DO GOD BELIEFS USUALLY OR ALWAYS REST ON DEFIANCE OF GOOD
REASONING?
Premise: God is that which creates from nothing.
Premise: The universe was created from nothing.
Conclusion: Therefore God exists.
This is not a valid argument simply because nobody really knows what create means. Knowing what it does is confused with knowing what it is.
The premises are parts of the argument. A premise is either true or false. There is no half-measure. But in this case each premise though it does not look it is unclear and ambiguous. We cannot know if it makes sense to talk of not-anything becoming something. We don’t really know what we mean. A vague idea remains a vague idea. God himself is also a vague idea for God is spirit and we know that the term means that which is real but is not made of anything material or made of parts. That is not very helpful either - its words without understanding. We know what to say about it but not what we mean. We struggle understanding matter and meaning something by it but this is worse. So it is not clear what the argument is doing. We don’t really have any way of determining the conclusion.
Religion might say that it is more important to take it on faith that God is love than to show that the universe suggests God or is explained by God. This is not true. The idea is that creation and love go together for creating was God's act of pure gratuitous love.
Any argument is based on premises which are used to get the conclusion. The conclusion is valid if the conclusion really does follow from the premises. It is invalid if it does not. An argument with untrue premises can still be valid. Valid means the thinking is correct not that the thinking is true. Premises have to be true for an argument to be sound.
An argument such as the God one above is meaningless and that is how it is invalid. Meaningless is another form of invalid. It is feared more than any other form of invalidity for arguments that read as if they mean something but don't are more dangerous and misleading than ones that plainly contradict themselves.
Premise: If a being is God he can do miracles.
Hidden premise: God is what which can create from nothing and therefore do miracles.
Premise: If miracles happen there is a God.
Conclusion: Again this suffers from God being indeterminate and creation being indeterminate. Creation is indeterminate in itself. God is indeterminate in itself too and made more indeterminate by saying he creates and is creator. Miracles though they are acts of creation are indeterminate too. You cannot tell them apart from magic which proves that. If nothing - not even God - is able to do miracles, I mean as in nothing is able to produce miracles, then that would be magic. It is the magic not of God doing something but nothing doing it. Creation is suspiciously like the notion that God makes nothing do magic to make things.
To say God has to do a miracle to hint that he created all things from nothing suffers from the fact that if creation cannot point to God neither can a miracle.
After all creation is a miracle.
A miracle at most would be showing that whatever is doing it, it is not a God.
Here is another one.
Premise: I have free will to choose good or evil.
Premise: God would give me this free will so that I can be free and responsible.
Conclusion: Maybe such a God exists.
That is actually meaningless as well for free will cannot be defined though we try. We know it means creating actions but to say it is creating actions is confusing what it is supposed to do with what it is.
And free will if it is real is about creating. The creating good or evil is not what it is about. We create good and evil yes but we only do so not because free will is about that but because it can be used for that. Free will in fact points to NOT having come from a moral God.
We talk about begging the question. You argue in circles and use the conclusion to support itself. You make your conclusion and pretend you are not. You for example decide that God is good, When told that evil and suffering are rife you will answer they feature in a plan to overcome them for God is good. You are defining God as that which gradually overcomes evil so you are guilty of saying, “God exists for I say so.” The notion that evil exists to gradually turn into good and that justifies God letting it happen is only a guess - just as much as it would be a guess to say that good exists to gradually turn into evil or into something non-moral. It cannot be tested for probability or anything so it means nothing.
Religion assumes that as there might be a God with the universe that therefore there is a God. Cum hoc ergo propter hoc is the fallacy of "with this, therefore because of this". It is forgetting that two things happening together does not mean they are causally linked. It is the error of thinking that correlation necessarily implies causation. It does not. Needing to drink more water when it is hot does not mean your needing to drink is the reason it is hot.
Believers seem to assume that all things came from nothing. They also assume there is a God. This on the face of it does not look like an example of this fallacy. It is for things existing and God existing does not mean God is the reason for the things existing. They assume only God can create but the reality is that nothing becoming anything is really something we cannot understand. It is just words for us.
Gambler’s fallacy is the assumption that the outcome of one or more independent events can influence the outcome of a subsequent independent event.
God forgave me many times before so I ask for forgiveness and he will forgive me now. God always hears my prayer so he will hear me now even if he does not help me in the way I expect. The fallacy is about taking things for granted. It is about taking God for granted if you look at the examples shown. The fallacy proves that the core reasons for having God, mercy and prayer, are not really about God. It is about you acting spoilt and hiding it.
Argument from ignorance, also called the negative proof fallacy, upholds the truth of a proposition based on a lack of evidence against it, or the falsity of a proposition based on a lack of evidence for it. An example is that "God has to exist for how else can you explain how we are alive?" That is using the fact that we have life, and a dangerous and challenged one at that, to urge faith in God. It is callous in doing so. It is obvious that merely to say there is a God is to assume the fallacy is correct. It is abusive of evidence and truth for the fact remains that lack of evidence says nothing about what is true or false. It is just a lack of evidence so read nothing more into it.
Arguments from ignorance are often tactical. You are the one saying there is a God so you should show there is one instead of asking the other person to make the case for or against. They try to cheat by saying the duty to verify which is yours is not yours.
Negative proof fallacy one: God must exist for how else can we account for how the universe exists when there might not have been anything? This is assuming there is a God for it is assumed there is no reason to think there is none. God could be a lie if there is no evidence against him.
Negative proof fallacy two: God does not exist for there is no evidence for him. But something can be true and there might be no evidence.
Is it as bad to say x exists for there is no evidence against? Or is it worse to say x does not exist for there is no evidence for x? The argument does nothing to stop us reversing it, "God does exist for there is no evidence that he does not." If you are going to say one then you can and should say the other in the next breath for it does not matter for one argument is as dire as the other. To say one is to say the other for it is saying the logic is right.
If you cannot work out if an argument is valid or otherwise, then create a parallel argument to see if you get a true conclusion or an absurd conclusion .
Common formal fallacies include "affirming the consequent" and "denying the antecedent."
Affirming the consequent (also called converse error) is to infer the converse from the first premise.
If A, then B.
B.
Therefore, A.
For example:
if God made me from nothing, then I can sin
I sin
Therefore I am created from nothing
Denying the antecedent (also called inverse error) is to infer the inverse from the original statement.
If A, then B.
Not A.
Therefore, not B.
For example:
If God, then Jesus.
Not God
Therefore not Jesus
FINALLY
Faith in God is anti-logic and anti-reason and as they are not just brain exercises but ways to protect ourselves from lies and mistakes faith in God is anti-people.
