That’s all entirely besides the point though—shminux created the pretense out of nowhere to make fun of it. In this sense, since shminux is making fun of some unspecified “God”, I’d expect them to pick the most reasonable (or most typical) definition to battle, which makes it totally inappropriate to say the problem is underspecified (since underspecifying the opposition’s views and defeating those crippled views isn’t a good way to actually learn from the argument).
I think I disagree with most of that; I think most of “the opposition” (not that I much like that framing) have views that are poorly defined, borderline-incoherent, or both.
(Not because “the opposition” are idiots; I suspect it’s also true that most atheists have rather fuzzy notions of just what “the existence of God” entails.)
Sure, it’s possible (at least, I think it is) to formulate a precisely-defined definition of “God” and debate whether there is any such entity. But that hardly ever happens; when people argue about the topic, what usually happens is that everyone has their own idiosyncratic and tactically-varying idea of what “God” and “God exists” means.
And I don’t think shminux introduced the notion of God in order to make fun of it; I think he thought it was a useful analogy to explain how he feels about the idea of time travel. Something like “it’s a thing lots of people assume is a reasonable idea that one ought to consider the possibility of, but I think it actually doesn’t make sense, and the more closely you look at it the less sense it makes, and bringing it into a discussion usually makes that discussion less useful rather than more”.
Thanks, this (and the reply confirming this was the meaning) cleared a lot up for me. I misread the original comment pretty poorly and would probably agree with this formulation of it. Thanks for clearing this up for me, I appreciate it.
That’s all entirely besides the point though—shminux created the pretense out of nowhere to make fun of it. In this sense, since shminux is making fun of some unspecified “God”, I’d expect them to pick the most reasonable (or most typical) definition to battle, which makes it totally inappropriate to say the problem is underspecified (since underspecifying the opposition’s views and defeating those crippled views isn’t a good way to actually learn from the argument).
I think I disagree with most of that; I think most of “the opposition” (not that I much like that framing) have views that are poorly defined, borderline-incoherent, or both.
(Not because “the opposition” are idiots; I suspect it’s also true that most atheists have rather fuzzy notions of just what “the existence of God” entails.)
Sure, it’s possible (at least, I think it is) to formulate a precisely-defined definition of “God” and debate whether there is any such entity. But that hardly ever happens; when people argue about the topic, what usually happens is that everyone has their own idiosyncratic and tactically-varying idea of what “God” and “God exists” means.
And I don’t think shminux introduced the notion of God in order to make fun of it; I think he thought it was a useful analogy to explain how he feels about the idea of time travel. Something like “it’s a thing lots of people assume is a reasonable idea that one ought to consider the possibility of, but I think it actually doesn’t make sense, and the more closely you look at it the less sense it makes, and bringing it into a discussion usually makes that discussion less useful rather than more”.
That’s exactly how I meant it, a seemingly reasonable concept that doesn’t hold together upon closer examination.
Thanks, this (and the reply confirming this was the meaning) cleared a lot up for me. I misread the original comment pretty poorly and would probably agree with this formulation of it. Thanks for clearing this up for me, I appreciate it.