kx000
Valued Senior Member
Non of this is valid. You have no knowledge of God, or of his not. I believe religion is false as well, that has NOTHING to do with God's existence, wouldn't you agree?
How is the FSM any more absurd than the Christian God?
- Thread starter wynn
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Non of this is valid. You have no knowledge of God, or of his not. I believe religion is false as well, that has NOTHING to do with God's existence, wouldn't you agree?
I don't have to have first-hand knowledge of some vague supreme being to argue against the Judeo-Christian God character. I can see the beginnings of that mythology just like I can see the beginnings of any other mythology. I can see it for what it is.
Not in the sense that you mean, no. First of all, you say "God" with a capital G. This isn't in reference to some prime mover, this is a reference to Yahweh, the Abrahamic god. And the concept of an omnipotent deity is decidedly monotheistic, so while you claim to think the religions of monotheism are false, you still take your concept of god from those religions. You think you're being objective here, but just like Wynn's arguments, they're centered in the "logic" of a monotheistic religion. For all you know, the creator of the universe might be a group of scientists. We might exist in a petri dish. There is nothing inherent to the universe that necessitates any creator at all, let alone a singular creator.
We can use a deliberate invention. To reject such a comparison, purely because it is known to be deliberately conceived, is fallacious when the source of their conception has no bearing on the aspects being compared.
It would be like saying we can't compare the question-answering ability of a machine and a human because the machine is deliberately conceived.
Which would certainly put any work done by IBM and their WATSON machine somewhat in their place.
Simply put, the source of the entities has no bearing on what about them is being compared in this instance.
And who is to say that the "deliberate conception" of the FSM was not a case of the FSM "working in mysterious ways" and putting knowledge of his existence into the mind of someone such that they give rise to knowledge of him?
It could be that Pastafarianism, while the predominant religion of the FSM, is merely a single interpretation, and that Ragu-doo, a lesser known interpretation (if this meme spreads, you heard it here first!!) is actually a more faithful interpretation. (I think one thing this parody religion has not yet done is to split into warring factions over the minutest of details... is the sauce more important than the pasta??)
In some regards it would offer the same comparison - when you wish to teach something that is unfalsifiable, why only teach one specific thing (e.g. ID).
But my understanding is that the FSM, as a conceived entity, was to highlight the issue with teaching an unfalsifiable alternative to evolution... i.e. why teach ID when there are so many equally unfalsifiable alternatives... such as the FSM... that one can also teach.
The FSM then spawned Pastafarianism... and it is this, with the FSM as its deity, that seems now to be the predominant meme, and this is a parody religion.
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Yup, you're enlightened. :m:
No. Even Hindus who talk to Westerners sometimes use the word "God" - and they mean Bhagavan.
And where did those scientists come from?
You would know, I guess ...
I say that because there were people long before there was monotheism. At some point either people invented the concept or God decided to announce himself finally after 2 million years or so of lurking.
it's a strawman.
comparing something everybody believes doesn't exist to something some people believe exist and others don't is fallacious.
the fact that they're both scientifically unprovable is a detail compared to the absurdity of the FSM's existence.
more correct would be the celestial teapot, which says there could be, and there might not be, a god out there, without the implicit unlikeliness implied by the FSM.
as a matter of fact, one may even make the analogy less conspicuous , and say god's existence is unprovable just like the existence of a random unmapped celestial rock(asteroid/planet), instead of a teapot(what would a teapot be doing up there?).
it's easier to argue god's proof of existence when compared to the flying spaghetti monster as opposed to say, love or souls.
Scifes has it exactly right.
It would be fine as a contrast critique of theocratic doggerel in law and government - although unicorns, ghosts or leprechauns would be more parsimonious in some respects; aliens would be better still - but that's rarely the way it's used, now is it? Few hark back to its original intent.
It still might be a useful refresher to some people desperately in need of contrast and deduction, mind.
Lady of Sorrows, indeed.
It would be fine as a contrast critique of theocratic doggerel in law and government - although unicorns, ghosts or leprechauns would be more parsimonious in some respects; aliens would be better still - but that's rarely the way it's used, now is it? Few hark back to its original intent.
It still might be a useful refresher to some people desperately in need of contrast and deduction, mind.
Lady of Sorrows, indeed.
No he's not. The absurdity of FSM is part of the lesson. If you cannot disprove FSM, however absurd it may be, there is a comparison to be made between it and God, which is equally impossible to disprove. If something so absurd has just as much valid evidence for it's existence as God, then we can dismiss both as absurd.
it's an unwarranted subjective part. a fallacious one.
agreed. however..
you mean we can dismiss both as "things with little valid evidence".
the transition from "has little evidence" to "absurd" can only be done through the FSM, which is why it's a strawman argument. the FSM is easier to defeat than god. it exists as something that doesn't exist and the thought of it existing is absurd.
god is not like that, although they have the same amount of evidence for their existence, the idea of god existing is not an absurd one. if it was so, people wouldn't have made it up and believed it to begin with, intentionally or unintentionally
.many things have little or no scientific evidence for them, as i said, souls have no scientific evidence for them, so are aliens, or an undiscovered species of insects.
the last one is well-known to be discovered regularly, so there is a trend to the popping up of evidence for it, which is why one may say it would be fallicous to compare it's current lack of evidence to god's current lack of evidence..
..unless you think the probability of the existence of an undiscovered species of insects is the same as god, when i compare them as two entities with no or little evidence for them.
It's obviously fictitious, but we are doing a thought experiment here. You have to accept the premise just for the sake of argument. You can't just dismiss something because it sounds silly. I think God is silly too, but it has the illusory legitimacy given to it by tradition. To think that the creator of the universe resembles human beings at all is just about the most absurd thing I could think of, much less that it cares about this species out of all the other 99% of species that already came and went.
Although you are correct that the term absurd is subjective, I think the fact remains that your God and the Flying Spaghetti Monster are both equally valid hypothesis. Equally weak.
With regard to your analogy about undiscovered species. There is already evidence that we aren't aware of all the species on earth. The evidence pertains to the vastness of nature and the limited number of biologists with the will and funding to find them. There is no comparison to God, since there isn't evidence of people often finding reliable evidence of God.
It's not a strawman in the aspects of the analogy that are being examined: the unfalsifiability of the deity and the following religion. All analogies are made up - so are you claiming that analogies are all strawmen? The only fallacy I can see is if one argues against point X (e.g. the issue of unfalsifiability) by saying that it is not applicable because the concept of the FSM is fabricated... this would be arguing a strawman, and seems to be what you are doing.
I disagree. The key here is that they are both unfalsifiable... and if it takes an absurd physical appearance to highlight this issue then so be it... it is not merely "detail compared to the absurdity..." but one of the very issues in question.
You have to separate the FSM from Pastafarianism (the religion)... the FSM is no different to the celestial teapot in the issue it raises with regard unfalsifiability. If you can tolerate the teapot, then embrace the FSM.
I admit the religion, Pastafarianism, is entirely different, as it parodies different issues. But the teapot is no different in principle to the FSM.
Completely different analogy.
Not able to technically prove at the moment is utterly different to being unfalsifiable in the absolute sense.
If we mapped every part of the universe then this "random unmapped celestial rock" would be proven to exist or not exist.
God, and the FSM, are beyond this... they are unfalsifiable.
I don't follow? Okay, souls I would consider to be on a par with god in terms of unfalsifiability. But are you suggesting that God is an easier concept to prove if held up against the FSM than against love, or souls?
If so then this in itself is a fallacy... because proof of a concept is nothing to do with comparison but to do with the thing being proven.
Is it easier to believe in God than in the FSM? Possibly, given the parodying nature of the FSM.
But this also isn't anything to do with proof, but rather peoples' ability/willingness to believe.
But if you mean something else, then I do not follow.
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Would you care to explain exactly what this comment is supposed to mean?
Okay, but they're still referring to a particular personality rather than a generic creator, so my point still stands.
Perhaps they are eternal. Or perhaps they spawned from nothing. It doesn't matter. The point is that there is no logical argument the necessitates a singular creator. It very well could have been a pantheon of gods.
That's not a refutation of my argument. Show me what about this universe requires a singular creator.
GeoffP said:
You guys have got to be kidding me. The FSM is a parody of Intelligent Design, not an attempt to disprove God. It began in this letter sent to the Kansas School Board, in which the author uses the arguments of ID proponents against them.
The difference is that Intelligent Design is a whole-cloth fabrication, a completely debunked pseudoscience. This is precisely why the FSM's greatest strength is that it is a completely made-up creature. This is why to "support" his claims, the author included a graph showing an inverse correlation between the number of pirates and the average global temperature, which is an obvious send up to the junk science and God-of-the-Gaps arguments put forth by the ID community.
The parody may have worked if he had substituted aliens (though the Raelians might probably wouldn't have thought so) or unicorns, but not as well as an obvious fabrication such as a flying monster that bears a striking resemblance to spaghetti and meatballs.
You guys have got to be kidding me. The FSM is a parody of Intelligent Design, not an attempt to disprove God.
But the latter is the way in which it's often used now, in my experience. It's initial premise is not in question. SG describes it as a thought-experiment; and it's that, too, clearly.
Well, no one who knows what they're talking about is trying to use it as evidence against God's existence, and that's certainly not what the point of this thread is. I seem to recall you arguing against its effectiveness as a parody, so I don't know why you now say its original premise was never in question.
And I'm not seeing anyone say that it's evidence against God, I'm seeing people say that it stands as a good example of how unfalsifiable claims cut both ways, but that's merely an argument against unfalsifiable claims, not the existence of a god.
if what they don't have in common is more important than what they do have in common, and the latter is the true goal of the analogy, then yes.
i can say that a lemon is a fruit just like a banana, a fair analogy..
..but not when i'm arguing that bananas are sour.
while both the FSM and god are unfalsifiable, that is not the point of the comparison, rather it's pushing the stance that they're both made up, when one is so by definition, and the other is not.
fallacy.
They are both made up that is the whole point.
well if that isn't friggin ironic
You guys have got to be kidding me. The FSM is a parody of Intelligent Design, not an attempt to disprove God. It began in this letter sent to the Kansas School Board, in which the author uses the arguments of ID proponents against them.
you know what's unfalsifiable? evolution.
evolution is the numerical science which interpolates the discrete archeological finds of living creatures.
no matter how far two points can be, no matter how some points might screw the trend, evolution always has, and always can, adjust its interpolating function to include those points.
to cut to the chase and proof the pudding by tasting it, give me a scenario in which evolution would be false. falsify it for me.
parallel to your answer(which i still wanna hear btw):
darwin himself when he put the theory of evolution said that if somebody were to find an organic element which can't come about through successive simpler processes then his theory would simply fall.
now there are two possibilities;
a-what darwin said doesn't make sense, in that unless you quantify the simplicity or quantity of the processes which are supposed to yield that complex biological element, then everything concieveble can have an evolutionary explenation to it, hence the theory is unfalsifiable.
b-there is a limit of complexity which when exceeded by the basic processes proposed to have lead to the complex biological element, the processes are rejected and the theory of evolution fails. then the theory is falsifiable as darwin stated.
in our world, many scientists say they have come across case b, well known established scientists, the "majority" of the scientific community rejected their theories, explaining them using case a, labeling them as pseudoscience.
if "irreducible complexity" isn't synonymous with "falsification test of evolution" then i don't know what is.
edit:if mods see this off topic just delete it or split it.
darwin himself when he put the theory of evolution said that if somebody were to find an organic element which can't come about through successive simpler processes then his theory would simply fall.
now there are two possibilities;
a-what darwin said doesn't make sense, in that unless you quantify the simplicity or quantity of the processes which are supposed to yield that complex biological element, then everything concieveble can have an evolutionary explenation to it, hence the theory is unfalsifiable.
b-there is a limit of complexity which when exceeded by the basic processes proposed to have lead to the complex biological element, the processes are rejected and the theory of evolution fails. then the theory is falsifiable as darwin stated.
in our world, many scientists say they have come across case b, well known established scientists, the "majority" of the scientific community rejected their theories, explaining them using case a, labeling them as pseudoscience.
if "irreducible complexity" isn't synonymous with "falsification test of evolution" then i don't know what is.
edit:if mods see this off topic just delete it or split it.