Save your time, I made one
Of course I'm sure nothing came of it other than people telling me how I am the atheist Pletho and blah blah blah

An obvious point.

People who are smarter than you are, pointing out how silly it is to believe in supernatural "miracles".

Affirming the consequent, sometimes called converse error, is a formal fallacy, committed by reasoning in the form:

1. If P, then Q.
2. Q.
3. Therefore, P.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent

No explanations are necessary since the timing of the events in the Bible are not problematic except for flimsy, semi-coherent reasons which are easily dispensed with when they are eventually made explicit.

You're not smart enough to make that point.

Concerto:

Again, you need to stop trying to "poke holes" in my argument and make yours.

I knew someone like you in college who was constantly nitpicking the alleged logical fallacies of others, constantly pretending that he didn't understand arguments and that was demanding that other people answer his questions about them, and never saying what he actually thought.

He ended up completely friendless, of course, because everyone thinks a guy like that is a jerk. But hey, at least he was the smartest guy in the room, the guy who always could tell a reductio ad absurdem from begging the question! Which, along with $3.50, would have bought him a latte to drink alone at a coffee house.

You missed the obvious point.

I was referring to Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Ingersoll, John Adams, Elbert Hubbard, and Ethan Allen.

• The question before Concerto is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?
  
• A miracle is an event described by Concerto to whom it was told by people who did not see it.
  
• In those parts of the world where learning and science have prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant and inhabited by Concerto, miracles are still in vogue.

You don't get it. My argument IS that your argument is full of holes. You need to either toughen up or go back home to mama.

No, I knew what you meant to say. You may have to reread my response a few times to avoid stumbling over your own projections.

People who are smarter than you are, pointing out how silly it is to believe in supernatural "miracles".

Thomas is making a point. Are you listening?

Concerto:

When you grow up, you will learn that being able to fit arguments into formal logical fallacies, a fun parlor game for nerds in philosophy class, isn't the same thing as making an argument.

Weak point actually, revealing an underlying fear of criticism which you try to mischaracterize as unfair.

In fact, making arguments is only one of the reasons for participating in forums like this. Another is knocking down handwavy nonsense like you are in the habit of starting threads with.

Who, that slave owner?

"Let God be true, but every man a liar." -- Romans 3:4

handwavy nonsense = miracles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Concerto:

I welcome criticism. I just have never met a person who loves to pull out logical fallacy names rather than actually say what he thinks who wasn't a dork.

So instead of telling me that I am assuming the consequent and that you don't understand my argument, make your own. Tell us how it really proves that the Christian story IS correct that all the reports of Jesus' appearances and miracles happened prior to the technological advancements that I set out.

That, and not whether you got an A in formal logic, is the issue here.

Most of the people in the bible?

The issue is not whether Concerto can name various logical fallacies, it is whether your argument is unsound. He has claimed that your argument is illogical, and he identified the way in which he thought it was illogical. If you disagree, you should show how he is wrong, or admit that your argument is unsuccessful.

If, as you are coming dangerously close to saying, you don't care whether your argument is logical, then don't bother making arguments. Analyzing the formal nature of your argument is just a tool to make it easier to identify what errors you are already making, not a way to invent errors in your argument.

As to the substance of Concerto's criticism, I think where he is going wrong is that, as you suggested earlier, your argument is inductive rather than deductive. Your claim (as I understand it), is that miracle reports occur most commonly in environments with a low amount of confirming evidence available (such as the ancient past). This is consistent with the hypothesis that miracle reports are false, as we would expect to have more false reports in low-evidence environments. However, it requires an explanation on the hypothesis that miracles are real. After all, we would ordinarily expect a normal distribution of miracles, which would mean that miracle reports would occur just as frequently in high evidence environments, and that is not the case.

Here are three responses to this argument.

1. The hypothesis that some miracle reports are true does not imply a normal distribution of miracle reports. After all, the exact same reasons that lead you to believe that false miracle reports would be more common in low-evidence environments would also apply on the assumption that some miracle reports are true. In other words, just because you believe that some miracle reports are true doesn't mean that you believe that all miracle reports are true, and in that case you would expect false miracle reports to be much more common in low-evidence environments.

2. Relative to the history of the humanity, it is actually very unusual for us to be in high evidence situations. Thus, if we assume that miracles are relatively infrequent, then the greater amount of miracle reports in low-evidence environments could be explained as a result of the greater frequency of low-evidence environments.

3. For various reasons, God doesn't present himself in an obvious fashion to humans. This is obvious to us even without appealing to the evidence for miracles. After all, God could simply appear to humans. Or Jesus, who is a human as well as God, could have remained on earth. So God must have some reason to remain at least partially hidden from humans. Indeed, this is an important theme in some of the Gospels (especially Mark). If we add this reason to the hypothesis that some miracle reports are true, then it is not surprising that the occurrence of miracle reports in high evidence environments is very low as doing so would interfere with God's desire to remain partially hidden.

Are we basically invoking Occam's Razor here? As in, it's more likely that no God exists than a God who is currently hiding himself because it's (at least superficially) a simpler explanation?

I honestly don't know if you can apply that kind of logic about specific aspects to larger theological issues. Because if you accept a couple basic elements of the religion, there's no reason God existing and God doesn't want to reveal himself is overly complicated. In the grand scheme of a question like whether Christianity is false... simply that an aspect of it requires theological explanation isn't evidence against the theology. In this case, the explanation isn't really that complicated, as I've mentioned several times, and as OP posted more clearly above.

I think your assumption that God wouldn't play "hide and seek" is actually the MOST important part of your argument. Which, as I said before, is a really big, unconvincing, unsupported assumption unless you want to provide some evidence. If you can support this argument, you win in my book:

1) If the Christian God exists, he would reveal himself by performing miracles (in a time period with excellent recording technology)
2) The Christian God hasn't revealed himself (by performing miracles since those technologies have been available)
Therefore 3) The Christian God doesn't exist

I just don't think you can do it. Nothing against your personal reasoning skills, but it's going to be really difficult to convincingly support 1).

Valid points.

"I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here and assuming the bible-era texts aren't excellent recording technology"

Please note that the bible-era texts are far from being clear and well-written. They contain significant and obvious plagiarism, mascaraing under the guise of different "gospels".

OP:



Outside of a formal logic class, arguments can be "fallacious" and still be correct. See, e.g., Eugene Volokh, "Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope". And the flip side is also true-- arguments can take the form of formal syllogisms and be incorrect (because of false premises) or uninteresting.

Learning the names of logical fallacies may be fun for nerds, but it's not the same thing as answering an argument.

Bixby:

Even if I make no assumption about what god would do, it would still be the case that almost all fraudulent religions would situate the miracles and divine visits in this period. Thus, it makes it more likely (not conclusive, but more likely) to be BS.

As I said, I happen to think the theological arguments are transparent rationalizations, but that's not the point of my argument.

You're absolutely right that it looks exactly like it would if it were fraudulent. I don't think that's enough to qualify as evidence though, because we're showing that it's also what it could look like if it weren't fraudulent.

Say I keep a dog at an apartment where no pets are allowed. I know the landlord is coming through for an inspection, so I leave the dog at a friend's house along with his bowl, food, leash, etc. The landlord does his inspection and sees no dog, no bowl, no food, etc. and determines that my apartment looks exactly what it would look like if I didn't own a dog.

So then you have to ask- is it more likely that I moved the dog out when I knew the landlord was coming by for an inspection, or that I don't own a dog? I'm not sure you have enough weight to say either is more or less likely.

...especially if there's a 2000 year old book saying I have a dog. (Just kidding).

Edit: the point being, not finding evidence of a dog is never going to change his mind. If going into it he thinks I own a dog because of a conclusion he's drawn from other evidence, the fact that he won't find one during his inspection won't change his mind. And if he doesn't think I have a dog before he goes in, the evidence is just going to seem to confirm that.

Bixby:

A better analogy is the child seeing ghosts, upthread. If the ghosts never show up when the adults are there, that is evidence that they are imagined, even if they "tell" the kid a "reason" why they only show up when the adults are gone.

As for the dog example, that just shows it isn't conclusive. But if the dog is never there when the landlord visits, that still makes the possibility of no dog at all more likely.

It also shows what christians have to argue to get around it-- that God is deliberately hiding Herself from us.

Did God change his mind about performing miracles?

I don't know what formal logic did to you as a child, but it is time to forgive it. So here are a few points. If you take a logic class, you will learn in the first week that an argument can be valid and still be incorrect (because of false premises) or uninteresting. So I don't know why you bring that up.

The slippery slope is an informal, not formal, logical fallacy, so it wouldn't be covered in a formal logic class. But if you were taking a logic class where it was discussed, your teacher would probably tell you that some slippery slope arguments are good arguments, the trick is to figure out which ones (which is the point of Volokh's discussion).

If you took a logic class and paid attention, you would also have learned that any deductive argument that affirms the consequent is a bad argument. The conclusion might be true, but you haven't given a reason to think it is true. So when Concerto claims that you're affirming the consequent, you should probably try to show how he is incorrect rather than complaining about his greater familiarity with the study of argumentation.

Finally, feel free to respond to the substance of my response to your argument. And also, your continual use of the argumentum ad nerdium fallacy is tiresome.

I think the ghost example only suits you better because we have an inclination to say the idea of ghosts is ridiculous. What if you've done a lot of research and thought and philosophy and debate and decided you believed in ghosts that are prone not to show up around adults? The fact that they don't reveal themselves to adults, then, is hardly evidence against their existence.

This goes back to what I mentioned in my last edit. If you don't believe in God, this argument is perhaps some sort of confirmation of your non-beliefs. If you do believe in God, this argument doesn't change anything. If you're undecided, you're probably going to come to a conclusion based on other factors since either side can adequately explain the lack of modern miracles.

Edit: not to jump on the bandwagon, but you really are affirming the consequent, which doesn't work. This is what I was trying to get at with the dog example. "If he doesn't have a dog, it would look like he doesn't have a dog. It looks like he doesn't have a dog, so he doesn't have a dog." This doesn't work. Because there are other possibilities, like, "If he has a dog, it would look like he doesn't have a dog. It looks like he doesn't have a dog, therefore he has a dog."

I'm not sure what you're getting at with this. To answer: I don't know? Maybe his plan was to do miracles all along but something changed. Maybe his plan was to do miracles for a while and then stop...?

This isn't quite right.

Let's say you have two hypotheses, call them A and B. Let's also suppose that both of these hypotheses are consistent with observations 1,2,3,...,n. It is an obvious mistake to then say that these observations provide evidence that A is more likely than B. But if the Christian has a theological reason for thinking that e.g. God wants to remain partially hidden, that is exactly the situation you have here: two hypotheses, both of which predict that you will have few if any miracle reports in high evidence environments. So your observations about the occurrence of miracle reports wouldn't then give you a reason to prefer the non-Christian to the Christian explanation.

This is why bixby brought up Ockham's Razor. Assume that hypothesis A is simpler than B. Ockham's Razor would tell you that even if observations 1,2,3,...,n are consistent with both A and B, you should prefer A. But the reason you should then prefer it is because of the content of the hypotheses, not as an empirical result of the hypotheses.