strawmen of god

S

scifes

In withdrawal.
Valued Senior Member
the comparison of the belief in leprechauns and faeries and the flying spaghetti monster and invisible unicorns and santa claus and the rest of the bunch to the belief in god is a straw man argument.

put simply, even though both can't be seen, god relates to our world in a way not similar to the past group, which is the goal of the argument, meant to be dismantled in a sweep of one logical fallacy.
 
scifes said:
put simply, even though both can't be seen, god relates to our world in a way not similar to the past group
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How is it "not similar"?
How does "god relate to our world"?

It's one thing to claim the comparison is a strawman, but another to actually show that it is.
 
So use Odin, Ra, Zues, Abzu or any of the other thousands of gods which man has invented. Surely they relate to our world in a similar way to your particular favorite god.
 
shaman_ said:
So use Odin, Ra, Zues, Abzu or any of the other thousands of gods which man has invented. Surely they relate to our world in a similar way to your particular favorite god.
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I guess there just remains the delicate issue of actually establishing that they were invented ... in which case one wouldn't have to rely on the said strawman
:eek:
 
Dywyddyr said:
How is it "not similar"?
How does "god relate to our world"?

It's one thing to claim the comparison is a strawman, but another to actually show that it is.
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ok let me help you out here

If you take the case of the cargo cult, you can indicate what the persons were actually seeing and falsely designating as god (although the argument whether it is simply a correct intention, namely to acknowledge something as greatly more powerful than one's self, applied to a wrong object remains).

If you want to bring the same model to all thesitic claims, you have to thoroughly establish what they were in fact seeing in their rendition of god.

So shoot.

(PS - it might pay to remember that Bertrand Russel, the original advocate of the god as flying teapot, FSM or whatever, was responding to fidesim, or a theistic slant that god is something whom no-one can know anything about)
 
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lightgigantic said:
If you want to bring the same model to all thesitic claims, you have to thoroughly establish what they were in fact seeing in their rendition of god.
So shoot.
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Ah, no.
The believer has to show that there actually was something to be seen and has some sort of effect on things.
Until they do that they're all in the same category as unicorns, elves &c.
 
Dywyddyr said:
Ah, no.
The believer has to show that there actually was something to be seen and has some sort of effect on things.
Until they do that they're all in the same category as unicorns, elves &c.
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not really since the case of leprechauns et al have clear foundations within the tract of fiction.

If you want to lump theism in the same group, you also have to do the homework

:shrug:
 
shaman_ said:
So use Odin, Ra, Zues, Abzu or any of the other thousands of gods which man has invented. Surely they relate to our world in a similar way to your particular favorite god.
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that's my point, no matter what their names were, they all relate to our world in the same way, they are all "gods", even though the times and cultures were different, one word suits all the concepts.

that can't be said about the strawmen.
 
lightgigantic said:
not really since the case of leprechauns et al have clear foundations within the tract of fiction.
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Really?
Any evidence for that?
As compared with, say, Zeus or most (if not all) of the other gods?

scifes said:
that's my point, no matter what their names were, they all relate to our world in the same way, they are all "gods", even though the times and cultures were different, one word suits all the concepts.
that can't be said about the strawmen.
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Wrong again.

They were all inventions to explain the world.
 
Dywyddyr said:
Really?
Any evidence for that?
As compared with, say, Zeus or most (if not all) of the other gods?
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Never heard of plato I take it ....

(or perhaps the absence of any comprehensive philosophical analysis within the literary circles of leprechauns doesn't bother you)
 
lightgigantic said:
Never heard of plato I take it ....
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I see you like to make assumptions.
Incorrect ones.

(or perhaps the absence of any comprehensive philosophical analysis within the literary circles of leprechauns doesn't bother you)
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Another assumption there too.
Simply because people have been selective on what they write about somehow proves the existence/ non-existence?
 
Dywyddyr said:
I see you like to make assumptions.
Incorrect ones.


Another assumption there too.
Simply because people have been selective on what they write about somehow proves the existence/ non-existence?
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more that a complete absence of discourse on the topic of the existence/non-existence within the field of leprechauns tends to mark it as clearly distinct
:eek:
 
lightgigantic said:
more that a complete absence of discourse on the topic of the existence/non-existence within the field of leprechauns tends to mark it as clearly distinct
:eek:
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So people didn't consider them to be as much worth writing about as other fictional constructs.
Maybe someone will get round to it one day...
 
lightgigantic said:
I guess there just remains the delicate issue of actually establishing that they were invented ... in which case one wouldn't have to rely on the said strawman
:eek:
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It is a reasonable conclusion considering the contradictory nature of the stories surrounding these gods and our observations of human behavior.
 
shaman_ said:
It is a reasonable conclusion considering the contradictory nature of the stories surrounding these gods and our observations of human behavior.
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probably more accurate to say that it's reasonable for one who considers the entirety of theistic discourses contradictory
 
Dywyddyr said:
That's an assumption. Of course.
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Hardly.

The seminal works of Plato can be found quite a few shelves away any seminal leprechaun tomes in most libraries.


That might be a worthwhile point. If all we had was that "strawman".
Which has yet to be shown as such.
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nevertheless the philosophical treatises derived from leprechauns are still pending .....
 
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