It is reasonable to believe that Santa Claus exists.

"Because Con agrees with my other points, the only contention I have to defend is that modal realism is a reasonable belief to hold." I do agree that if modal realism is true that it would be reasonable to believe Santa Claus exists, provided "Santa Claus's existence can be asserted without implying a logical contradiction"... and I was just too lazy to argue that it couldn't be. I also agree that this left you with only one conetention to defend, that modal realism is a reasonable belief to hold. "Con has brought up arguments that (if they work) may run counter to mine, but none of them actually refute modal realism itself or show in any way that it is implausible." We all have our opinions... "Additionally, I think Con's counterpoints fall short and I'll attempt to show why." Beautiful.. 1. Fine Tuning "It's true that when you roll a die 30 times, every possible outcome is equally probable. However, should you roll 30 straight sixes, it's reasonable to conclude that you're playing with a loaded die." I agree. "The same is true of the universe: every possible way the universe could be organized is equally likely, however, the specific arrangement we observe (an arrangement where sentient life is possible) is extremely unlikely." Ok, allow me to explain why the same is NOT necessarily true of the universe: For starters, the reason for which it's reasonable to conclude that the die MAY (not must) be loaded, is that 30 straight sixes occuring is incredibly unlikely and probably less so than the die being loaded (i don't know how you'd quantify the probability of the die being loaded short of finding the percentage of us who would do so... but i'm fairly confident that there're enough sneaks in the world to make it more likely than 30 straight sixes occuring). So we're actually still left with a probability that we're wrong.. but less of a one, and since gambling's a dangerous game at the best of times, it'd be reasonable to move on past, and believe that the die were loaded, or at least that there was a high chance that they were... depending on how much of a gambler you are :) Now, you say the same is true of the universe because of the existence of sentient life, because sentient life existing is the same as rolling 30 straight sixes.. Just lol.. First of all, rolling 30 straight sixes has a probability of occuring, and would eventually occur given infinite time to, given that that probability is given over 30 turns and not infinity. So...? So much for being parsimonious, right? I mean positing unnecessary, unseen and unsupported entities to explain how something with a low probability could occur, when given infinite time it would've occured anyway; That's not parsimonious, right? Second, your analogy sucks; allow me to provide a better one: It's true that when you roll a million sided die, every possible outcome is equally improbable (1 in a million), but one must occur, even though it was highly unlikely that it would. Like it? And what's so special about life anyway? "There are for more ways to design a universe that is not life-permitting than there are to design life permitting universes." Designed many universes? "To blithely assert "well, the arrangement we observe is unlikely, but every other possible arrangement is equally unlikely" sidesteps the problem rather than actually addressing it." It doesn't though. It makes sense. Take my die analogy again; would you posit that because I rolled a one on my million sided die, that I actually also must've rolled every other possibility in alternate worlds for it to make sense? Because something happened one way in no way means that it must also have happened in every other possible way. That just doesn't follow, and seems ridiculous :) 2. Modal realism is parsimonious "Con misunderstands the law of parsimony. He writes "what you're actually suggesting is that we should just believe in whatever it is that can be explained the quickest." This is incorrect. What the law of parsimony actually states is that *all other factors being equal,* simpler hypotheses are more likely to be true." Allow me to introduce simpler, as defined by wikipedia[1]: Simplicity is a more qualitative word connected to simple. It is a property, condition, or quality which things can be judged to have. It usually relates to the burden which a thing puts on someone trying to explain or understand it. ... I'd have thought that explaining something with more to explain would've been more burdensome than explaining something with less to explain? I think it's you who misunderstands the law of parsimony. I'm sure you'd agree for your own sake that the part of the definition that talks about how simple something is to understand would be best ignored here, given what we're talking about ;P "Because Con has not provided an alternative hypothesis to modal realism (besides briefly mentioning God, though he hasn't followed up on it)," Again, my argument for god, in terms of parsimony (which I understand :P): Well, what you're actually suggesting is that we should just believe in whatever it is that can be explained the quickest. So, it's "God did it" Versus "Well, see the chances of the universe unfolding like it did were actually 1 seeing as it had infinite attempts, so you see it actually all makes perfect sense afterall... lol". The first one's shorter :P Well, I've hit the character limit, and to be honest, I'm way to lazy to go about shortening this, so it continues here:http://www.debate.org... Thank Mirza! [1] http://en.wikipedia.org...