But you had PRIOR observations that she was polite and helpful. The common-sense approach would be to take EVERYTHING you had observed about her and use that to formulate an explanation for her behavior: “Wow, Jane is usually so nice, but right now she’s not. Since I know she’s probably not a bad person (based on my prior observations) I wonder what’s wrong?”
We go through life making observations and drawing conclusions to explain those observations. Science is just doing the same thing in a methodical manner.
Goodness, how do YOU form opinions about others then? Divine inspiration? Random guessing?
I think it’s obvious that he’s not talking about opinions about others, rather the falsifiability required for the application of the scientific method.
A hate to appeal to (my) authority, but a Ph.D, somewhere over 30 peer reviewed papers (I work in industry, so I don’t publish that much) editorial board memberships on two journals, program chair of several conferences and workshops, and being a member of more program committees than I remember is evidence that I have some clue as to what this means.
Your miracle is one data point. If a girl friend or boy friend didn’t come home only one night, only a jealous jerk would draw too many conclusions. I was talking about a repeated and consistent pattern of behavior. If there was sufficient evidence of healing using prayer, and no evidence of healing without prayer, then we’d have something worth studying. There are always outliers, and the reason statistical techniques are used is so that we don’t get fooled by them.
Now, if that man or woman started generalizing their experience with one person to all members of that sex, I’d agree with you that they are not being scientific.
Observation is important. Jane Goodall looking at chimps is doing excellent science, after all.
When I was an undergrad, we had a theoretical physicist take over for the professor at our big lecture one day. This involved measuring gravity. He got a negative value of g. We didn’t all rush off the phone the Nobel committee; we concluded that theoretical physicists shouldn’t be trusted with experiments. In your case your model of this person as being always polite gets modified into a person always polite unless her car broke down - and when things go funny, you investigate. You’ve got tons of evidences supporting the conclusion that she is polite, after all - far more than people who believe in God have. Now, if this person starts consistently being horrid, and you, by faith, depend on her to be nice, who is being foolish? To you think it makes sense to rely on faith and ignore the evidence?
Hamster King’s example was of the use of deduction in understanding a single case. If your girlfriend doesn’t come home, your first hypothesis might be that she is out fooling around, however if she come in with a damaged car, cell phone with no power, and a friend who tells about their horrible ordeal of waiting for a tow truck, the new evidence changes your opinion - about that specific case. This is why experiments are repeated over and over again, because one data point proves nothing.
Well, I got the idea from this"
Things occurring at the mental level can certainly be determined by physical processes - the evidence is that all of them are, and that evidence is the effect of drugs on mental processes. I never claimed that we have a complete model, or that any given drug determines anything.
BTW I’ll repeat once again that I’m not claiming that anyone uses a formal scientific method in their personal life, but that it often makes sense to use the same principles rather than faith. And it works both ways. It is just as invalid to claim that god exists and answers prayers when you find a $20 bill when you are hungry as it is to say that God is evil if you trip on a root.
Falsification doesn’t happen with one bit of data, but requires repeated negative results. In general, the more evidence for, the more evidence against you need. If you come up with your own private crackpot hypothesis, and do an experiment, you might be able to falsify it right away. (I’ve done this myself - we don’t hear about it because you don’t publish ideas so stupid that you disprove them almost immediately.) Falsifying the consistent politeness model would require multiple observations, and, as I said, you’d probably come up with a refined and more sophisticated model to fit the new data instead.
Your use of quotes around “religious” is quite correct. I agree that if we had no religions, we’d have wars for other reasons - but maybe not some of the ones started for religious reasons. We might have additional ones also.
The multiplicity of faiths only argues against a god who wants everyone to believe in lockstep. If that god cared, he’d show up all over. That is the Christian god. The god I grew up with cared about what I believed, but not really about that Christian kid who lived down the street. God wanted him to be good, etc., but eating pork and working on the Sabbath would have no ill effects.
Perhaps the problem is that those religions which rely most on faith are precisely the ones where the evidence is more likely to falsify basic beliefs.
So the most effective objection to my “way of knowing” argument for atheism, assuming Voyager and I are characterising ITR’s arguments correctly, is that we don’t have agreement that faith is an unreliable way of knowing things.
My initial objections about repeatability are countered by the fact that a god might actually WANT people to believe different things. This leaves open the possibility that faith is a reliable way of “knowing” what god wants you to know.
This is a sense of “knowing” that most philosophers and all empiricists would reject, but can’t be fairly countered without reference to empiricism.
Intuitively, I reject it myself because knowing the effectiveness of empricism, I am suspicious of a claim that there is an alternate way of knowing that fails empirical test but is still valid in another sense.
I’ll never know empirically whether or not my Mom actually loves me. You could come up with several tests I’m sure, but they would never be a methodology considered as validly scientific.
Interesting. What you are saying I think, is that God for some unknowable purpose reveals contradictory things to each of us, like a master plotter, and the fact that God wants you to believe A and me to believe B just means that this is best for the master plan - and by faith we should go with the flow.
I don’t think even empiricism could answer this one. However, it is of limited usefulness to the religious, since we each have our own independent revelation, equally as valid, and anything a preacher of Pope says about god’s desires is only relevant for him, not me. God might have told him to be chaste, but god wants me to have a good time. If a person of faith buys this argument, then he should shut up about what everyone else does, and I’m fine with that.
<BB King>
Nobody loves me but my mother,
And she might be jivin’ too.
</BB>
Of course you never know anything, you just have a hypothesis more or less supported. If your mom feeds you gruel and makes you sleep in the unheated basement, the love hypothesis might have to be re-examined.
Is there evidence that she loves you? Is there evidence that she doesn’t? Do you have blind faith that she loves you, or are you relying on a past history that is consistent?
There are two points about the Christian concept of revelation that need to be made. The first is that we believe that God is separated from the world in general terms, and only gives us a revelation–in other words, a direct communication–on rare occasions. The most important occasion was in the life of Jesus Christ, when He showed up literally in person. So apparently God chose that method of Revelation because he believed that it was the best possible way to enter and affect human history. We can theorize about the advantages of having one individual lead a life of self-sacrifice and then calling others to imitate the example. One of the disadvantages is the possibility that things may be misinterpreted. If you only have the records of one person’s life, and those records get distributed all over the world, in countless different societies, for two thousand years, there’s bound to be some confusion and disagreement. But, as I said, I think that it’s more impressive how much all the major branches of Christianity have kept in common.
The second is that since human nature is so different from divine nature, there will necessarily be difficulties in communication between the two. In fact, it seems that a direct communication between the two may be impossible, as suggested in the book of Exodus when Moses asks to see God face-to-face, but the response is that it just can’t happen. Any revelation has to be indirect at some level.
So with those two things in mind, I’ll try to tackle the question of whether God wants “different groups to believe different things”. There are some issues where different things may be appropriate at different times. For example, if George Fox heard God calling him to total non-violence while bringing his message throughout England, yet Emperor Constantine received a vision urging him to conquer in the name of Christ, I don’t see any reason why both experiences couldn’t be genuine. It may just have been that one approach was appropriate at one time, another approach at another time.
The same type of logic could be applied to some of the issues that you mention. On the question of miracles, for example, I believe that there some miracles including the famous ones at Guadalupe, Lourdes, and Fatima have had a sizable positive effect, and based on that plus the carefully documented evidence I personally believe in those events. At the same time, it’s always been acknowledged that a focus on miraculous events can easily become an obsession and cause harm. People can be distracted, get fooled by charlatans, and be lead to do bad things if they accept claims too readily. St. Teresa of Avila talked about this quite a bit. So some groups of Christians lean heavily against claims of the miraculous, and some reject most cases including the famous ones. (Though I’m not certain that any Christian group outright rules out all belief in miraculous events.) But I don’t see this as being a point against the usefulness or correctness of revelation.
I do think that the usefulness of his teachings is evidence. I would agree that it’s not conclusive evidence or overwhelming evidence, but it’s certainly the biggest draw for a lot of people who are beginning to explore Christianity.
As for Paul, I simply can’t agree with the negative vibe that a lot of people give towards him. When I read his letters, what I see is this. He’s typically addressing a church that’s having some problem or dispute about something, such as leadership, settling conflicts among members, whether to eat meat from sacrifices, or whatnot. Paul offers his opinions about such questions, usually in the first parts of the letter, but then gradually changes the subject to the ethical foundations and the spiritual aspects of life in Christ, always emphasizing the importance of these above any specific rules. The most famous example is 1st Corinthians, but one can see the same process in other letters. (Not all of the letters attributed to Paul were actually written by him; scholars have pretty firmly decided that some are not.)
ITR champion, I have no problem with you taking this as a personal belief about revelation, but it is far from universal even within the Christian faith. I don’t have the demographic data to hand (but I can find it if you want, it’s fairly recent) but belief in the efficacy of prayer and the idea of “Words” is very widespread.
The possibilities are that others receive much more revelation than you, or the original argument, that revelation is unreliable as a way of knowing (since these others can’t even distinguish when they are knowing by revelation).
I’m still interest in your response to my concern with this. Apart from a (originally hotly disputed) creed of historic occurrences, just how much have they kept in common? I’d be happy with a binary question of current relevance (Homosexuals in leadership positions, birth control/abortion, military intervention) where there is clear unity.
This isn’t an argument for revelation as a way of knowing - it’s explanation for inadequacy of revelation.
Agreed. Change in revelation over time is not direct evidence of the unreliability of revelation. The fact that it is never scientifically ahead of its time is indirect (absence of evidence that would strongly support revelation, but not evidence that discredits revelation).
Actually, it is a strong point. Belief in miracles is a key component of using revelation as a model of knowledge to predict the future. Scientific knowledge is very useful in predicting the future (hence applied science and engineering are effective fields of endevour). If you believe in miracles through revelation, and that belief is not true knowledge, revelation has been unreliable for you.
They are separate points. The ability to teach and develop philosophy is not a correlate with divinity.
As for Paul, here is the trouble from my point of view. He shifts the focus away from the teachings OF Jesus to teachings ABOUT Jesus. He directly adds ideas and rules of his own, supported by his revelation knowledge about spiritual issues. The result (not entirely his immediate fault, but arising as a result of the shift of focus) is a lot of people now and through history who hold ethical views in direct contrast to the teaching of Jesus, and justify these on spiritual grounds.
Jesus as a humanist philosopher was extra-ordinary. Jesus as a supernatural being really doesn’t have a lot to distinguish him from other mythology.
Yes, of course. There is evidence for both really, if one were too look long and hard enough. My point was, that there are ways of knowing beyond strictly the empirical. Specifically withing the usage of empirical withing the scientific method.
I was trying to avoid reference to specific theology, but I guess I need to point out that in my family, love itself is of God. As is our guide to moral conduct.
Might I point out that you have evidence that, through consistant direct actions and words, your family loves you, but you have blind faith that love itself is of God. Two difference concepts-two different standards.
I submit that you “know” your mom loves you only because such an interpretation is consistent with a lifetime of observations of her actions and behavioral cues. She does things that indicate love, and when she’s with you her voice and facial expression communicate love. You could possibly interpret this as evidence of a lifetime of sinister fakery on her part, but a simpler explanation is that she really does love you.
Beyond “know”, I claim certainty. I have faith in it. Granted, it’s not blind faith.
This will likely be difficult for you to understand, as it’s likely a factor of my upbringing, but they are exactly the same concept.
To me, love, faith, moral code, consciousness itself, are all the things that of God. It’s how they are defined for me. The power that and effect that these things have in my life is more than enough for me justify God’s existence.
I appreciate that others have a different interpretation of their own life experiences and observations. I also appreciate the OP’s continued dialog in his own thread.
What’s the difference between knowing something, and claiming certainty? We’re obviously not talking about the simple-awareness definition of “knowing”, so we must be talking about the “100% certainty” definition of the word.
And if I’d been taught that lightning came from Zeus, then every strike would be proof of Zeus’s continued personal involvement in the world. But the thing is, lightning, love, faith, morals, and consciousness have other, less divine explanations.
Then you have a problem. Because love, faith, moral code, and consciousness all demonstrably exist for those who believe in other gods, or, more importantly, in no god at all.
It’s not difficult to understand; it’s just stupid and wrong.
No, they aren’t. First, since God doesn’t exist he can’t actually define anything. Second, love is an emotion; a brain state. And consciousness is also a brain state. You don’t get to define them, and neither does your imaginary God. As for your moral code; if you really defined your moral code like that I doubt you’d be posting here. You’d be in prison or dead.
None of those require gods of any kind. Nor are they restricted to believers, even if you think that unbelievers are all soulless automatons or something of the sort.
In your case your model of this person as being always polite gets modified into a person always polite unless her car broke down - and when things go funny, you investigate. You’ve got tons of evidences supporting the conclusion that she is polite, after all - far more than people who believe in God have. Now, if this person starts consistently being horrid, and you, by faith, depend on her to be nice, who is being foolish? To you think it makes sense to rely on faith and ignore the evidence?