tl;dw

Why don't you make your own arguments rather than just linking videos? Or at least give us a summary of what he talks about. Right now it looks like you just typed "reasons to believe in god" into youtube and linked the video.

I find many discussions on this site terse and simplistic.  This was an attempt to garner a more in depth conversation.  Apparently its too much to ask.

This is a bad thing ? 

Yeah, that's what I always think when I read one of Deludedgod's posts all the way through : Too simplistic.

Eh, no, this was an attempt to plug this guy's book. 

Watch an hour long infomercial for yet another God book ? Yeah, kinda.

If he makes any arguments that haven't been crushed here yet, why not just list them ? 

Er...you did watch it yourself, I hope ? 

Damned straight.

[edit] C'mon! That's funny, and you know it.

I haven't watched the video. I'll try to find some time in the next couple of days, though, just because you have a point. It would be nice if you'd give us an indication if there's something specific you liked, so we can pay particular attention. Otherwise, our short little attention spans will drift, and we'll miss something important, and then we won't be able to have a full discussion.

You know how atheists are.

Of course you have to have life needlessly complex. It is impossible  for you to accept that atoms are not the product of magic. So you needlessly assign the control over the googles of googles of googles of atoms in the universe to a man in a white robe vs a man with a pitchfork.

"POOF" logic is your game and we are the people pointing out the myth behind the curtain.

 Come on, VP.  You know if they got all the definitions and our arguments right, they'd not have a case.  They have to argue against a distorted version to sound like they have something.

What should be so convincing is repeating something. If you repeat it enough it must be true. The sun is a thinking being by that standard because people repeated and dipicted that claim in Egypt for 3 thousand years.

I watched a bit more of the video.

He goes on to argue that the argument from evil falls flat because it relies on an argument from ignorance. I suppose he is construing the argument from evil as saying: we cannot make sense of the suffering, therefore the suffering is senseless, therefore an all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly loving being would stop it. He has put forward a caricature of the argument, just like he caricatured the position of atheism earlier in his video.

Here is a fairly decent portrayal of the argument from evil...

Assumptions:
(A) God exists
(B) God is all-knowing
(C) God is all-powerful
(D) God is perfectly loving
(E) Any being that lacks any of the three above properties would not be God

Argument:
(1) Evil exists
(2) An all-knowing being would know that evil exists
(3) An all-powerful being could eliminate it
(4) A perfectly loving being would desire to eliminate it
(5) Thus, evil does not exist (from 2,3,4)
(6) Thus, no being is all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly loving (from 1,2,3,4,5)
(7) Thus, God does not exist (from E,6)

The argument does not say evil is senseless. If a God existed that was not all-powerful, not all-knowing, or not perfectly loving, then we very well could make sense of the evil. If no gods existed, we could make sense of it.

For the sake of argument, we shall assume that the evil does make sense; none of the evil that exists is senseless. That doesn't change the veracity of the argument, though. If you accept the theistic assumptions outlined, you're doomed because the premises lead, deductively, to a proof by contradiction. The argument shows that the existence of evil rules out the existence of God (as defined), and the existence of God (as defined) rules out the existence of evil. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

His argument, that the argument from evil relies on the fallacy of the argument from ignorance, seems to arise from his assumption that one of the greater-good theodicies successfully resolve the problem. Specifically, he relies on the unknown purpose defense. His acceptance of the validity of that theodicy leads him to think that the argument from evil relies on an argument from ignorance. Perhaps he did not try to caricature the argument from evil, but simply never looked at it without his rose-colored glasses on.

The unknown purpose theodicy does not work. It effectively abandons any possible justification for thinking that God is good, assuming God exists. Determining if something is good or bad requires at least some understanding the motive and intent of that God, but the unknown purpose defense explicitly denies such an understanding. If you use this theodicy, then you cannot assert that God is good without begging the question. This is special pleading in its purest form.

It also denies any possible justification for offering help to your fellows, because you would never know if you are working with God, without God, or against God. This attempt to rescue God from disproof results in throwing morality into the gutter, as you could never talk intelligibly of an outward moral virtue for yourself, for others, or for your God, and thus you would find yourself in moral paralysis.

I may watch more of the video later. I don't have my hopes up that it will put forward a good argument, though, seeing as how I've encountered three duds in a row thus far, and those weren't even new duds.

Correct. It also has the implication that we shouldn't praise any apparently righteous behavior either, because it might be necessary for an evil of equal or greater magnitude.

Anyway, I watched a bit more of the video.

Keller attempts to rebut Hitchens' argument that basically asks why God, if God exists, would allow his followers to commit such horrendous evils in his name. I have not heard Hitchens put forward any arguments, so I'll provisionally accept this portrayal of Hitchens' argument for the sake of argument.

Keller responds by saying that people seem to have an innate tendency to twist or pervert any worldview or philosophy for the attainment of evil ends. His response fails.

Even if humans had such an innate tendency, they also have the innate tendency to favor self-survival and to fear that which can destroy them. If God existed as defined, as having omni-attributes, then God could increase their fear of destruction and their favoring of self-survival to such an extent that it would overpower their tendency to twist or distort worldviews and philosophies. Those individuals not sane enough to recognize God's potency could be simply washed away, like God supposedly done during the worldwide flood. In such a scenario, God could prevent his followers from committing horrendous evils in his name.

The only way one could construe Keller's argument as successfully resolving the problem is to construe his argument as supporting non-intervention, such as that postulated by deism, because that would, to a certain extent, absolve god of any wrongdoing by not intervening. Unfortunately, he is not arguing for deism or anything similar. Using non-intervention to defend the notion that an interventionist god exists does not work; it contradicts itself.

Then, he argues that this tendency to twist or distort worldviews or philosophies occurs in Buddhism, Shintoism, Christianity, and Islam. I do not disagree. Unfortunately, he goes on to argue that violence, oppression, etc. also arose from atheism. This response also fails. Atheism is not a philosophy or worldview. Atheism only pertains to atheists within whose brains you will not find an acceptance of the proposition "a god exists". It does not put forward any principle, doctrine, belief, assertion, proposition, and therefore there is no principle, doctrine, belief, assertion, or proposition that someone could twist or distort in favor of violence, oppression, etc. so nothing could arise from atheism. Nothing that an atheist accepts grounds itself in atheism, distorted or not, because that cannot happen. In the "atheism outgrowth" for lack of a better term, he mentions Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and so on, but all of these individuals did what they did because of their mental health, their upbringing, their political views and aspirations, their anti-intellectualism, and so on, but none of that has anything to do with atheism.

Where'd you go, Spumoni?  There are some quite pointed statements made here by VP...he's clearly NOT lazy and is willing to engage you in great detail!  

Hello?

You there?

I'm pretty sure these are also referred to as strong (positive) and weak (negative) atheism. I suppose negative atheism is simply the lack of a belief in God while positive atheism is "denial" of God (whatever the heck that means)? Although, many people disagree and claim that no distinction actually exists. Instead, negative atheism is lumped together with people that are really don't know to form the category, agnostics, while positive atheists are painted as puppy-torturing demons. Overall, the amount of semantic disagreement over these few words is pretty ridiculous, even among atheists and theists themselves.  

My approach to this problem (and I believe this is the RRS's stance) is I simply split everyone into theists (believe in God) and atheists (don't believe in God) and use the term agnostic (cannot know for certain whether God exists) as a qualifier.

So...

100% chance that God exists - gnostic theist

>50% chance that God exists - agnostic theist

50% chance or not sure - agnostic

<50% chance that God exists - agnostic atheist (negative)

0% chance that God exists - gnostic atheist (positive)

I prefer this classification because the other method, for some reason, has a difference way of classifying <50% than >50%.

Thoughts, anyone?

Edit: Also, I think we often emphasize that agnosticism describes what we believe we can know, not our beliefs themselves. 

Check out this page.

http://www.rationalresponders.com/am_i_agnostic_or_atheist

When you say "most agnostics are more like 1-10%" etc., I assume you're referring to people that would call themselves agnostics, and, likewise, with every category. If that's the case, then I agree with pretty much everything you wrote. First, I think there are very few actual fence-sitters; there appears to be a giant gap in the middle of the playing field. Along the same line of reasoning, most people whom consider themselves agnostics appear to hold that God most likely doesn't exist. They don't consider themselves atheists because there seems to a pervasive definition of atheism as absolute knowledge that no God or Gods exist, which is still held by a large part, if not the majority, of at least the U.S. population. 

I agree that it's extremely difficult to put probabilities at 0 or 100%. Induction, for all practical purposes, is a process that is absurd to doubt, but we can't really say that it ever proves or disproves something with 100% certainly, although I suppose it could gather enough evidence to make the difference ridiculously minuscule and mostly semantic. Anyways, most atheists are agnostic atheists, and, you'll disagree with me here, but I also get the impression that most Christians feel they are 100% certain of the validity of their beliefs. 

Finally, of course, we can only put a qualitative percentage (qualitative percentage?) on these things because there is no way for us to actually quantify the chance of God existing. I think you implied something slightly different; "there can be no definition for God?" 

But, if you've called him something that you can't define, then you've already defined him, haven't you? 

Sigh, I suppose it's rather pathetic that people like you and I have been debating this issue for over a thousand years, but we haven't even agreed on the definitions of the very terms that are most fundamental to the topic.

Thanks for the link. This is interesting. I might be an enthusiastic christian and think I am 100% sure (as I probably have in the past) but my 99.9 was because we all might be brains in vats or in the matrix. But I wasnt taking into account all the possible ways I could be wrong. And even if I dont understand math and that I cant be 100% and still be wrong thats one thing. Also people dont really know what their percent really is. We are guessing or estimating what it is which puts a confidence band on it. I try to put a confidence interval on everything just for practice  to see if I can get better at containing the real number. But in a sense, since probability is subjective it doesnt make sense to put an interval on it! Its only based on what I think I know.

So I agree that many Christians think theyre at 100%. I will consider that I have "maintained the faith" when I die even if I'm only at 51%.

As christians we are taught to be sure about where we're going...but lately I think maybe its better to not be so sure...but I figure I'm ok with not existing anymore after death, I deserve hell (but dont think its going to be that bad for most people) so Im ok with that, but I would still like to serve god for eternity if thats an option.