steven nemes said...
As for the first question, I'll suggest this. If I find some small tracks of mud on my driveway, they look like animal tracks, and they lead to my garbage can which is knocked over, the bag has small holes bit into it, and garbage is leaking everywhere--I don't there have definitive, foolproof, certain evidence that it was a raccoon that did it. But it still is the sort of thing I'd expect to see if a raccoon did it. So also with God. Even if the evidence we have doesn't logically entail that it was God who caused the universe, or designed it, etc., it is still the sort of evidence we'd expect to see if God did exist, and I think we'd be alright in believing beyond the evidence here.
http://steven-n.blogspot.com/2010/05/terrible-response-to-theistic-arguments.html
steve said...
Congrats! You will go down in the annals of philosophy as the thinker who coined the Coonological theistic proof. Generations of phil majors will study your argument alongside Anselm, Aquinas, Philoponus, and Leibniz.
I await modal and Bayesean versions of the Coonological proof.
Vicious debates will break out in philosophy journals over the correct interpretation of the Coonological proof, viz. the Bahaman, Barbados, Cozumel, Guadeloupe, or Tres Marias Coonological proof.
Oxford and Harvard will endow Distinguished Steven Nemes Professorships of Philosophical Theology.
And I will be immortalized in footnotes of obscure German periodicals as some otherwise forgettable dude who used to leave otherwise forgettable comments at your blog.
May 4, 2010 5:12 PM
Anonymous said...
Where I live, if I find some small tracks of mud on my driveway, they look like animal tracks, and they lead to my garbage can which is knocked over, the bag has small holes bit into it, and garbage is leaking everywhere--then a possum did it. Not an Opossum--those are for Yankees. I'm talking about the oversized rat possum.
May 4, 2010 5:28 PM
steve said...
Anonymous has now produced the Cartesian version of the Coonological proof:
Cogito pos sum!
May 4, 2010 6:24 PM
Sometimes I don't even make those inferences. I am a properly functioning cognizer who is sometimes in certain epistemic circumstances like described in the above story. I see the mud, muddy animal tracks, knocked over garbage, small holes in the bag, etc., and I just find myself believing "Coon must have done all of this." I cannot help this belief, it arises spontaneously, non-inferentially, and immediately, and it is warranted to a degree sufficient for knowledge. Call this Warranted Coonian Belief.
ReplyDeleteYou could develop nearly identical models for the rationality of believing it was a chicken with raccoon feet--so you'd have a probabilistic defeater for your model there Paul
ReplyDeleteAnd I'd say Steve "Arminian Krusher" Hays is hardly forgettable
ReplyDeleteI've gotta say, I haven't heard an argument for the existence of God that's better than that one.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't an argument for the existence of God at all...
ReplyDeleteI think my favorite comedian, after Steve Haze, is Coonan O'Brien
ReplyDeleteIt's not an argument for the existence of God? You coulda fooled me.
ReplyDeleteNo, Zilch, it's an explanation.
ReplyDeleteSteve, but my view can be insulated from defeat, and other coon beliefs besides the general "Coon made this" can be both immediate and inferential, and still others, only inferential. There's a cooperative effort going on so and I can use Natural Coonology to help bolster these areas, as well as for use as defeater-defeaters.
ReplyDeleteWell, last night, Richard Dawkins emailed me to express his disapproval at the Coonological argument, as well as the Cogito pos sum variant.
ReplyDeleteAs he put it, appealing to "Coondidit" as an explanation was a "science-stopper" and "cop-out."
He also said that "Coondidit" explanations should be banned from the public school curriculum since "Coondidit" explanations were just a Trojan horse for intelligent coon theory creationism.
...the bag has small holes bit into it, and garbage is leaking everywhere--I don't there have definitive, foolproof, certain evidence that it was a raccoon that did it. But it still is the sort of thing I'd expect to see if a raccoon did it.
ReplyDeleteI think a raccoon would make a much worse mess than this.
Well, you all stink!
ReplyDeleteIn my neck of the woods when one does the investigation as to the critter tracks, the garbage can knocked over and the plastic bag with small rodent like bite marks on it and ooze coming out of those holes, one quickly goes back into the house cause the skunk is sure to be around somewhere! Skunkonological theistic proof is not one discipline I wish to go about proving by natural selection!
Now of course everybody knows that the skunk while scrounging around next to the Grizzle Bear in the garbage liter doesn't much care the bear is there. The Grizzle, on the other hand, well, he just wants to find something good to eat strictly minding his own business cause he knows it doesn't accomplish anything for him getting hostile and taking a bite out of crime.
"Ah, let the skunk eat, there is plenty for both of us"!
How the hell does this look *anything* like a theistic argument at all?
ReplyDelete"How the hell does this look *anything* like a theistic argument at all?"
ReplyDeleteOoh, lookie, he can cuss.
Why don't you close your mouth and open your mind, you might just learn something, youngster.
"Why don't you close your mouth and open your mind, you might just learn something, youngster."
ReplyDeleteWhat are you talking about?