More of that Santa Claus stuff, with added IPU...

[Lord Muck oGentry]

I came across this bizarre outburst at Scepcop:

Argument # 4: The Invisible Pink Unicorn / Santa Claus gambit.

Stated as: “Of course I can't prove that God, spirits, UFO’s, paranormal phenomena or metaphysical realities don't exist, but you can't prove to me that invisible pink unicorns and Santa Claus don't exist either, but that doesn't mean that they are real.”

Here is the rest:
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/Page4.htm

1) First, the main problem with this argument is that what people actually experience is NOT the same thing as what a skeptic deliberately makes up for the sake of argument! To put the two in the same category is both illogical and underhanded. Since the skeptic using this argument hasn’t really experienced invisible pink unicorns himself, everyone knows that he is deliberately making up something fictitious to put down something he doesn’t believe in while the paranormal experiencer or claimant is not.

It's easy to mock this. ( So here goes... ) What's at issue is precisely whether people who say they have had experience of such things have in fact had such experience or merely think they have — so the premiss of the objection is question-begging. The point of the skeptical argument is that the believers' standard of evidence is so low that just about anything will satisfy it. The sincerity with which a belief is held is a poor guide to its truth.

2) Second, likewise what someone sincerely believes is NOT the same as what someone knowingly makes up. Since the skeptic who uses this argument don’t believe in invisible pink unicorns himself, it is pointless as well as inconsiderate to compare that to what people genuinely believe and experience, such as God, spirits, or ESP. Of course, just because someone genuinely believes something doesn’t make it true, but to compare an honest person to a deliberate fraud is not a valid comparison.

Again, fairly simple. What is at issue is the believers' standard of evidence. Hypothetical counterexamples here are quite as deadly as the common-or-garden sort.

5) Fifth, just because something is unprovable does not automatically put it in the same category as everything else that is unprovable. For example, I can’t prove what I ate last night for dinner or what I thought about. Without witnesses, I can’t prove what I saw on TV or how high I scored in a video game either. But that doesn’t mean that these things are in the same category as every story in the fiction section of the library.

Now, that just supposes that skeptics muddle what is unproved and perhaps in practice unprovable ( say, what the writer had for dinner last night) with what can be disproved ( say, that Sherlock Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street in 1887). And, more important, it misses the point of the skeptical objection: what believers believe and assert needs to be supported.


So, a pretty hostile review from me. However, in the spirit of critical thinking and, of course, charitable interpretation, I'd like to ask whether I have missed or misunderstood anything from the Scepcop article.

[Croydon Bob]

"1) First, the main problem with this argument is that what people actually experience is NOT the same thing as what a skeptic deliberately makes up for the sake of argument! To put the two in the same category is both illogical and underhanded. Since the skeptic using this argument hasn’t really experienced invisible pink unicorns himself, everyone knows that he is deliberately making up something fictitious to put down something he doesn’t believe in while the paranormal experiencer or claimant is not. "

Well that is totally missing the point.

Apparently, every Christmas in the US the 911 service gets hundreds of calls from people reporting that they've seen Santa. Some of these people are serious. So from the loony perspective that does prove that Father C is real. The article starts from the preconception that anything a skeptic says is false, while anything said by someone claiming a paranormal experience is true - a massive fail.

[Stompy]

To start with, from my definition of Skepticism, to debunk it would to use skeptical tools of enquiry and doubt to question... those very same skeptical tools. Hmm.
Then, the argument quoted consists of falsely comparing a cynical argument of reductio ad absurdum with 'genuine belief'. The very point is that the belief is being reduced to an absurdity.


My dis-satisfaction with IPU arguments, as an agnostic atheist, is that clearly religious thought, feeling, writing, and scholarship does not only shore up belief in the untestable and presumably imaginary. They also can lead to systems of morality and community that are pretty worthwhile - in fact, arguably, some humanists tried to copy this while cutting out the religion. This, to me, is why goading those with 'genuine belief' with "Well I can believe in rubbish too!" is just an obvious incitement to anger.

[Lord Muck oGentry]

My dis-satisfaction with IPU arguments, as an agnostic atheist, is that clearly religious thought, feeling, writing, and scholarship does not only shore up belief in the untestable and presumably imaginary. They also can lead to systems of morality and community that are pretty worthwhile - in fact, arguably, some humanists tried to copy this while cutting out the religion. This, to me, is why goading those with 'genuine belief' with "Well I can believe in rubbish too!" is just an obvious incitement to anger.

Well, Stompy, if what you are saying is that we ought in decency to refrain from being gratuitously offensive, then I shall agree.
However, if you are suggesting that IPU arguments are offensive ( as opposed to giving offence — which in my view is an occupational hazard for anything vertebrate) then we shall have to disagee. If believers take offence at IPU comparisons, the remedy is simple: they can give up beliefs that invite the comparison.

As to morality: there may be a contingent, historical connection between morality and religious belief, but we cannot logically derive moral conclusions from religious assertions about divine wishes ( the point of the Euthyphro sketch).

[Pebble]

My dis-satisfaction with IPU arguments, as an agnostic atheist, is that clearly religious thought, feeling, writing, and scholarship does not only shore up belief in the untestable and presumably imaginary. They also can lead to systems of morality and community that are pretty worthwhile - in fact, arguably, some humanists tried to copy this while cutting out the religion. This, to me, is why goading those with 'genuine belief' with "Well I can believe in rubbish too!" is just an obvious incitement to anger.

Is there a suggestion here that we should be morally superior tothe relgious believers? After all the Thalmud, Bible & Quoran and many other religious texts are openly hostile to others, even within christian, jewish & islamic sects there continue to be hate campaigns and promotion of extreme violence to others of the same basic faith (Northern Ireland, fundamentalists, Yemen, Israel).

I regard the IPU approach as satire rather than a serious argument, the defence that it is spurious misses the point. It is a light hearted way of pointing out the nonsense of unfalsifiable beliefs. If one translates the argument into a real situation (witches, homophobic god, mysogenist god etc) - then it can touch raw nerves, and there is some argument for incitement. Even then why should the religious be treated with deference? Is the fact that they might fight back reason enough to indulge in self-censorship?

[Stompy]

From what I've seen of uses of IPU when atheists meet Christians, it was just a form of trolling for amusement.
Believing in the IPU is only like believing in God because both are unfalsifiable and without empirical evidence. Otherwise there are a lot of legitimate differences (admittedly some of them make IPU come out better - I don't think anyone has killed another for not believing properly in it yet).

I think unfalsifiable beliefs go way beyond religion and woo. I think we all have stereotypes and generalisations that are actually unfalsifiable beliefs, but we think about them rarely as we find ourselves socially accepted when saying them and fail to question them often enough. This means I find pointing out that God is an unfalsifiable belief doesn't shock or please me as much as it used to.

[Pebble]

I think we all have stereotypes and generalisations that are actually unfalsifiable beliefs, but we think about them rarely as we find ourselves socially accepted when saying them and fail to question them often enough. This means I find pointing out that God is an unfalsifiable belief doesn't shock or please me as much as it used to.

Having become comfortable with your unfalsifiable beliefs does not improve the nature of unfalsifiable beliefs.

[Admin]

The IPU argument is basically an argument from analogy and when used to illustrate the absurdity of belief in untestable ideas or entities it works very well. i.e. the invisible/incorporeal/unknowable/untestable God (for example) is isomorphic with the invisible/incorporeal/unknowable/untestable IPU.

If their (lack of) properties are identical then they can be compared by analogy to show that belief in one is no more tenable than belief in the other.

2) Second, likewise what someone sincerely believes is NOT the same as what someone knowingly makes up.

I think this is the fundamental flaw in their (and other people's who use this) counter-argument. Believing in something that doesn't exist or just making up something that doesn't exist is fundamentally the same - neither thing exists!

What seems to be going on is that they perceive the two things differently because belief in God (or whatever) is personally or culturally accepted and therefore seems to be reasonable whereas belief in a made up IPU seems to be unreasonable because it's not accepted as potentially valid.

e.g. If you accept that God is a man-made concept then the pertinence of the analogy is clear; however, if you believe in God, you're prone to fall for this illusion of reasonableness.

I've seen this on several occasions with this and similar analogous arguments. The 'believers' fail to see the accuracy of the analogy because they think their own belief is reasonable whereas the IPU (Santa, tooth fairy, etc.) is obviously absurd.

[Stompy]

The IPU argument is basically an argument from analogy and when used to illustrate the absurdity of belief in untestable ideas or entities it works very well. i.e. the invisible/incorporeal/unknowable/untestable God (for example) is isomorphic with the invisible/incorporeal/unknowable/untestable IPU.

There's already an unlimited multiplicity of Gods to illustrate the absurdity of belief in untestable ideas or entities, I find it hard to keep track of more!

[Stompy]

Having become comfortable with your unfalsifiable beliefs does not improve the nature of unfalsifiable beliefs.

I think I'm on a Skeptic forum because I'm actually uncomfortable with my unfalsifiable beliefs, and would like to talk about them more. It would be odd coming here if I just wanted to let them lie.

It's not like I think Skeptics are a bunch who assume the privileges of righteousness and perfection and then persecute an out-group who do not hold up to those standards - that's what I detest most about groups of believers. Therefore I did not come here expecting that my own faults would be looked over because of a slavish dedication to conformity.

[anaconda]

Having become comfortable with your unfalsifiable beliefs does not improve the nature of unfalsifiable beliefs.

Yes, and this is a key point, at least for many atheists and humanists.

Id suggest that the phrase 'unfalsifiable belief' infers an undue level of credibility in whatever it is that is believed, in particularly when it refers to gods. This is because we can never absolutely disprove the non tangible, but refering to beliefs as unfalsifiable appears to profer some form of proof.

If someone asks me to prove the non existence of god i have absolutely no interest. I cannot disprove a negative, im not the one proposing a created being so why is it my place to do so. But dont be so silly as to suggest that this is anyway contitutes evidence of its existence.

[Pebble]

I think I'm on a Skeptic forum because I'm actually uncomfortable with my unfalsifiable beliefs, and would like to talk about them more. It would be odd coming here if I just wanted to let them lie.

It's not like I think Skeptics are a bunch who assume the privileges of righteousness and perfection and then persecute an out-group who do not hold up to those standards - that's what I detest most about groups of believers. Therefore I did not come here expecting that my own faults would be looked over because of a slavish dedication to conformity.

Glad to hear it. However, this is a skeptical forum, so it seems illogical to present your arguments here, without being prepared to defend them with high quality evidence. You have also presented metaphysical arguments which by their very nature lack right or wrong outcomes, so where you present and attempt to defend these, the only thing that can happen is to have your logic scrutinised. Presenting these as challanges to the 'skeptics' is hardly the way to get a cozy welcoming response.

This is a good place to have evidence shredded and to then decide whether you still think your original position meets your requirements from an evidence based standpoint. In addition where logical falacies are used to get to conclusions, these will be identified. If you disagree, there is no problem, but your responses must address the weakness in the argument put - otherwise people will tire of you very quickly. Sorry, nothing personal.

The question then is why you are here? If it is to learn - enjoy the banter. If it is to test your mettle, then do not expect comfort.

[chaggle]

I think we all have stereotypes and generalisations that are actually unfalsifiable beliefs, but we think about them rarely as we find ourselves socially accepted when saying them and fail to question them often enough.

What sort of unfalsifiable beliefs are you talking about Stompy?

[Stompy]

Glad to hear it. However, this is a skeptical forum, so it seems illogical to present your arguments here, without being prepared to defend them with high quality evidence. You have also presented metaphysical arguments which by their very nature lack right or wrong outcomes, so where you present and attempt to defend these, the only thing that can happen is to have your logic scrutinised. Presenting these as challanges to the 'skeptics' is hardly the way to get a cozy welcoming response.

I see no reason to accept your claim that skeptics cannot talk about metaphysics in a friendly manner. There is nothing about doubt that necessitates an aggressive attitude.

[Stompy]

What sort of unfalsifiable beliefs are you talking about Stompy?

I do not know you personally - you will have to be vigilant of yourself to discover whether you betray such beliefs. However, I have not known anyone intimately who has not used unfalsifiable stereotypes and generalisations on some occasions; unfalsifiable because they are not adequately tested and resist counter-claims. This belief may itself be one of my own generalisations. All I can say is that generalisations are so cognitively useful that I are compelled to imagine them as ubiquitous.