glossary of apologetics : a debator's toolbox

[hyksos]

Any adult philosopher needs to know the basic layout of theistic debates. Without these tools, even the most clever of us can be caught off guard, and frustrated in debate. This glossary tries to give a short definition of these words. It is not in alphabetical order. Instead, I have opted to order these on a spectrum going from , on one pole, most atheistic then towards more religiously extreme. Anyone preparing for a debate is strongly advised to do research on each item in this glossary.

Apologetics
We should address the word, "apologetics", itself. Apologetics is the whole basis for the existence of this glossary. It is essentially religion restructured through approaches of logic and reason. Religion comprises a much larger set of human social phenomena, irrational religion, persuasion, moral rhetoric, cult leaders, and evangelism. (There exist churches who contend that evidence of God is immediate, and that you can "feel His presence".) Engaging irrational religion is a different ball of wax, and exceeds the scope of this post.

anti-theism
An extreme form of atheism. Religion is bad for society. Indoctrinating children into religion is akin to child abuse. Governments should pro-actively curtail religious practice.

non-cognitivism
(Often Theological noncognitivism). The entire concept of a monotheistic deity is incoherent. Attempting to either reason out the existence or attempting to collect evidence of a deity is impossible. Theo noncogs are a brand of atheists popularly found on the internet. The motto of Theo noncogs is that a god can not exist , because its alleged properties are self-refuting. They concentrate, almost exclusively, on the omnipotence, omnipresence, and other aspects of the concept of God within many religious traditions. They will often invoke the "Problem of Evil" to challenge omni-benevolence. They investigate the infiniteness or eternaless for earmarks of fallacious reasoning.

atheism
A person without a belief in a god. Some popular dictionaries have defined atheism as the denial of God's existence.


Secular humanism
A system of ethics and morals that is not informed by religion nor spirituality. In the Italian Renaissance , "humanism" was an approach to knowledge that God could be best known through the study of man.


Syncretism
The pattern in history in which an indigenous religious practice is transformed or assimilated into a different religion usually brought in from the outside. 'Syncretism' can also refer to the scholarly pursuit of comparing how various doctrines or even entire stories were transmitted between different religions.


petitio principii; Begging the question
A logical fallacy. A form of circular reasoning. A subtle argument in which the conclusion is assumed true prior to, or along with the premise.

Affirming the consequent
A logical fallacy, wherein if P -> Q, a person asserts that Q -> P is true. This reasoning is a non-sequitur. While Q->P could possibly be true, you cannot use P->Q as its justification.

modus tollens
A particular valid deduction from formal logic. If P -> Q, and we discover that ~Q, then we conclude ~P. (If it rains, then the sidewalk is wet. The sidewalk is not wet. Conclusion: It did not rain.)

Argument from ignorance
A logical fallacy. In general contexts, it is stated: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. However, the fallacy cuts both ways. No mathematician has been able to prove the Goldbach conjecture. The inability to prove the conjecture has no bearing on its truth or falsity. Similarly a large group of atheists who are unable to prove that God does not exist has no bearing on the issue of God's existence. A debater using the argument "You can't prove there is no God. Ergo, there is a God.", is committing a logical fallacy called the Argument from Ignorance.


Principle of Sufficient Reason
Often "PSR" Coined by mathematician/philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. If there is any fact in the world, there must exist a reason that it is so.

Brute fact
A brute fact is a fact that has no explanation for why it is so. (an example: the universe has 3 dimensions of space). In Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV series , Sagan narrates this following argument : If everything that exists requires a creator, then who created the creator? Sagan is invoking a reductio argument on infinite regress. A brute fact appears (superficially) to act as a violation of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Many theo-noncogs assert that theists are contradicting their own position. A theist will do this whenever they use PSR as a justification for a creator's existence, but then assert the creator's existence as a brute fact.



apatheism
The position that holds that the existence or non-existence of a God has no bearing. God existing (or not) will have no effect on human life in general. Tomorrow morning, the world will be no different in either scenario.


agnostic
A person who holds that the existence of God is perfectly coherent, and entirely plausible. But also, this person asserts that all the pure analytic arguments for God are insufficient to conclude its existence. Also a person who believes that theists have not met their burden of evidence for establishing a god's existence.

Empiricism
A philosophical system. A system where all knowledge claims must be traced to measurement and observation.

Idealism
The view that mental properties are distinct from physical properties. Mental events have causal powers.

Rationalism
(often Greek Rationalism). A philosophical system in which there are truths which transcend the physical world. Humans, through a faculty of reason, have access to those transcendent truths.

Dialetheism
An approach to formal logic which accepts the existence of statements which both true and false at the same time. Dialetheism (like paraconsistent logics, and intuitionist logic) is not used in any scientific or mathematical discipline. This is not so dramatic, as even Second-order logic is rarely used in STEM disciplines.

sophistry
In a debate it is arguing in bad faith. Sophistry is the use of clever rhetoric to deceive your opponent or the audience.

scholasticism
A collection of various written traditions in European history, where polemics on the Bible were carried out in writing that extended to book-length works. Various schools existed from about 1100 to 1700. This period also corresponds to the rise of Protestant christianity.


Thomism
A theology associated with Saint Thomas Aquinas. Statements (1)"God exists" (2) "God does not exist" (3) "God probably exists." are taken as hypothesese. Reason, dispute, and evidence are then utilized to decide which is true. American theologist, William Lane Craig, has strongly denied that he is a Thomist.

Kalam's Cosmological Argument
An example of a proof for the existence of God. While there are many such "proofs" this one gained notoriety when it was adopted and spread by William Lane Craig.
(1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
(2) The universe began to exist.
(3) The universe has a cause.
(4) We call that cause God. Therefore God exists.


deism
The belief that God exists, but interacted with the physical universe very early, either to create the universe, to "set it into motion" or both. The deistic god is sometimes called the "God of Einstein".

panentheism
Panentheism (Greek for "all in God”). The belief that God pervades and interpenetrates every part of the universe and also extends beyond space and time. A central dogma in Hindu religion, panentheism appears in concept in the writings of a few European philosophers of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Apophatic theology
God transcends all human concepts. Apophatic theology is a central dogma in modern Islam. Also seen in some denominations of American Christianity, such as the Church of Christ. Apophatism is expressed in religious practices that prohibit graven images of God, such as depictions in painting or sculpture.

faith
Belief in facts without empirical justification. "Belief in things un-seen".

Personal God
The belief that humans can interact with God in an ongoing relationship. This is contrasted with "classical theism" where God is used as a referent to a metaphysical concept, either as a first cause (Thomism) or as some variation of "highest principle of existence".

Divine command theory
An ethical theory from normative ethics. DCT asserts that what is moral is determined by what God commands. For a person to be moral is to follow his commands. According to Pollock (2007), there are four assumptions of divine command theory:
(1) There is a god.
(2) God commands and forbids certain acts.
(3) An action is right if God commands it.
(4) People ascertain what God commands or forbids.

presuppositionalism
An extremist theology in which God's existence must be taken as axiomatic prior to any subsequent reasoning. There are no facts in the world which cannot be eventually traced to the singular, binding fact of God's existence. Presuppositionalists assert that even entertaining the non-existence of God leads to a system of beliefs that are foundationaly incoherent. Any conclusions reasoned from doubt of God must (somehow) necessarily already be false.

[TheVat]

[ moved from Religion forum, as it touches on several branches of philosophy... and will get more reads, hopefully ]

[Serpent]

Thank you both.
Dictionaries and glossaries are wonderful.
Their readership tends to be limited, as does the comprehension and retention of their contents.

[Forest_Dump]

I am a little curious about where these definitions came from. A bit more than a year ago I picked up a hefty time of a reader on the philosophy of religion in a university bookstore and, while I am still slowly working my way through it (as my interest and time waxes and wanes), suffice it to say that many of the definitions appear to be highly debatable. This might be even more exaggerated where I live because here Midi is probably the predominant religion so the focus around the Abrahamic religions no longer holds the same significance for me.

[Serpent]

I am a little curious about where these definitions came from. A bit more than a year ago I picked up a hefty time of a reader on the philosophy of religion in a university bookstore and, while I am still slowly working my way through it (as my interest and time waxes and wanes), suffice it to say that many of the definitions appear to be highly debatable. This might be even more exaggerated where I live because here Midi is probably the predominant religion so the focus around the Abrahamic religions no longer holds the same significance for me.

Actually, I, too am curious bout the source.

many of the definitions appear to be highly debatable.

That goes without challenge. Definitions are endlessly contested, debated, refined and modified. That's what makes any new compendium of terms so delightful to compare to its predecessors. (To those of a peculiar bent...)

[Forest_Dump]

I can understand that. To some, for example, atheism might be confined to a disbelief in deities of theories. But for others it could be taken to mean a disbelief in all forces, powers, etc, that haven't been fully defined by science to date. So some would say that any kind of faster than light travel, the force in star wars, whatever animates the zombies in Walking Dead, or even all those extra dimensions some physicists believe in all count as supernatural and/or religion. You pick and then argue vociferously as you like.

[Serpent]

I don't see how "a -theism" can mean anything that doesn't include " theoi" or "gods", let alone zombies or all forces that are not fully defined by science (i.e. all forces, since scientific definitions are also under constant review.)
Skeptics generally reject all unexplained phenomena, at least provisionally. While all atheists are skeptical to the point of rejecting gods, they are not by definition required to deny all of the paranormal.
To some, atheism is "a religion" - but that's not so much an alternate definition as a deliberate misrepresentation.

[Forest_Dump]

I certainly include atheism as a religion because it includes a definite set of statements about deities and religion. Additionally, personally I find it to be a set of statements that I find unbelievable. Interestingly, as well, that reader I mentioned includes papers by such radical atheists as Dawkins and I think Dennett and in fact a whole section on atheism (Feuerbach, Draper, Rise, etc). It is a philosophy of religion.

[Serpent]

May I be shown the statements to which I am alleged to subscribe?

[Forest_Dump]

K but I prefer to wind my part down here. Atheism makes the statement that there is no God. Personally I don't believe in the Judeo-Christian God of today but leave open the possibility there was something going on on that mountaintop.a few thousand years ago (believe it or not that is compatible with a number of traditional religions and not incompatible with my views of science which are of the realism school). Anyway, to discount any or all religions is a set of statements that I find to be too absolute and lacking of evidence for me.

[Serpent]

There are probably more shades of agnosticism than atheism. Nevertheless, all atheists do not share a single tent.

Atheism makes the statement that there is no God.

I don't think atheism is an entity capable of issuing statements, any more than science is such an entity. If there were a uniting statement for all atheists, I doubt it would feature 'god' as a proper noun.
That notion can't be included in a credible definition.

I would have liked to see the Articles of Atheism, to put my own position on a spectrum drawn by [presumably] philosophers of religious belief and unbelief. While my pov would not affect the formal definition, understanding the standard employed would help me to accept or reject the definition.

[hyksos]

I am a little curious about where these definitions came from.

Actually, I, too am curious bout the source.

Most are written by me for brevity and utility. Some from Britannica , some from plato.stanford.edu , a lot from wikipedia. Likely too many of these are from wikipedia, and I should had followed the references deeper.

http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/Cavalier/80130/part2/II_preface.html

http://www.sciencechatforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=23562&start=0

Atheism makes the statement that there is no God.

http://www.sciencechatforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=16627&start=0

[Forest_Dump]

Perhaps oddly I can agree with lots of that. I have even had people argue strongly that I am an atheist. Based on most of what others seem to say I think I am a reverent, skeptical, weak agnostic with leanings towards animism. But since I don't like any form of ideological (religious, economic, political, etc) missionary zeal, I would prefer not to have to argue my case.

[toucana]

Faradave wrote

As an outsider to philosophy, I find it helpful when terms are defined, at least for use in a particular thread.

For example, most people seem to use "cosmos" and "universe" interchangeably. But in physics, I use cosmos to mean all space and its contents at a particular moment (and for a given reference frame, a "simultaneity") whereas I use "universe" to mean all space and all time (this happens to include all 4D simultaneities), so I define the terms for clarity.

The classical Greek word Κοσμος has several meanings. One of them is 'Ornament’ and it is still used in that sense for a type of daisy (Cosmos genus Cavanilles) with a single brightly coloured flower found in South America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos_(plant)

The usage more familiar to physicists of 'Τhe universe seen as a well ordered whole' is actually given as a tertiary reading in my copy of Liddell & Scott’s Lexicon of Classical Greek.

The only real difference between the words Cosmos and Universe is that one comes from classical Greek, and was first used by the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (570 BC - 495 BC), and the other comes from Classical Latin and was first used by the Roman scholar and statesman Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC).

Beyond that, they are actually synonyms.

[hyksos]

Perhaps oddly I can agree with lots of that. I have even had people argue strongly that I am an atheist. Based on most of what others seem to say I think I am a reverent, skeptical, weak agnostic with leanings towards animism. But since I don't like any form of ideological (religious, economic, political, etc) missionary zeal, I would prefer not to have to argue my case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_atheism

https://infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/atheism/about.html

I wobble between apatheism and agnosticism. If anything, modern physics has shown me that the universe is far stranger than we can imagine. Human metaphysical common sense is no guide. It isn't even a valid guide for the physical universe, let alone some 'larger' reality.

I do fear that a large contingency of internet atheists are unaware that logic is limited. While logic is a powerful tool and a necessary skill for a disciplined mind, it is not all-powerful. Even in mathematics, we have to confront the uncomfortable fact of the existence of propositions that are true, but which cannot be proven.

What do we mean when we say that a mathematical proposition is "true", but which we have shown cannot be proven? These thorny problems inevitably circle back to Rationalism, as defined above. If a true proposition has no proof, it certainly has no empirical justification (see 'Empiricism' above).

so the focus around the Abrahamic religions no longer holds the same significance for me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahman

[Serpent]

Since the sources are disparate, the glossary as a whole cannot be challenged, so we'd have to debate each particular definition separately. That could take literally forever. And since we only seem to disagree on a couple of the entries, that seems a futile exercise - indeed, the same futile exercise that [I presume] prompted the introduction of a glossary in the first place.
For the moment, I'm happy to accept it as it stands.
Later, if sorting papers for tax return leaves me free time, I'll look up the relevant entries in my Oxford Companion.

ETA - I looked. It's signally unhelpful on the definitions of 'atheism' and 'universe'; on the former, it waffles; for the latter, there isn't even an entry. Bah!

[Faradave]

Beyond that, they ["universe" & "cosmos"] are actually synonyms.

Thanks for making my point that the terms are used interchangeably. But that leads to a problem. On the one hand,
"The universe is all of space and time and their contents..." - Wikipedia.

On the other hand,
"The expansion of the universe is the increase in distance between any two given gravitationally unbound parts of the observable universe with time." - Wikipedia,
which is something changing over time.

The latter more correctly refers to is "expansion of space" but one often hears of "cosmic inflation".

Further, "expansion of space" (any particular simultaneity) over time suggests independence of space from time, if one presumes a flat geometry. This cannot be the case in view of invariant speed (i.e. space/time ratio) limit c, which indicates a dependence.

My post was meant to encourage authors to define terms, as they intend to use them, in a thread. For a thread like this one, defining "God" as "The Supreme Being", would have different implications than "Creator of all that is" among many examples. But one can choose (or combine) to accommodate a particular argument so long as it is made clear to readers.

[Serpent]

My post was meant to encourage authors to define terms, as they intend to use them, in a thread.

I very strongly agree with this. It's all right for terms to be interchangeable in theory, but in each particular exchange, the participants need clarity regarding their subject matter. We all too often see bad-faith arguments, where one participant misrepresents another's statement by the use of an alternate term, and sometimes one with a different meaning - as if the other person had used it.

For a thread like this one, defining "God" as "The Supreme Being", would have different implications than "Creator of all that is" among many examples. But one can choose (or combine) to accommodate a particular argument so long as it is made clear to readers.

I would find neither of those definitions acceptable without appending "according to Abrahamic tradition..." or "in the Sikh belief system...." It would, however, be acceptable to use the word consistently throughout the conversation, once it had been established that everyone is referring to the same character designated as "God".
If we wanted to be persnickety, by the definition cited by Forest_Dump : Atheism makes the statement that there is no God." and the remarkably similar one in the OC to Philosophy : "Athiesm is ostensibly a doctrine that there is no God." both of which denote disbelief in a particular deity. The old Norse, Hindus and Aztecs were/are atheists in the only sense we consider. However, as they clearly have religions featuring all manner of theoi, they cannot be atheists. Conversely, all Christians, Muslims and Jews are atheistic toward Thor, Shiva and Quatzequatel. The difference hinges on the word "god", rather than "God". If we hope to avoid that confusion, we should be more specific: for example, any form of the god's name Jehovah or Allah would clarify what god is being believed- or disbelieved-in.

[charon]

Why are we more interested in the word rather than what it represents? Look at the thing, not the word.

[toucana]

Why are we more interested in the word rather than what it represents? Look at the thing, not the word.

Because words define concepts which are the tools of thought. If you don't understand what someone is trying to say, then you will have no idea what they are thinking, or trying to convey to you

I would refer you to the tale of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9, and the lines in Confessio Amantis (1390) by John Gower that depict the engineering difficulties that may arise from a confusion of tongues.

One called for stones, they brought him tyld [tiles]
And Nimrod, that great champioun
He ragéd like a young lioun

[Serpent]

Why are we more interested in the word rather than what it represents? Look at the thing, not the word.

Which thing?
There are 29 "things" up there, all intangible. How do we look at them?

[charon]

Why are we more interested in the word rather than what it represents? Look at the thing, not the word.

Which thing?
There are 29 "things" up there, all intangible. How do we look at them?

I've no idea. How do you know there are 29 and intangible? Or is that a joke?

What I'm saying is that the label is one thing and the actual reality another, it's very simple. Everyone says 'the universe' but remove the label and what is there?

And do we actually know? Nearer home it's easier. Look at the sky without the word 'sky' and it's extraordinary. But with 'universe'... it's a sort of blank, right?

I'm not saying don't use words for reference, of course, that would be silly.

[Serpent]

I've no idea.

If you have no idea how to do it, why are you asking others to "look at the thing"?

How do you know there are 29 and intangible?

I looked at the OP, counted the words in bold, classified them in the person, place, object, idea table, observed in each instance that it is not a person, place or object and concluded that, as ideas or concepts, they lack physical corpora which could be seen or touched.

What I'm saying is that the label is one thing and the actual reality another, it's very simple. Everyone says 'the universe' but remove the label and what is there?

I guess you'd have to call it "that which, if you don't know its name and imagine it gone, there'd be nothing left to imagine."
If you remove the label Syncretism : what there is a phenomenon with no name that, if we want to discuss it, we have to describe the long way:
"The pattern in history in which an indigenous religious practice is transformed or assimilated into a different religion usually brought in from the outside. Alternatively, the scholarly pursuit of comparing how various doctrines or even entire stories were transmitted between different religions. " which would be rather tedious, so we probably would pass on discussing it at all. Much as if the word 'pyramid' were removed from our vocabulary, and we'd have no collective short descriptive for "Those big grave things for ancient Egyptian kings and all the other buildings and objects shaped like those big grave things for ancient Egyptian kings."

I'm not saying don't use words for reference, of course, that would be silly.

Use them, just don't define them?

Edited to include the cited example. And again to correct typing error.

[charon]

We're talking at cross purposes. The discussion was about the universe and you said 'There are 29 things up there'. But you were talking about the OP's list, not the universe, which is why I thought it might be a joke.

Of course we need words for things and the more clearly used the better. But my point was that the word, the label, is not the thing for which it stands. When we say 'universe' do we really know what it stands for? Or only vaguely?

[Serpent]

We're talking at cross purposes. The discussion was about the universe and you said 'There are 29 things up there'. But you were talking about the OP's list, not the universe, which is why I thought it might be a joke.

Sorry. I was talking about the thread subject, not a particular example of one word with different meanings. The topic under scrutiny is not the universe as a thing-itself, but the word 'universe'; iow, the label-itself.

Of course we need words for things and the more clearly used the better. But my point was that the word, the label, is not the thing for which it stands. When we say 'universe' do we really know what it stands for? Or only vaguely?

The point of that example was to state clearly and unequivocally which of two or more meanings one intends to use in a particular discussion, exactly so that we do know what the word stands for.

[charon]

But you can google it. Which dictionaries contradict each other over meanings for universe?

[Serpent]

But you can google it. Which dictionaries contradict each other over meanings for universe?

Are you in the habit of googling every potentially ambiguous word in a discussion? How do you even know which ones are potentially ambiguous or contentious? You may simply assume that other participant(s) has (have) the same understanding of the subject that you have.
In the case of Faradave and 'universe', both you and I would be very from correct in that assumption.

[charon]

Agreed.

[TheVat]

See the OP to remind yourselves of the thread topic. Not a venue for personal theories in cosmology, but I can move those posts to a new thread. (done)

[Forest_Dump]

Agreed. To me the OP was directed towards a discussion on religion while later it seemed to become more about science. As I see it, it has become clear that science has no more to contribute to religion than religion has to contribute to science.