Cerebralbore101 said:
JWeinCom said:
Ok..? Who cares?
George Washington said and did some great things. He said and did some dumb things. This is one of the dumb ones.
When they've studied it, there is a negative correlation between religiousity and quality of life among nations. Plenty of mostly secular countries (Scandanavian Countries, Israel, Japan) have been doing pretty well in terms of crime rates and other indications of morality.
There is no evidence for god, therefore god doesn't exist is not necessarily an argument for ignorance fallacy. In cases where we should expect evidence for something, then pointing out that there is not evidence can be a valid argument. For example, if I claimed there was a fire in my house, and there is no scorch marks, no smoke damage, etc, then the lack of evidence is proof that there was no fire.
It depends on the particular god you're arguing for, but generally, the absence of evidence is a pretty logical case against it, or at least a case for not believing in it.
As for the argument I gave as an example it is absolutely an argument from ignorance fallacy. But, since people don't generally talk in logical syllogisms (and I find the particular poster isn't particularly clear) then it gets messy.
If you're saying it's reasonable to believe in god because there is so much we don't know, that is an argument from ignorance. The argument goes, since we don't know everything, we can't completely rule out the possibility god is lurking outside our knowledge. That means we don't have definitive proof against him/her/schlee/schler, so it is reasonable to believe in it.
That is quite literally an appeal to what we are ignorant of to support a position.
Likewise, claiming that god (fictive or otherwise) is necessary for objective morality (that has not been shown to exist) becaue nobody has provided another method (which people had) without positive evidence that god is necessary or sufficient for objective morality is definitely an argument from ignorance.
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That's a modus tollens, not an argument from ignorance. It takes the form of if P then Q. Not Q, therefore not P. Or to put it into the house burning argument that you used. If P (my house burnt down), then Q (there should be scorch marks and fire damage). There are not any scorch marks or fire damage (Not Q), therefore my house didn't burn down (Not P).
The problem with the the argument from ignorance fallacy is that the statement "If X then there should be evidence for X" does not always follow. For example "If Joe killed Sue there should be evidence that Joe killed Sue." This statement is illogical because Joe could have destroyed the evidence, or taken special care not to produce any evidence.
I agree that absence of evidence is a case for not believing in a God. But it is not a case for believing that a God *doesn't* exist.
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That's why I said that it depends on what kind of god you're arguing for.
If you're arguing for a deistic first cause kind of god, or using god to mean any being with power that transcends human knowledge, then evidence wouldn't matter, because that kind of god may or may not leave evidence.
When you're arguing for a god with specific characteristics though, then you often should expect evidence. For example, if someone wanted to argue for a god that answers prayers from christians, you'd expect evidence in the form of prayers answered at a rate higher than chance. If we look examine and can't find that evidence, then that is evidence against that version of god.
