2009-01-19
Formal Argument
In the comments section I was accused of committing a logical fallacy. The one identified was an appeal to emotion, covered here and I quote the bit that explains why it is not applicable:
"appeal to consequences does not refer to arguments that address a premise's desirability (good or bad, or right or wrong) instead of its truth value. Therefore, an argument based on appeal to consequences is valid in ethics, and in fact such arguments are the cornerstones of many moral theories"
I have never attempted to argue "If you don't accept my claim that I am God, human rights abuses will continue to occur, and that is why my claim is correct". (Regardless of the fact that the first part of the argument is most likely correct). However, I don't think I've ever formally presented the argument. But let me have a stab at it.
1. In principle, it is wrong to wrong/bad to rape/chop people's tongues out and various other human rights abuses.
2. Protecting people from human rights abuses is good, even if this involves the use of force.
3. The ultimate good is to protect human rights.
4. God is usually assumed to be the ultimate good entity.
5. For a human to be considered close to God, or doing God's work, or God-like, he/she would do God-like things, ie ultimately good things, ie protecting human rights.
6. Stopping Saddam from doing those things to the Iraqi people is one of those good things even IF that was not the only, or even, primary, motive. (for some people it was the only motive - and it SHOULD have been A motive for ALL moral actors on the planet).
7. Humans thus have the ability to compete to see who comes closest to being God-like.
8. I chose to take part in that competition, regardless of the fact that I was an atheist, in fact, being an atheist was an integral part of that competition to eliminate the inaction/indifference caused by people saying "God will take care of that".
9. I devoted an enormous portion of my life to protecting people from human rights abuses, be they Americans jumping from the WTC or Iraqis being raped by their own government.
10. Not only did I make more effort than anyone else to protect human rights, the ultimate result of that was isolating/deriving a particular ideology that would convert human rights abusers into defenders of human rights, if adopted and internalized.
11. That ideology/philosophy (message 666) is the most important achievement in human history as for the first time it provides a pathway to obtaining world peace (ie after world freedom), rather than the current situation where wars, fights and human rights abuses seemingly pop up randomly and are unfathomable and unstoppable.
12. That human achievement was accompanied by a series of seemingly miraculous "coincidences", namely:
a) Message with discovery ended up being numbered 666. There is not even a 1 in 666 chance of this happening, as the thousands of messages that I wrote on the Iraqi blogs rarely ever even had an OPPORTUNITY to be 666, because message comments per post don't normally reach that number. It is an undisputable fact that 666 is widely known in our culture as representing evil (despite the fact that there's zero evidence of it being evil, any more than there is of 13 being unlucky).
b) Message was written on Sept 11, 2004, the anniversary of the most widely known act of evil by terrorists in human history.
c) (much weaker "coincidence") The blog post that the message chain was written in response to was posted on my birthday.
Specifically NOT included in this argument are unverifiable claims of revelations - they only play a part in easing (greatly) my personal acceptance of the argument - but as with all other unverifiable claims, they cannot play any part in a scientific line of enquiry.
13. The combination of the God-like actions with the miraculous "coincidences" point to something supernatural having just occurred.
14. There are other supporting "coincidences" surrounding the God-like person, such as the fact that he was born the same year that Jerusalem was reunited - something that many people believe (without hard evidence) to be of religious significance. Also other moral acts like trying to produce lots of public domain software to lower the cost to business to ultimately drive down prices.
15. It is wrong to write off something so improbable as the above as a long series of "coincidences" any more than it would be to write off the lottery numbers being the same every week 10 weeks in a row as "coincidence" (rather than the far more likely scenario that it's rigged).
That concludes the formal argument for the proposition "a supernatural event occurred around a God-like person".
I'm not expecting anyone to accept the argument, even though it is entirely logical and correct, because I am way too familiar with the extreme dogma that almost all humans possess.
The leap from "a supernatural event occurred around a God-like person" to "that person is God" is not provable. It is necessarily speculative because we don't have access to investigate how the universe was constructed. Such speculation gives rise to models that are conceptually useful, and different people will come to different views on the likelihood of those speculative models. My preferred model, and I stress, that it is just a model, is:
1. The universe has been constructed via a sophisticated computer, the closest movie that shows such a concept is "The Thirteenth Floor", although the aspect where the "player" gets replaced in the upper universe on death is not a very likely implementation.
2. Almost all history is fabricated as part of that simulation.
3. The universe creator, who we will DEFINE as "God", has most likely JOINED the universe (something that is technically easy to do once everything is silicon-based) and is in fact the most God-like person we see on earth.
4. The purpose of the universe is to create a challenge for God-on-earth to see how much wrong he can right during his time inside the universe.
I have no interest in debating the latter speculation, since not only can I not prove it, I don't even claim that it is true. I only claim that it is the best model I know of (and challenge people to find a superior alternative). I'm happy to refine the model based on "likely implementation based on how we would do it ourselves". I am happy to debate the initial premise and the various assumptions in it. I certainly understand why a rapist would not accept the logic when he baulks at an assumption that rape is a human rights abuse rather than a perk. But apart from the rejection by sociopaths of these things being human rights abuses, no-one has been able to find a flaw in the resulting logic. It's extremely unlikely they ever will either, because I have other (non-scientifically verifiable revelations) reason to believe the argument is sound. So any counterargument is sure to have a flaw in it, even if it takes some time to flesh out the formal error of logic.
Now let the monotonous wall-to-wall dogma and ever-repeating logical fallacies begin. Foddy, you have pole position as usual.
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"appeal to consequences does not refer to arguments that address a premise's desirability (good or bad, or right or wrong) instead of its truth value. Therefore, an argument based on appeal to consequences is valid in ethics, and in fact such arguments are the cornerstones of many moral theories"
I have never attempted to argue "If you don't accept my claim that I am God, human rights abuses will continue to occur, and that is why my claim is correct". (Regardless of the fact that the first part of the argument is most likely correct). However, I don't think I've ever formally presented the argument. But let me have a stab at it.
1. In principle, it is wrong to wrong/bad to rape/chop people's tongues out and various other human rights abuses.
2. Protecting people from human rights abuses is good, even if this involves the use of force.
3. The ultimate good is to protect human rights.
4. God is usually assumed to be the ultimate good entity.
5. For a human to be considered close to God, or doing God's work, or God-like, he/she would do God-like things, ie ultimately good things, ie protecting human rights.
6. Stopping Saddam from doing those things to the Iraqi people is one of those good things even IF that was not the only, or even, primary, motive. (for some people it was the only motive - and it SHOULD have been A motive for ALL moral actors on the planet).
7. Humans thus have the ability to compete to see who comes closest to being God-like.
8. I chose to take part in that competition, regardless of the fact that I was an atheist, in fact, being an atheist was an integral part of that competition to eliminate the inaction/indifference caused by people saying "God will take care of that".
9. I devoted an enormous portion of my life to protecting people from human rights abuses, be they Americans jumping from the WTC or Iraqis being raped by their own government.
10. Not only did I make more effort than anyone else to protect human rights, the ultimate result of that was isolating/deriving a particular ideology that would convert human rights abusers into defenders of human rights, if adopted and internalized.
11. That ideology/philosophy (message 666) is the most important achievement in human history as for the first time it provides a pathway to obtaining world peace (ie after world freedom), rather than the current situation where wars, fights and human rights abuses seemingly pop up randomly and are unfathomable and unstoppable.
12. That human achievement was accompanied by a series of seemingly miraculous "coincidences", namely:
a) Message with discovery ended up being numbered 666. There is not even a 1 in 666 chance of this happening, as the thousands of messages that I wrote on the Iraqi blogs rarely ever even had an OPPORTUNITY to be 666, because message comments per post don't normally reach that number. It is an undisputable fact that 666 is widely known in our culture as representing evil (despite the fact that there's zero evidence of it being evil, any more than there is of 13 being unlucky).
b) Message was written on Sept 11, 2004, the anniversary of the most widely known act of evil by terrorists in human history.
c) (much weaker "coincidence") The blog post that the message chain was written in response to was posted on my birthday.
Specifically NOT included in this argument are unverifiable claims of revelations - they only play a part in easing (greatly) my personal acceptance of the argument - but as with all other unverifiable claims, they cannot play any part in a scientific line of enquiry.
13. The combination of the God-like actions with the miraculous "coincidences" point to something supernatural having just occurred.
14. There are other supporting "coincidences" surrounding the God-like person, such as the fact that he was born the same year that Jerusalem was reunited - something that many people believe (without hard evidence) to be of religious significance. Also other moral acts like trying to produce lots of public domain software to lower the cost to business to ultimately drive down prices.
15. It is wrong to write off something so improbable as the above as a long series of "coincidences" any more than it would be to write off the lottery numbers being the same every week 10 weeks in a row as "coincidence" (rather than the far more likely scenario that it's rigged).
That concludes the formal argument for the proposition "a supernatural event occurred around a God-like person".
I'm not expecting anyone to accept the argument, even though it is entirely logical and correct, because I am way too familiar with the extreme dogma that almost all humans possess.
The leap from "a supernatural event occurred around a God-like person" to "that person is God" is not provable. It is necessarily speculative because we don't have access to investigate how the universe was constructed. Such speculation gives rise to models that are conceptually useful, and different people will come to different views on the likelihood of those speculative models. My preferred model, and I stress, that it is just a model, is:
1. The universe has been constructed via a sophisticated computer, the closest movie that shows such a concept is "The Thirteenth Floor", although the aspect where the "player" gets replaced in the upper universe on death is not a very likely implementation.
2. Almost all history is fabricated as part of that simulation.
3. The universe creator, who we will DEFINE as "God", has most likely JOINED the universe (something that is technically easy to do once everything is silicon-based) and is in fact the most God-like person we see on earth.
4. The purpose of the universe is to create a challenge for God-on-earth to see how much wrong he can right during his time inside the universe.
I have no interest in debating the latter speculation, since not only can I not prove it, I don't even claim that it is true. I only claim that it is the best model I know of (and challenge people to find a superior alternative). I'm happy to refine the model based on "likely implementation based on how we would do it ourselves". I am happy to debate the initial premise and the various assumptions in it. I certainly understand why a rapist would not accept the logic when he baulks at an assumption that rape is a human rights abuse rather than a perk. But apart from the rejection by sociopaths of these things being human rights abuses, no-one has been able to find a flaw in the resulting logic. It's extremely unlikely they ever will either, because I have other (non-scientifically verifiable revelations) reason to believe the argument is sound. So any counterargument is sure to have a flaw in it, even if it takes some time to flesh out the formal error of logic.
Now let the monotonous wall-to-wall dogma and ever-repeating logical fallacies begin. Foddy, you have pole position as usual.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 06:58 
