Jerry Coyne is to be congratulated for reading The Huffington Post. I can't be bothered, but I'm happy when he finds something interesting [CfI declares war on atheists].His latest discovery is a childish rant by John Shook, Director of Education and Senior Research Fellow, Center for Inquiry. Like Jerry Coyne, I am terrbily disappointed in the American branch of the Center for Inquiry. If the kind of nonsence they're spreading ever begins to contaminate the Centre for Inquiry in Canada then I will quite the organization. (I am currently a CFI Canada Advisory Fellow.)
Here's what Shook says in his HuffPo article [For Atheists and Believers, Ignorance Is No Excuse].
Atheists are getting a reputation for being a bunch of know-nothings. They know nothing of God, and not much more about religion, and they seem proud of their ignorance.The question before us is whether there is a God or there isn't. So far, I have not been convinced by any argument in favor of supernatural beings. Every single argument that I've encountered seems flawed. Many of them are stupid and nonsensical.
This reputation is a little unfair, yet when they profess how they can't comprehend God, atheists really mean it. To listen to the loudest atheists, you can hear the bewilderment. And they just can't believe how a thing like religion could appeal to any intelligent person. The mythological story told by atheists recounts how religion arose through vast ignorance and perversity. A plague upon humanity, really, infecting the dimwitted or foolish with viral memes about spirits and gods. If there's no arguing with irrational people or dumb viruses, what's to be done?
Astonished that intellectual defenses of religion are still maintained, many prominent atheists disparage theology. They either dismiss the subject as irrelevant, or, if they do bother to acknowledge it, slim refutations of outdated arguments for a medieval God seem enough. Atheists cheer on such bold leadership, but what is really being learned? Challenging religion's immunity from criticism is one thing; perpetuating contempt for religion's intellectual side is another. Too many followers only mimic the contempt, forgetting that you won't effectively criticize what you would not understand. The "know-nothing" wing of the so-called New Atheism really lives up to that label. Nonbelievers reveling in their ignorance are an embarrassing betrayal of the freethought legacy.
I am not a "know-nothing." I've made a big effort to learn the latest arguments for the existence of God. I've attended lectures by well-known theists and by well-known accommodationists. I read their books. I read their articles. I've even attended courses on religion.
I'm not going to embarrass the theists and accommodationists by listing the really stupid books written by people in the theist camp. John Shook has pointed out the worst of the theist arguments. Here's four books that supposedly represent the best of modern religious arguments for the existence of God ...
- The Big Questions in Science and religion. by Keith Ward (Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus, Oxford University), Templeton Foundation Press, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania (2008)
- Belief: Reading on the Reason for Faith edited by Francis Collins, HarperOne, New York (2010)
- Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science by Michael Ruse, Cambridge University Press, New York (2010)
- The Dawkin's Delusion: Atheist fundamentalism and the denial of the divine. by Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath, published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (2007)
This brings me to my challenge. I challenge all theists and all their accommodationist friends to post their very best 21st century, sophisticated (or not), arguments for the existence of God. They can put them in the comments section of this posting, or on any of the other atheist blogs, or on their own blogs and websites. Just send me the link. Try and make it concise and to the point. It would be nice if it's less than 100 years old. Keep in mind that there are over 1000 different gods so it would be helpful to explain just which gods the argument applies to.
I don't care where they post the argument, just get on with it. I'm not interested in any other details about theology. Those points only become relevant once you've convinced this atheist that you have a rational argument for the existence of God. Don't bother telling me how you reconcile your God with evil, or why you believe in miracles, or why transcendence is important in your life, or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Don't insult my intelligence by pointing out that religion has done a lot of good things in the past as if that were proof of the existence of the supernatural. Don't be silly enough to try proving god by telling me that religion makes people feel good. So does chocolate, and wine.
Let's stop the whining about how "know-nothing" atheists are ignoring the very best arguments for the existence of God. Come on, all you theists and accommodationists, put your money where your mouth is. Give us something of substance instead of hiding behind The Courtier's Reply. Let's see the angels.
I'm betting that wimps like John Shook and his accommodationist friends don't have a damn clue what they're talking about. I'm betting that they haven't the foggiest notion of any new and sophisticated arguments for the existence of God that the New Atheists haven't already addressed. I'm betting they're just blowing smoke in order to provide cover for their theist friends in the hope of saving them from intellectual embarrassment.1
That's why he says in his article ...
Christian theology has come a long way since St. Thomas Aquinas. Under stress from modern science and Enlightenment philosophy, it has explored cosmological, ethical, emotional, and existential dimensions of religious life. Many kinds of theology have emerged, replacing a handful of traditional arguments for God with robust methods of defending religious viewpoints. There are philosophical atheists who have quietly and successfully kept pace. The discipline of atheology is quite capable of matching these theologies with its skeptical replies, so atheists need not be intimidated. Taking theology seriously enough to competently debate God should not be beneath atheism.Too bad he doesn't mention even one of those supposedly robust new arguments for the existence of supernatural beings. Could it possibly be because they don't exist?
Guess we'll find out pretty soon. I'll wait for one week.
1. They may also want to be saving themselves since many accommodationists have spent a lifetime studying theology. It must be embarrassing to be told that their life's work is no more important than studying fairy tales.
554 comments :
«Oldest ‹Older 401 – 554 of 554> Nadiah: that would be cherry-picking the data.
Yes and no, I meant if it holds up, then even if every other prophecy in the whole world fails, we have a problem, Houston. But for the Scriptural claim to be really true, yes, all the prophecies have to be true.
"Yet he too is wise and can bring disaster; he does not take back his words." (Isa 31:2)
> If you're going to count fulfilled prophecies in your favour, then you must count failed ones as well to be fair.
My view is that no prophecy has failed, I have discussed many of them--glad to discuss further, but say, over at theologyweb.com. Were you to go there, you will see a number of such threads there!
> Nadiah: I agree with you that the Babylon prophecy is eerie.
>
> Lee: I’m hoping more people try, knowing what this might be making clear.
>
> Nadiah: I know what you think - you think that's the Holy Spirit.
But I meant not the eeriness, but the implication. If we try again and again, with the statement in view that we cannot do this, then it becomes fairly clear that there is Someone there.
Then we can have our eeriness.
"You have had a shock like that before, in connection with smaller matters –when the line pulls at your hand, when something breathes beside you in the darkness. So here; the shock comes at the precise moment when the thrill of life is communicated to us along the clue we have been following. It is always shocking to meet life where we thought we were alone. 'Look out!' we cry, 'it’s alive.' And therefore this is the very point at which so many draw back–-I would have done so myself if I could–-and proceed no further with Christianity. An 'impersonal God'--well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads-–better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap-–best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband--that is quite another matter." (C.S. Lewis)
Thought I would not deign the prophecy talk with a real comment, but seriously...
Yes and no, I meant if it holds up, then even if every other prophecy in the whole world fails, we have a problem
No we don't, especially if the prophecy is not very risky (cities are deserted all the time through history). In my native country we say "even a blind chicken finds a grain from time to time". Does not mean that prophecies work, just that you are bound to get lucky if you make enough of them.
My view is that no prophecy has failed, I have discussed many of them
That is rather strange, considering that so many obviously have, ranging from the claim that Egypt will be uninhabited to Jesus' rather unambiguous announcement that his second coming would be within the lifetime of the people he was preaching to. But well, if you "discuss" Nostradamus long enough, you can also show that he predicted the assassination of JFK or something. For certain values of "discuss".
One of the things I find funniest about the bible, however, is the sequence in Matthew:
And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.
I mean, this is really hilarious and sad at the same time, depending on your degree of empathy with the author. If you were writing that, would you not leave out that sentence entirely instead of explicitly putting a red flashing arrow above the fact that Jesus was not called Emmanuel, as supposedly prophesied for the messiah, but, you know, Jesus? Reading the bible, I never understand how anybody can consider that great, inspiring literature. The authors were a bunch of incompetent hacks really.
@Garamond
Congratulations Garamond, you've discovered that the map isn't the territory. Now, if it isn't a variety of microscopes that would count as observation, what would? Do our eyes count? I know personally how prone to failure they are, and judging by the spectacles in your picture, you do too.
This is actually a fairly common creationist argument, btw. They seem to think that observation requires you to be sitting on a stool nearby watching (in their case) evolution happen.
Now please, amaze me with your insights into philosophy and science, which apparently you know far more because, as you assert, I have no background in it. What constitutes observation? You have asserted that there is at least some evidence for the existence of (at least) one god. Please, enlighten me, oh wise one, what evidence this is. You claim it's not an interesting question, so I'm asking you to indulge me and throw even a tiny bit my way. I would be oh so grateful.
lee_merrill said:
"> Does that mean that if Babylon is inhabited once more you will renounce your faith?
Yes, I’ll commit to that. If more and more attempts to restore Bablyon continue to fail, will you become a believer? Maybe Antony Flew style?"
Well, I'd like to believe you, but the experimental evidence suggests you would ignore inconvenient evidence (e.g. @ 28/9 8:45:00 PM) hand-wave the counterexample disproving your argument and insist it wasn't relevant to your argument (e.g. @ 28/9 8:46:00 PM), while continuing to assert that every biblical prophecy had been confirmed in spite of glaring counterexamples (@ 30/9 11:47:00 PM).
"But I meant not the eeriness, but the implication. If we try again and again, with the statement in view that we cannot do this, then it becomes fairly clear that there is Someone there."
You mean once, by Saddam, in the last couple of decades, when we illegally and immorally went to war with him. And we didn't know where it once stood for a long time before that? Clearly God is working against us when we failed at rebuilding it once.
I'm with Dymara. You're going to goalpost this one. Even if we were to get the hanging gardens up and running again, you'd claim it wasn't good enough to go through with your boast. Your logic is weak, and it's everyone knows it.
[Second attempt]
Samael says:
Congratulations Garamond, you've discovered that the map isn't the territory.
You're on the right track.
Now, if it isn't a variety of microscopes that would count as observation, what would? Do our eyes count? I know personally how prone to failure they are, and judging by the spectacles in your picture, you do too.
and
What constitutes observation?
Drawing from the philosophy of mind literature, a sensory event and an internal model of it. A model of the model implies conscious observation.
This is actually a fairly common creationist argument, btw. They seem to think that observation requires you to be sitting on a stool nearby watching (in their case) evolution happen.
I don't understand why so many atheists see this demand for observation evidence as bogus when it comes to something as simple as evolution, then turn around and make the same mistake in demanding observational evidence of god.
Now please, amaze me with your insights into philosophy and science, which apparently you know far more because, as you assert, I have no background in it.
Would you like to change that?
It sounds like I've bruised your ego sufficiently that you're not going to take reading suggestions from me. Instead, drop by talk.origins and ask for pointers into the literature of the philosophy of religion. Then read them. (If you don't have access to articles behind paywalls, post a note there and they'll magically appear in your inbox. Interlibrary loan works for textbooks.)
You have asserted that there is at least some evidence for the existence of (at least) one god. Please, enlighten me, oh wise one, what evidence this is.
Certainly. The embarrassing number of species of beetles are evidence for the class of gods with an inordinate fondness of beetles. The regularity of the sun rising in the east is evidence for the class of gods responsible for this, and evidence against the class of gods who make the sun rise in the west. My tribe conquering your tribe is evidence that my gods are stronger than your gods.
The (near-universal) error atheists tend to make here is confusing evidence (which can point in many, many ways) with conclusive evidence (which only refutes, and reliably only in the most trivial cases).
Asking for evidence of god is much like asking for evidence of evolution. Creationists are happy to point out that there is no set of evidence that (conclusively) proves evolution, and the same evidence can be used to support many sillier theories.
However, if you're willing to abandon the idea of conclusive evidence *for* a proposition, then you can ask the far more useful question of which model is better. Thunder supports both modern theories of weather and thunder gods. I can't demonstrate thunder gods don't exist, but I can demonstrate that models which rely on thunder gods are far less useful than what the Weather Channel uses. That allows me to dismiss the thunder gods model without having to answer the (unanswerable) question of Do They Really Exist.
That's how science is done. We don't prove theories are wrong; we create theories that are better.
You claim it's not an interesting question, so I'm asking you to indulge me and throw even a tiny bit my way. I would be oh so grateful.
You're very welcome.
Atoms haven't been observed, tricked out models showing evidence for many gods, apparent Asimov reference...
Garamond is this a Poe?
gillt says:
Atoms haven't been observed, tricked out models showing evidence for many gods, apparent Asimov reference...
Garamond is this a Poe?
Nope, just the voice of experience of 15 years of designing and running experiments. When I'm reading numbers off of my computer screen, I'm painfully aware that they're just that: numbers on a computer screen. I have a hypothesis that they've measured what I was trying to measure to an acceptable level of accuracy. Far more often than not, that hypothesis is wrong (although the error bars do tend to decrease over time).
So when IBM puts up a picture of an atom, I automatically make the distinction between "picture of atom" and "the atom itself". What we're seeing in that picture is a long chain of hypotheses and approximations --- brilliant, stunning, and excellent science. But it's a picture I'm observing, not the thing itself.
Garamond: "The (near-universal) error atheists tend to make here is confusing evidence (which can point in many, many ways) with conclusive evidence (which only refutes, and reliably only in the most trivial cases).
When I ask for evidence for god, I'm asking for convincing evidence. For example: convincing evidence against evolution would be a fossil rabbit in the pre-Cambrian, just as convincing evidence for the miraculous would be, to paraphrase Sean Carroll "pointing out something directly visible that requires a violation of general relativity or the standard model. That's all it would take, but there aren't any phenomena." Nor do we expect there to be.
Garamond: "So when IBM puts up a picture of an atom, I automatically make the distinction between "picture of atom" and "the atom itself""
If that's the position you're taking then you're staring at a picture of your monitor and not the monitor itself. An AFM I'd argue is more objective than your own set of eyes.
"The embarrassing number of species of beetles are evidence for the class of gods with an inordinate fondness of beetles."
Argumentum ad populum? There is a beetle god, there are a lot of beetles, thus evidence of beetle god? And you claim you know anything at all about philosophy?
"I don't understand why so many atheists see this demand for observation evidence as bogus when it comes to something as simple as evolution, then turn around and make the same mistake in demanding observational evidence of god."
Like predictions coming true? Although it shouldn't surprise me since you're the one who seems to think that taking a picture with a microscope is not an observation. That somehow our unaided eye is a better observer of reality.
Or when we observe Lenski's bacteria adapting to metabolize citrate. Or Italian Wall Lizards adapting cecal valves. The fossil record. Endogenous Retroviruses. I'm willing to provide all sorts of observations. I don't know who these strawmen atheists are who aren't willing to provide evidence for evolution. No, none of these are conclusive, nor would I make that argument.
"However, if you're willing to abandon the idea of conclusive evidence *for* a proposition, then you can ask the far more useful question of which model is better. Thunder supports both modern theories of weather and thunder gods. I can't demonstrate thunder gods don't exist, but I can demonstrate that models which rely on thunder gods are far less useful than what the Weather Channel uses. That allows me to dismiss the thunder gods model without having to answer the (unanswerable) question of Do They Really Exist."
Your evidences are fallacies. We know what causes thunder. We observe air being heated. We observe a pressure wave. We have observed that pressure waves hitting our ears is translated as sound. Where is there room for thunder gods in this? It only supports thunder gods if you're willing to lose touch with reality and ignore Occam's Razor, much like the RC Church's "evolution+god."
Why are you so quick to input god into everything? You're making the same mistake as Napolean did, according to legend, to which Laplace replied: "I have no need of that hypothesis."
Why do you keep confusing evolution with god anyways? Evolution is a process. It actually can't be pointed to. That's why there are so many creationists.
Gods are entities. You seem to be trying to play fast an lose with this, but I'm really only interested in gods as people believe. You can assert that god is a plum or an idea or whatever for all I care, but none of us are talking about that.
The idea of gods are clearly the creations of various cultures, totally a product of their own time. I'm normally only willing to say that, at best, they go in the same bin as leprachauns and easter bunnies and any other thing that are asserted without evidence. In your words, that allows me to dismiss the gods model without having to answer the (unanswerable) question of Do They Really Exist.
The god worshiped by man (well, I'll focus on Yahweh because I'm most familiar with it), on the other hand, is an being which purportedly contains a bewilderingly contradictory array of traits. He is not physical, yet can interact with physical reality (left unexplained). He is three, but also one (left without being explained convincingly). He is a spirit (left unexplained). He is never wrong, but can change his mind (left unexplained).
In other words, he is incoherent. That moves it to the "Does not exist" bin, along with 4-sided triangle and other logical impossibilies.
lee_merrill writes: My view is that no prophecy has failed....
Thus making your pledge to treat prophecy as falsifiable utterly empty and meaningless.
> My view is that no prophecy has > failed....
In Matthew 26:29 Jesus says
"I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father's kingdom"
In Matthew 27:48
"Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink."
> Atoms haven't been observed
Well, by that logic, neither have any television shows.
Serious question, although I am expecting comedy gold for an answer: what do you think is happening when scientists think they're splitting an atom?
At some point in the future, the following cities will cease to be and will never be rebuilt:
London, New York, Calais, Kyoto, Munich, Toronto, Mexico City, Venice, Sydney.
I'm pretty much guaranteed to be right about at least one of those, and the ones I'm wrong about don't count. Does that make me a god? Because there are a bunch of people who really need to be struck by lightning.
> Samael: Clearly God is working against us when we failed at rebuilding it once.
Then there was Alexander the Great, he tried, and failed. Then there is this more recent attempt, started four years ago, and no Babylon from the ashes yet.
> Even if we were to get the hanging gardens up and running again, you'd claim it wasn't good enough ...
Well, believe me, or not. But you all will ignore this challenge? Fair is fair:
> Lee: If more and more attempts to restore Bablyon continue to fail, will you become a believer?
> Anonymous: In Matthew 26:29 Jesus says ...
And vinegar is not wine, the words were "this fruit of the vine", referring evidently to well, this fruit of the vine.
> Andrew M: I'm pretty much guaranteed to be right about at least one of those, and the ones I'm wrong about don't count. Does that make me a god?
Only if people repeatedly try and rebuild one or more of them, and fail, and fail. Then we'll look you up for thunderbolts...
Garamond Lethe says...
When I mentioned that I had read some philosophy and epistemology, Garamond Lethe replied ...
Glad to hear it. I had listed several approaches to scientific epistemology earlier (operationalism, instrumentalism, etc.). Where do you put yourself on that continuum?
I haven't got a clue. I suppose I could run off and do some quick research on the subtle meanings on those words but, frankly, I have better things to do.
And when I asked him, "Do you honestly believe that there's no difference between the evidence for the existence of atoms and (lack of) evidence for the existence of God?"
He replied...
Evidence is evidence, and there's plenty to support various models of gods. (One obvious example: we have overwhelming support for the class of gods with an inordinate fondness for beetles.)
Now I get it. You're into sophistry.
I'm not.
Goodbye.
gillt says:
When I ask for evidence for god, I'm asking for convincing evidence.
And that's an error.
For example: convincing evidence against evolution would be a fossil rabbit in the pre-Cambrian,
Really?
I don't think it would be. After all, we still have oceans of data of gene frequencies changing in populations over time that we'd still have to account for. Yes, the geologists and paleontologists would have some 'splainin' to do, but (as with most new evidence) I think evolution would only be modified, not overturned.
(It's a powerful turn of phrase and makes a good point, but like most bon mots it's more vivid than true.)
just as convincing evidence for the miraculous would be, to paraphrase Sean Carroll "pointing out something directly visible that requires a violation of general relativity or the standard model. That's all it would take, but there aren't any phenomena."
We arrived at the standard model by making observations that contradicted the model we had before the standard model, and as new contradictions show up I expect we'll incorporate them into the model that comes after that standard model.
Popper is out of fashion these days, but I do think his underlying insight was correct. We can use evidence to evaluate competing models, but evidence is insufficient to declare a model has been finalized.
Thus, there cannot exist conclusive evidence *for* a god, or for evolution, or for the standard model. That's why Larry's original question is uninteresting.
Thinking of gods as models avoids this problem: we can use evidence to disregard bad models without having to show whether gods exist or not. That won't allow you to conclude atheism, but I don't see that as any great loss.
Samael,
Now that you're done venting, try reading what I actually wrote. If it helps, assume I'm an atheist (my beliefs are slightly more complex than that, but it's a good first approximatioin).
"And vinegar is not wine, the words were "this fruit of the vine", referring evidently to well, this fruit of the vine."
No.
The older gospel, Mark, has Jesus saying he won't drink wine again, then 'tasting' 'wine'.
The original Greek is 'oinos', and everywhere else it's used in the New Testament it means wine. Earlier in Matthew (9:17) there's the well-known phrase 'pouring new wine into old wineskins' - the original word was 'oinos'. It does not mean 'sour vinegar' there. Or anywhere else. It's an after the fact justification, as is the ridiculous idea that 'fruit of the vine' doesn't mean wine. The Last Supper's a Passover meal ... where wine is served. Communion does not involve drinking a drink that's never been heard of before or since, 'fruit of the vine', it involves drinking something made from fruits that come from vines, grapes, ie: wine.
Obviously people pointed and laughed at the contradiction. Luckily, as you demonstrate, Christians are good at rationalizing these things away, and Luke, written later, has Jesus actively refusing the wine on the Cross (contradicting Mark).
But the problem remains that Mark says what it does. So the translators got to work, and in that AND ONLY THAT example, 'oinos' becomes a variety of odd things 'sour vinegar', 'wine vinegar' and so on. Vinegar, of course, comes from vines, the clue's in the name.
There are even early manuscripts where someone's scraped out 'oinos' and scrawled in 'oxos'.
It's one of the classic, and most obvious, examples of the Bible realizing it's messed up and clumsily editing.
There are many, many examples of *later* gospels adding in details that fulfill Old Testament prophecy because, oops, turns out Jesus didn't. The most blatant, of course, being the Bethlehem retcon.
It's very easy to say your guy fulfilled prophecy if, every time someone points to an unfulfilled prophecy, you just alter the record to say he did.
This is a clear example of Jesus saying something would happen and the exact opposite happening.
Early Christians knew it was a glaring hole in their argument, and made crude and ridiculous attempts to redefine extremely common words in an attempt to have them say something they don't say.
Not, of course, that modern Christians would ever do that today.
Samael says:
Why do you keep confusing evolution with god anyways? Evolution is a process. It actually can't be pointed to. That's why there are so many creationists.
Gods are entities...
How do you know gods are entities?
Ever observe any?
Or are you modeling gods as entities?
I haven't observed any gods, but then I haven't observed evolution, either. I use models to think about things I can't observe directly. It's a really powerful tool.
Oh, and I don't consider "process" as an adequate description of evolution. It's a basket of several closely-related scientific models, all of which have solid mathematical formulations at this point. The textbook I used was Barton's _Evolution_ which does a decent job of showing you the math but a less decent job of explaining it.
(Not too long ago I thought I'd pick up a Ph.D. minor in biology, so I took a grad class in evolutionary biology. That was the second-best class I've ever had --- second only to the semester I spent studying Aristotle's _Poetics_ as an undergrad. I can summarize the course in the words of the professor who taught it: "Nothing makes sense in biology except in light of evolution, and nothing makes sense in evolution except in light of population genetics." And population genetics is all math, all the time... which never made it into the several popularization of evolution I'd read up to that point.)
"I don't think it would be. After all, we still have oceans of data of gene frequencies changing in populations over time"
There's a distinction between 'proof' and 'evidence'.
As you say, there's masses of evidence for, say, the modern cosmological model. Even if the Hubble telescope took a picture of God parting the waters 6006 light years away, it wouldn't be *proof* the Biblical account was right. It would be a piece of evidence.
We can't 'prove' or 'disprove' God. We can look at individual pieces of evidence and weigh them up, building up a case.
The case for God is flimsy, to the point that even the people here offering evidence admit it's not actually evidence for God, as such.
Creationists, and their more moderate bedfellows do tend to concentrate more on attacking the atheist case than building their own. It's hilarious to see a creationist pointing to one piece of evidence and claiming it means the entire Darwinian edifice has collapsed, while not accepting the view that their own position is so full of holes there's nothing left to put another hole in.
For me, the most compelling reason there isn't a God: it ought to be *really* easy to prove (ie: make an utterly compelling case) there's a God. Instead, the argument is 'you're looking in the wrong place', without any hint about where it would be better to look.
Anonymous says:
> Atoms haven't been observed
Well, by that logic, neither have any television shows.
Correct.
Serious question, although I am expecting comedy gold for an answer: what do you think is happening when scientists think they're splitting an atom?
I think science is happening. We have a model of what atoms are, we have have models of how our instruments are built, and we have a model of what will happen when we apply the instruments to the atoms. The observations we make of the instruments during and after the experiment gives us an idea of how accurate our models are.
gillt,
I admit it; I'm stumped. Your objections seem to be ones that a theist would be listing as problems for my position, but I'm pretty sure you're on the atheist side. So I really don't see what your concerns are.
"Here are the problems with your position as I see it:
Assumption 1: God is in part defined as an intelligent creator of the universe.
Assumption 2: We would know what a god-like intelligence is if we saw it. "
To me, neither of these are problematic or even assumptions. The first is basically the definition that we're going by; it's certainly what _I_ consider to be the minimum required to be a god (and the alien example is just a gray area, debatable either way, as I said). It's almost certainly what most people consider to be a bare minimum standard for their view of god. It also seems to be included in the definition of God that Larry Moran wants us to prove. Other than wanting to argue over "sufficiently advanced aliens", what problem could you have there? And if that IS your problem, you have to actually, you know, ARGUE for it and reply to my replies to your concern.
I also really can't see how there's ANY necessity in that statement, let alone a false one.
As for the second one, that's not an assumption. That's something that we need to settle as part of the argument. I am not and did not claim that there was such an intelligence. I think, based on how we think about intelligence, that we could indeed judge intelligence in the universe. If you don't think so, feel free to argue for it. But you haven't. At best, you talked about brains and neuroscience, but the relevant field -- philosophy of mind -- is past that, for the most part. So, at best, you can try to argue that God's intelligence is such that we couldn't determine it, but that's a debatable position.
But I can't see why you'd want to argue either of these unless you're taking the theist position. The first gives a clear definition of the sort of god I'm talking about, which an atheist should leap to accept since it gives a clear criteria for evaluation. And an atheist should jump to accept "an intelligence that we can discern" because that also makes some clear criteria. If anything, _I_ should be the one bringing that in ... and I won't, because I think it unsupported.
So I fail to see why you'd want to evaluate this without conceding those assumptions, at least provisionally. And you will note that my original argument (to talk about moving on to evidence) claimed we needed more data and argumentation. Remember, I don't think the argument, at least currently, works.
gillt,
"Not belief, but way of knowing, otherwise you'd have ended this argument long ago with the declaration, "Have Faith!" "
I'm using the epistemic definition. I'm doing philosophy here, remember, and I treat the belief in God just like any other belief. Which, for some reason, tends to really annoy atheists when they figure out what that means ...
"Though some people insist that faith is actually a way of knowing, along with revelation, they would be wrong in a practical sense."
By Larry Moran's definition of science as a way of knowing, science is rational, evidence-based and skeptical. The only one of these that faith need reject by definition is skepticism. Can we have a valid way of knowing that is not skeptical? Seems that every day reasoning isn't, and it does give us knowledge, so by that faith COULD be a way of knowing.
"The question is 'how did the universe start?', plain and simple. It's not 'how do we reconcile what physics tells us with a given set of religious beliefs'."
And the reply is that there is an issue of "something coming from nothing", since that's what we'd have if there isn't a universe. Hawking tries -- explicitly -- to answer that PHILOSOPHICAL question, so that he can avoid the THEOLOGICAL answer of God. And he fails to address the philosophical question that he is explicitly trying to answer because he isn't getting that when philosophers say "nothing", they REALLY mean "nothing".
" "Support this contention."
Easy. Do like I asked and give me one piece of evidence."
The contention I wanted you to support was that I was framing the debate as if there was all this evidence on the side of God and all this evidence against. I'm not doing that. Support your contention of how I'm framing it or admit that I'm not.
"An example that at least one particle, once, somewhere in the universe, was moved in a way that we wouldn't expect by something that's best explained by divine intervention."
Supposedly, this has been given: it's the supposed examples of miracles. Since you aren't running out to thus accept God, I suspect that to you this isn't all that's meant by "evidence". Thus, in this case, you're probably using the TYPE of evidence to downgrade the EXAMPLE of evidence. So, then, to make my question clearer: what TYPE of evidence would you require for such a claim?
BTW, note that appealing to your own personal incredulity or the fact that you can find an explanation you prefer is just as much a fallacy when atheists do it as when theists do.
Jud,
"QM is a huge subject area. What you've essentially just said is "About the only credible other possibility I've seen re causation is about three-fourths of modern high-energy physics." It is so general as to be meaningless."
Well, don't blame ME for the vagueness and generality, since that's what the people who brought it up said: QM allows for causeless contingent things. I've dealt with sqlrob's example of virtual particles -- they are contingent but do seem to be caused -- so maybe you can provide some specific examples that work better. No one else seems willing to ...
"You asked what reading Dr. Guth's book would get you. Briefly, a clue. At greater length and more specifically: An excellent description of the leading physical theory regarding how the universe we see today came to be, a description consistent with all observations and rigorously supported mathematically; one that neither posits that causation stops at the Big Bang, nor that "something" came from "nothing." "
Congratulations; you've just done from the other side what this entire thread is about from the philosophical side. Essentially, you've told me that I just don't understand physics and that I need to get an education in that before I can understand anything and have "a clue". If you think this theory addresses the issues I'm talking about, the onus is on you to show what I'm missing and why it addresses them (or shows why my issues aren't relevant). It's no more appropriate for someone from the physics side to say "Read books!" as it is from the philosophical side.
And you will note that I have not done that in any way here. I've spelled out the problem here, in discussion with everyone, and what the issues are.
I admit that my knowledge of physics is weak, but you really do need to raise enough of a problem to make it worth my time to go find and read that specific book by showing what problem it addresses, and so far you have given no indication that you understand the problem well enough to make it worth my time.
"The reason Hawking isn't coming at the origin issue from the philosophical direction of how something can come from nothing, is that based on scientific observations and highly corroborated evidence, this is not the correct question. Quantum fluctuations, virtual particles and vacuum energy aren't "nothing." "
That's exactly my point: they AREN'T nothing. So how can you claim we START with that as opposed to nothing? If you need to assume these things exist, you aren't addressing the problem unless you either show that they're necessary or that the problem is actually ill-formed. You have done neither.
I'll address the rest in another comment ...
Jud,
"You might also want to seek a more sophisticated understanding of causation (in the physics rather than the philosophical sense). Physicists certainly have said our current ability to reliably extrapolate causation into the past stops at the big bang, and there are more or less speculative physical theories that posit time itself beginning at the Big Bang, but these are not at all the same as saying causation did not exist until the Big Bang occurred."
Well, I was arguing this with a physicist, and he argued that you can't TALK about causes before the Big Bang and so you don't have to ask what caused the Big Bang. And I do think he did say that causation didn't exist before time was created in the Big Bang, but that might be a misrepresentation. Philosophically, this makes no sense because time isn't inherent to the concept of causation, but again this isn't MY claim, but a claim by someone who should know physics. I know not all who claim to know a field -- or even be qualified for a field -- are always right, but why should I believe you over him?
"An extension of the experiment is to fire individual electrons through the slits at discrete intervals so it is assured no two electrons will physically interfere with each other in space-time. Yet as each individual electron strikes the target, there emerges, lo and behold, an interference pattern! Thus it is demonstrated that the causation of the interference is independent of (space-)time. "
So ... why should we call that interference causation? What would you say if the person mentioned above replied with "That's not really causation; it's interference, but it's something other than causation."? How could you prove that scientifically? Heck, how could you do it if he even said "That's the QM model of causation, but it only applies to QM, not cosmology. So it doesn't apply to the Big Bang and so cannot be used in that case"?
You'd have to turn to conceptual analysis to show that they are the same concept, wouldn't you? And that's philosophy's bread and butter.
Also note that you seem to be arguing vigourously for the position that I already pointed out was mandated philosophically. So why are we talking about this?
"It is therefore entirely possible the chain of causation that led to the current universe could extend into an environment where time did not exist. In the face of such complex and exotic strangeness underpinning the real world, over-simplistic philosophical struggles regarding how something can arise from nothing are quaintly inadequate anachronisms, not relevant to observed physical phenomena and scientifically viable theories derived therefrom."
First, that "over-simplistic philosophical struggle" handled this case better than the science did, coming to the same conclusion as you without having to happen to find an example of it first.
Second, how in the world do you expect to appeal to science and real physical entities for the space where the universe doesn't exist? Your physical laws don't apply beyond the scope of this universe. How in the world can you generalize into areas where you have no observations and all the rules could have changed? At least philosophy has a shot at it since it doesn't tie itself to the rules we happen to have, but what we must have.
> I suspect that to you this isn't
> all that's meant by "evidence".
It's evidence, in the legal sense. You've entered 'miracles' into the case for God.
Now, you're right that 'personal incredulity' can't decide this. But we can't take every statement at face value. If we can, then I'm going to get in a quick 'there's no God and everyone who says otherwise is wrong', for the win.
We have to assess the evidence.
Mr Ratzinger recently beatified Cardinal Newman because of a miracle, so let's take that miracle as an example.
A Catholic Deacon had back surgery in a hospital. As he was recuperating he was in great pain. He saw a TV show about Newman, prayed to him and the next morning the pain had gone.
Is 'Cardinal Newman told God to remove Sullivan's pain, God performed a miracle' the most likely answer?
The back surgery in question routinely leaves the patient in pain, which - if treated - lasts three hours to two days. Sullivan was on painkillers. He recovered after a day.
Is that a miracle?
I can't prove it wasn't. I can point out it that if it was a miracle, it was a pretty crappy one.
Here's where the personal preference comes in. If God works by allowing pain except when a Deacon prays to the last guy he saw on TV, who - in Heaven - runs up to Him and says 'just got a prayer, the guy's in pain', and God gets around to it at almost exactly the point the pain would have gone anyway ... I'd rather live in an atheistic universe, please.
Garamond:
"I don't think it would be. After all, we still have oceans of data of gene frequencies changing in populations over time that we'd still have to account for. Yes, the geologists and paleontologists would have some 'splainin' to do, but (as with most new evidence) I think evolution would only be modified, not overturned."
You assume too much. A modern day rabbit fossil in pre-Cambrian geology would count as evidence against evolution, contra to what you said. I Never said said it would overturn the entire field(s).
Garamond:
"We arrived at the standard model by making observations that contradicted the model we had before the standard model, and as new contradictions show up I expect we'll incorporate them into the model that comes after that standard model."
This is simply an argument from ignorance. There is no reason to expect a phenomenon to violate general relativity.
Garamond:
"Thus, there cannot exist conclusive evidence *for* a god, or for evolution, or for the standard model. That's why Larry's original question is uninteresting."
You keep on insisting on this term conclusive evidence I don't think anyone is asking for.
I gave you an example of convincing evidence and you resorted to hand-waving.
Meh.
"Support your contention of how I'm framing it"
No. I'm not slightly interested in you, I'm not making an ad hominem argument, I'm not interested in you turning it into a 'he said / she said' contest. I'm interested in the ideas, the evidence you can bring.
So bring something.
Garamond Lethe,
I've read through every single comment on this thread. I've mostly been content to just lurk and read the back and forth, but your comments are so exasperating (even worse than the IDists and the Bible prophecy guy), that I couldn't help but say something.
We get it. Nothing can be known conclusively. I may not be sitting here typing on a keyboard and staring at a computer screen. I may be hallucinating, or in the Matrix, or any other outlandish scenario. I don't care. There's a threshold where most people say, this particular concept is so likely to match with objective reality, that I'll assume it's true, or some other concept is so unlikely to match with objective reality, that I'll assume it's false. It's not about absolute certainty. Nobody who's given it any thought pretends that we can have absolute certainty. If we did, 'true' and 'false' would be meaningless words, since we'd never get to use them. So quit arguing about models of things that would be relegated to that category of 'extremely unlikely to match with objective reality'. The tooth fairy isn't real, and it's just silly to pretend anything else.
How do you know gods are entities?
Because that's the fuckin' definition. You may think there's something out there external to the universe, but if it's not Owlmirror's invisible bodiless omniscienct omnipotent magical person, or something similar, then this isn't the thread for it.
"You keep on insisting on this term conclusive evidence I don't think anyone is asking for."
Indeed.
If there was conclusive evidence, we'd have concluded this. Atheists have taken it as far as it's possible to go - to a god of the gaps, or one so beyond the limits of human language that no human being has ever actually worshipped it.
I don't need *conclusive* evidence to the contrary. At this point, I'd settle for shitty evidence or a crappy argument for the existence of something like the Christian God.
Not 'against Darwinism' or 'that questions the scientific method' or criticizes the atheist model. A positive argument *for* God as something more than 'something that, y'know, we can't rule out'.
Christians talk about celebrating their god, the joy of it, the celestial harmony and so on. But the theology of it is evasive, skulks around, makes excuses.
This, I think, for me, is the absolute killer argument against the Christian god. Why isn't it *obvious*? Why has God created a universe that looks exactly like one that doesn't need a god involved? Why does he allow churches to be set up that look for all the world like institutions designed to pray on the vulnerable and protect their own assets? Why are the arguments for him so weak that five year olds can see the problem? Why are the 'sophisticated' arguments so sophisticated that no one can so much as breathe them?
@Verbosestoic
The only justification you gave for this minimum requirement for god is that someone said it long ago and popular vote. And that minimum requirement doesn't distinguish god from a sufficiently advanced alien race or some future human race. Multiverse is not off the table just because you don't like it.
I'm asking for a better justification (why intelligence over omnipotence or plain old existence?) and one that doesn't confuse god with aliens.
I would like you to at least acknowledge this so we can move on.
Verbosestoic:
"I treat the belief in God just like any other belief. Which, for some reason, tends to really annoy atheists when they figure out what that means ..."
It annoys me right now because you aren't being clear. What do you mean just like any other belief? Like my belief that the sun will rise tomorrow, that if I close my eyes reality doesn't cease to exist? Those beliefs are evidence-based. That is not what belief in an undetected entity is like.
Verbosestoic:
"By Larry Moran's definition of science as a way of knowing, science is rational, evidence-based and skeptical. The only one of these that faith need reject by definition is skepticism. Can we have a valid way of knowing that is not skeptical? Seems that every day reasoning isn't, and it does give us knowledge, so by that faith COULD be a way of knowing."
Faith is perhaps through a stretch only trivially rational or internally so and evidence-based reasoning is irrelevant to the type of faith used in god-belief, otherwise we wouldn't have to call it blind faith.
What reason do you imagine this type of faith a valid way of knowing?
"The observations we make of the instruments during and after the experiment gives us an idea of how accurate our models are."
I do understand the point you're making. Any ten year old with a philosophy primer would.
It applies in all cases, yes?
Or, in other words, this is completely common to all areas of human experience. It applies equally to science and religion.
Good.
Then we can remove it from the equation. It's simply not relevant to the discussion. Imagine that every single phrase has the added subclause ['as far as the limits of human experience and observation understand'].
At a practical level, you split an atom and scientific instruments register exactly what the scientific model would predict. Nothing more, nothing less.
So ... where's the evidence for God at the practical level?
>one that doesn't confuse god with >aliens
I don't think a human could ever infallibly identify a god. There could be an advanced being capable of perfectly tricking our feeble human senses into being perfectly persuaded.
*However* the Christian God would know it existed, and is infallible, meaning it would know it was right to know it existed.
So, the question to ask when we meet God isn't 'prove it', it's 'how do you know you are god?'.
If God can do *everything*, not just the possible, then kill two birds with one stone and ask it to prove it doesn't exist. Everyone's a winner, atheists and theists alike.
Verbosestoic: "
First, that "over-simplistic philosophical struggle" handled this case better than the science did, coming to the same conclusion as you without having to happen to find an example of it first."
I suppose philosophical meanderings may stumble upon some reality-based conclusions once in a while, but it's only through science that we know what's wheat and what's chaff. In our modern times, philosophy must defer to the evidence if it wants to remain relevant.
"I don't think a human could ever infallibly identify a god. There could be an advanced being capable of perfectly tricking our feeble human senses into being perfectly persuaded."
Pretty much. Michael Shermer's Last Law is a variation of Arthur C. Clarke's "Three Laws." "Any sufficiently advanced ETI is indistinguishable from God."
Garamond: "I haven't observed any gods, but then I haven't observed evolution, either."
And here we have someone who thinks personal experience (or lack thereof) is a good substitute for ignorance of the literature.
Sounds like a creationist.
verbosestoic writes: I know not all who claim to know a field -- or even be qualified for a field -- are always right, but why should I believe you over him?
Oh yeah, a sample of 2 is large enough (not). Read, talk to more than one physicist or interested layperson.
So ... why should we call that interference causation? What would you say if the person mentioned above replied with "That's not really causation; it's interference, but it's something other than causation."?
I would say he was blissfully ignorant of the definition of the word "causation." The interference is an effect, one which is present when two slits are open and is not present when one slit is open. Two slits open being necessary and sufficient for the effect to occur, there is something in the opening of two slits that causes the effect. (Physicists might describe it as the wave functions of the electrons in the two streams interfering with each other.) This is causation in the same basic, fundamental, elementary sense as interference patterns in waves on the surface of a pond are caused by tossing two rocks into the pond in close proximity.
That's exactly my point: they AREN'T nothing. So how can you claim we START with that as opposed to nothing?
Yes, physics says we START with something as opposed to nothing. Or more accurately, there is no START. Go back as far as you want, there's something. There are handy diagrams and text in the back of the Guth book describing this stuff in detail. (Told you there was a good reason to read it.) And the great thing is, there's a constant stream of scientific corroboration for this view every year. The reports of the observations from the COBE satellite are among the most-cited high-energy physics papers every year, and you know who came up with the theory that explains those observations? Dr. Guth.
Eternity's a hell of a long time, you know. As far back as you want to go, I (or you) can go further (cf. Cantor's diagonalization), and there will always be something. Call it vacuum energy, virtual particles, whatever you like. If some philosophers have difficulties with that or start mumbling about the "uncaused cause" that's a problem for them, not the rigorous mathematics and physics that gave us this picture.
verbosestoic writes: I know not all who claim to know a field -- or even be qualified for a field -- are always right, but why should I believe you over him?
Oh yeah, a sample of 2 is large enough (not). Read, talk to more than one physicist or interested layperson.
So ... why should we call that interference causation? What would you say if the person mentioned above replied with "That's not really causation; it's interference, but it's something other than causation."?
I would say he was blissfully ignorant of the definition of the word "causation." The interference is an effect, one which is present when two slits are open and is not present when one slit is open. Two slits open being necessary and sufficient for the effect to occur, there is something in the opening of two slits that causes the effect. (Physicists might describe it as the wave functions of the electrons in the two streams interfering with each other.) This is causation in the same basic, fundamental, elementary sense as interference patterns in waves on the surface of a pond are caused by tossing two rocks into the pond in close proximity.
That's exactly my point: they AREN'T nothing. So how can you claim we START with that as opposed to nothing?
Yes, physics says we START with something as opposed to nothing. Or more accurately, there is no START. Go back as far as you want, there's something. There are handy diagrams and text in the back of the Guth book describing this stuff in detail. (Told you there was a good reason to read it.) And the great thing is, there's a constant stream of scientific corroboration for this view every year. The reports of the observations from the COBE satellite are among the most-cited high-energy physics papers every year, and you know who came up with the theory that explains those observations? Dr. Guth.
Eternity's a hell of a long time, you know. As far back as you want to go, I (or you) can go further (cf. Cantor's diagonalization), and there will always be something. Call it vacuum energy, virtual particles, whatever you like. If some philosophers have difficulties with that or start mumbling about the "uncaused cause" that's a problem for them, not the rigorous mathematics and physics that gave us this picture.
> that's a problem for them, not the
> rigorous mathematics and physics
> that gave us this picture.
That's another argument against God - not that math proves he doesn't exist, just that the God hypothesis feels so much like cheating.
The idea of life pulling itself up from acids, endlessly repeating the same processes, finding what works, incrementally improving, over billions of years, working out ways to take what you have and make a tiny little bit more from it ... it's so much more satisfying than 'then a giant magic thing did some magic and there was a lion'.
Seems like the atheistic work ethic is so much more *eternal* than the theist one.
It doesn't speak for which one's true, but I'm with Terry Pratchett - I'd much prefer being an ape on the way up than an angel on the way down.
@lee_merrill
"I meant if it holds up, then even if every other prophecy in the whole world fails, we have a problem, Houston."
Mm. I saw your comments about the incredible unlikelihood of so many attempts at rebuilding Babylon failing. However it's still cherry-picking the data, or rather, resampling the same space.
It would be like if I said "look, this smoker didn't die of cancer" and then "look, they didn't die of cancer in year 1, in year 2, in year 3... what's the probability of that!?". Well actually, the probability is 1, given that we've already selected the smoker that didn't die of cancer.
"My view is that no prophecy has failed, I have discussed many of them--glad to discuss further... over at theologyweb.com. "
I agree, this comment thread isn't really conducive to discussing something with many branches. It's okay, it's enough to me to know that you are looking at them. I'll leave it to your other enthusiastic discussion partners to work with you on those.
"'Look out!' we cry, 'it’s alive.'"
'... oh no wait, that's just my reflection.'
I have an open letter to singring at this address:
atheism-analyzed.blogspot.com
Stan
gillt says:
Garamond: "I haven't observed any gods, but then I haven't observed evolution, either."
And here we have someone who thinks personal experience (or lack thereof) is a good substitute for ignorance of the literature.
Sounds like a creationist.
In at least a couple of posts I defined "observation" to be limited to sensory inputs and internal states.
I'm in a charitable mood; I'll assume you didn't see those posts.
Larry says:
> Glad to hear it. I had listed several > approaches to scientific epistemology > earlier (operationalism,
> instrumentalism, etc.). Where do you > put yourself on that continuum?
I haven't got a clue. I suppose I could run off and do some quick research on the subtle meanings on those words but, frankly, I have better things to do.
You asked for a sophisticated answer. That's going to require some terms of art.
Now I get it. You're into sophistry.
I'm not.
Goodbye.
Oh, Larry, you're too easy....
D'ya think maybe if you can acknowledge your ignorance of some pretty basic epistemic terminology that maybe, just maybe, you're not in a good position to evaluate a sophisticated epistemic argument?
Wilkins could come in here and carve me up like a Christmas turkey (and I'd learn a lot from it), but that's because he knows what these words mean.
You can do better than "sophistry".
Let's start again.
You're asking for "evidence". To me, that means statements that either support (but not confirm) or disconfirm a model.
Does that sound reasonable?
And since you're asking for evidence for a god, I'm going to conclude that you're treating this god as a model. (Contrast this with asking for proof, which creates a more mathematical expectation.)
Now you haven't defined which god you're talking about --- which is understandable, but a bit of a blunder. I expect you'd like to be able to say that there's no evidence for any god; that'd be the home run. It would be much simpler to ask for evidence of the god of Augustine or Behe's god, but that's not nearly so dramatic.
But in not limiting your god by providing a definition, I'm free to choose from the universe of gods. Quakers consider their god to be the model of their "voice within", experiencing that voice during religious ritual becomes evidence. Is it also evidence of the brain entering a particular physical state? Sure. But as I'm sure you're aware, any given piece of evidence can support multiple models.
Which model should you believe? That's an entirely different question from which models have evidence. I prefer physicalist models, but that's on the weight of the evidence and the explanatory power of the model, not because I categorically state that certain models by definition may have no evidence.
gillt says:
This is simply an argument from ignorance. There is no reason to expect a phenomenon to violate general relativity.
Why do you think so?
Starting with --- well, pick an arbitrary point --- Copernicus, we've had a succession of improving theories of physics. We're now at the point where our theories --- particularly the standard model --- explain everything that is within reach of our experiments.
But we're also extending the reach of our experiments (which is most of what I do for a living). If we were certain that the standard model was complete, there'd be no need to continue doing these experiments.
There's no reason to think that we're going to find anything that will cause us to throw out most of physics (after all, we still teach Newton). But nor do I see any reason to think that the current formulation of the standard model is beyond improvement.
I have posted an open letter for singring here:
atheism-analyzed.blogspot.com
It's too long for a comment.
> Alex SL: Does not mean that prophecies work, just that you are bound to get lucky if you make enough of them.
Not if they're within the power of someone to falsify at any time.
> Anonymous: and Luke, written later, has Jesus actively refusing the wine on the Cross (contradicting Mark).
I don't believe Luke does, actually.
> Anonymous: But the problem remains that Mark says what it does. So the translators got to work, and in that AND ONLY THAT example, 'oinos' becomes a variety of odd things 'sour vinegar', 'wine vinegar' and so on.
"Then they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it." (Mark 15:23 NIV)
Mark says he was offered wine, and then other accounts mention later being given vinegar. But if you or others want to debate such points, let's take this elsewhere please.
> Nadiah: I saw your comments about the incredible unlikelihood of so many attempts at rebuilding Babylon failing. However it's still cherry-picking the data, or rather, resampling the same space.
But as I have said, I believe all Bibilical prophecies are defensible, but for the sake of argument I can grant you all your contradictions and still make my point.
> Nadiah: It would be like if I said "look, this smoker didn't die of cancer" and then "look, they didn't die of cancer in year 1, in year 2, in year 3... what's the probability of that!?". Well actually, the probability is 1, given that we've already selected the smoker that didn't die of cancer.
But we don't know the outcome of Babylon in advance--unless of course, you're God!
Then you can make such statements.
Garamond: "In at least a couple of posts I defined "observation" to be limited to sensory inputs and internal states."
And I and a few others in previous posts called this trivial if not arbitrary. Perhaps you missed those.
That still doesn't clear up comments like "I haven't observed god or evolution now watch as I pull a false equivalency out of my hat."
Garamond: "But we're also extending the reach of our experiments (which is most of what I do for a living). If we were certain that the standard model was complete, there'd be no need to continue doing these experiments."
Go back to my post. I said something directly visible, which means no fancy models or ideal states necessary. It's all very exciting, but I'm not interested in the borderlands areas of general relativity or the standard model and the limits of our knowledge regarding those and how that makes for some nifty god-of-gaps excuse-making.
I'll repeat the call for reasonable evidence.
"pointing out something directly visible that requires a violation of general relativity or the standard model. That's all it would take."
gillt says:
That still doesn't clear up comments like "I haven't observed god or evolution
I don't define either god or evolution to be either an internal state or a sensory input. They're models. It's beyond my frail powers to observe models. I can construct them, reduce them to mathematical formalisms, test them, compare them, and even discard them.
But I can't observe them.
If you don't like this definition you're free to offer your own. My came from the philosophy of mind literature (Dennett's _Consciousness Explained_ is probably your best starting point). In doing so, I have the advantage that people who know far more about this topic than I do think that this is a pretty reasonable definition.
But you're certainly free to improve on it.
So, what's an observation? Are they public, private, or both? Are they independent of language? What can you say about their reliability?
Before you answer, you might enjoy reading up on evolutionary epistemology. Rav's "Philosophical Problems of Mathematics in the Light of Evolutionary Epistemology" is available online and will give you pointers into the rest of the literature. It describes several aspects of the approach I've been taking in this exchange.
Go back to my post. I said something directly visible, which means no fancy models or ideal states necessary. It's all very exciting, but I'm not interested in the borderlands areas of general relativity or the standard model and the limits of our knowledge regarding those and how that makes for some nifty god-of-gaps excuse-making.
Would you be surprised to learn I'm an atheist?
Larry has a terrible argument for atheism and as a scientist he really should know better. The fact that I happen to agree with his conclusion doesn't excuse his sloppy reasoning (or yours).
Now, would you please go back and reread what I've been writing without trying to anticipate where I'm going to be inserting god? Thanks.
"pointing out something directly visible that requires a violation of general relativity or the standard model. That's all it would take."
Ok.
Because you don't have much of an understanding of the standard model, you didn't realize that there have been several. The first that was known as such was the Glashow-Weinberg-Salam model from 1967-1968. This model did not account for quarks, and so the model was amended in 1970.
If you define "miracle" as "phenomenon that violates the standard model", then quarks are a miracle.
I don't find quarks particularly miraculous. The fault may lie in your definition.
Second, while the (current) standard model gives extraordinarily accurate predictions, there is measurable error outside of the bounds of expected experimental error. This error is observable phenomenon not accounted for by the model.
You may also find this to be miraculous. I don't.
I've taken these two examples from S. F. Novaes's "Standard Model: An Introduction" (arXiv.org, warning: actual math). He closes as follows:
These remarkable achievements let just a small room for the new physics beyond the Standard Model. Nevertheless, we still have some conceptual difficulties like the hierarchy problem, that may indicate that the explanation provided by the Standard Model should not be the end of the story.
See wikipedia's entry on the standard model for a short description of the hierarchy problem.
Lee Merrill,
it is at least very clear by now that you do not understand the concept of selection bias, or what would be problematic about having it.
Just in case there is anything unclear, the problem is of course that you can convince yourself of anything, no matter how far-fetched it is, if you only count the hits and hand-wave away the misses.
@lee_merrill
"But we don't know the outcome of Babylon in advance--unless of course, you're God!"
"for the sake of argument I can grant you all your contradictions and still make my point."
... As I read it, you seem to be saying something very very odd. Given that, let me instead first check that I fully understand you before replying again.
Let's say, hypothetically, that there are only 10 prophecies in the Bible, and of those 10, one is the Babylon prophecy we've been discussing, and the other 9 were prophecies that failed.
Given this hypothetical, would you still find the Babylon prophecy compelling proof that God exists? And would you think it was valid to point to the fact that Babylon has failed to be rebuilt however many times that it has been tried, given that it is to focus on only 1 of the 10 prophecies?
> Alex SL: the problem is of course that you can convince yourself of anything, no matter how far-fetched it is, if you only count the hits and hand-wave away the misses.
> Nadiah: Given this hypothetical, would you still find the Babylon prophecy compelling proof that God exists?
Not the God of the Bible, nor the God that I believe in.
But in this situation, I would not be so much concerned with the probability that this being is right, instead, I would be trying to estimate whether this supernatural being exists. These are different questions.
If I say this ball will never bounce (but it does) and this spoon will never tarnish (but look, it's tarnished) and no one will ever walk around this mountain again (and they can't), then we clearly have a supernatural event going on in this last prohibition.
Lee merrill is what happens when you take Garramond's thinking seriously.
@Garamond
...entities
I learn about supposed gods by reading works that purport to describe them. You seem willing to redefine god to anything that works for you at the time, but I'm going gods actually conceived by man. After all, we can talk about "fdgs," "xxzxfrt," or "iweth55fg" until we're blue in the face and it won't matter because nobody thinks such beings exist. And at that point I take the pragmatist's approach and walk away.
[Once again I will be discussing mostly what's familiar: Yahweh.]
The Old Testament authors describe god as a being. They don't seem certain if it is a physical, immanent being like the greek gods, or a transcendent spiritual being, like the one that Christianity ultimately supports.
Now, you keep trying to call god a model and compare it to evolution. Evolution is a word used to describe a process of allele frequency change over time, and clearly, as you say, biology is rubbish without it.
God as used by man, is, once again, described not as an action, like evolution, but as a being. It's resemblance to you or I varies by religion. But in any case, It exists. Evolution, on the other hand, happens. Noun versus verb. Christians might say "God is love." Muslims might refer to Allah as Ar-Rahmān "The Compassionate" (Allah is Compassionate).
Now, you may describe models where God is able to do those things believers claim, like affect physical reality without a body, or be multiple places at once, or microwave a burrito as hot as It wants. These are the models (hypothetical, as they don't generally exist, because "God did it" is an answer but not an explanation; but if they took the time, these would be the ones comparable).
Much like we have created a model to describe how the universe, which has the property of gravity, affects objects of mass, which we call General Relativity, the model as it relates to god would be how such a being does the same. The being is not the same as the action.
"But in this situation, I would not be so much concerned with the probability that this being is right, instead, I would be trying to estimate whether this supernatural being exists. These are different questions."
So no matter the outcome of the prophecy, you would believe in God anyways? After all, the correctness of the answer isn't what you be concerned about, but whether God exists. And yet you then use the correctness of the answer as evidence that God exists.
Round and round it goes...
...The prophecy must be true because God exists-->God exists because the prophecy must be true-->The prophecy must be true because God exists-->God exists because the prophecy must be true...
"If I say this ball will never bounce (but it does) and this spoon will never tarnish (but look, it's tarnished) and no one will ever walk around this mountain again (and they can't), then we clearly have a supernatural event going on in this last prohibition."
So all that is required for the supernatural to occur is that something turn out differently than you, personally, expect?
You seem to be ignoring natural causes, as well as you being wrong. Plus a lot of other, wilder possibilities. You're straight up showing why prophecies are worthless: anyone can make one about anything, and some of them will always come true.
Samael: "So all that is required for the supernatural to occur is that something turn out differently than you, personally, expect?
It's worse than that, by Lee Merrill's standards it's supernatural if you guess something right.
>It's worse than that, by Lee
> Merrill's standards it's
> supernatural if you guess
> something right.
Here's my definition, for what it's worth: 'an event is supernatural if it's so unusual that a description of how it fits with the standard scientific model looks more like special pleading and raises more questions for a trained specialist in that field than it answers'.
The Red Sea parts letting the Jews through but drowning the Egyptians ... it's best to admit that any scientific explanation as to how that happened makes less sense than 'the Jewish God did it'.
With the Cardinal Newman 'miracle' of a man in hospital in great pain who was given painkillers and who's pain went away within the timeframe that usually happens ... less so.
> Mark says he was offered wine, and
> then other accounts mention later
> being given vinegar. But if you or
> others want to debate such points,
> let's take this elsewhere please.
No, let's do it here.
'Wine vinegar', as I say, is a modern translation (NIV, 1973) that is not translated to mean that anywhere else and it's there so that when some smartass like me says 'hang on, Jesus said he wouldn't drink wine again', a priest can smugly assert it was 'wine vinegar', not wine.
The *original* says 'oinos', a word that means 'wine' and is translated as such in every other place.
Jesus predicted he wouldn't drink wine, within twenty four hours he drank wine. Not only that, but the fingerprints of early Christians and later translators trying to fudge it because they've seen the problem are blatantly obvious.
[second attempt, splitting into parts]
gillt says:
That still doesn't clear up comments like "I haven't observed god or evolution
I don't define either god or evolution to be either an internal state or a sensory input. They're models. It's beyond my frail powers to observe models. I can construct them, reduce them to mathematical formalisms, test them, compare them, and even discard them. I've even been known to publish a few in the peer-reviewed literature.
But I can't observe them.
If you don't like this definition you're free to offer your own. My came from the philosophy of mind literature (Dennett's _Consciousness Explained_ is probably your best starting point). In doing so, I have the advantage that people who know far more about this topic than I do think that this is a pretty reasonable definition.
But you're certainly free to improve on it.
So, what's an observation? Are they public, private, or both? Are they independent of language? What can you say about their reliability?
Before you answer, you might enjoy reading up on evolutionary epistemology. Rav's "Philosophical Problems of Mathematics in the Light of Evolutionary Epistemology" is available online and will give you pointers into the rest of the literature. It describes several aspects of the approach I've been taking in this exchange.
gillt says:
Go back to my post. I said something directly visible, which means no fancy models or ideal states necessary. It's all very exciting, but I'm not interested in the borderlands areas of general relativity or the standard model and the limits of our knowledge regarding those and how that makes for some nifty god-of-gaps excuse-making.
Would it help if you knew I'm an atheist?
Larry has a terrible argument for atheism and as a scientist he really should know better. The fact that I happen to agree with his conclusion doesn't excuse his sloppy reasoning (or yours).
Now, would you please go back and reread what I've been writing without trying to anticipate where I'm going to be inserting god? Thanks.
gillt says:
"pointing out something directly visible that requires a violation of general relativity or the standard model. That's all it would take."
Ok.
Because you don't have much of an understanding of the standard model, you didn't realize that there have been several. The first that was known as such was the Glashow-Weinberg-Salam model from 1967-1968. This model did not account for quarks, and so the model was amended in 1970.
If you define "miracle" as "phenomenon that violates the standard model", then quarks are a miracle.
I don't find quarks particularly miraculous. The fault may lie in your definition.
Second, while the (current) standard model gives extraordinarily accurate predictions, there is measurable error outside of the bounds of expected experimental error. This error is observable phenomenon not accounted for by the model.
You may also find this to be miraculous. I don't.
I've taken these two examples from S. F. Novaes's "Standard Model: An Introduction" (arXiv.org, warning: actual math). He closes as follows:
These remarkable achievements let just a small room for the new physics beyond the Standard Model. Nevertheless, we still have some conceptual difficulties like the hierarchy problem, that may indicate that the explanation provided by the Standard Model should not be the end of the story.
See wikipedia's entry on the standard model for a short description of the hierarchy problem.
Larry
Your weblog suffers from the same deficiency that afflicts After The Bar Closes, Panda's Thumb Pharyngula, richarddawkins.net, EvC, Uncommon Descent and just about every other "forum" presumably dedicated to the question of our origins. You promote and tolerate anonymity for the same reasons all the others do. It is the only way you can maintain your popularity, your daily visitor participation and statistics. Any person who will denigrate a known adversary as he hides his own identity is a cowardly intellectual disaster. This blog, like all the others, is crawling with such low life, the only reason your blog survives.
Now be sure to delete this message like you did my last one.
I have better things to do with the rest of life than to waste my time on the likes of Larry Moran.
Have a nice, totally controlled "groupthinktank."
jadavison.wordpress.vom
samael says:
I learn about supposed gods by reading works that purport to describe them. You seem willing to redefine god to anything that works for you at the time, but I'm going gods actually conceived by man.
And how do you think those gods were created if not by "what works for you at the time?
[Once again I will be discussing mostly what's familiar: Yahweh.]
The Old Testament authors describe god as a being. They don't seem certain if it is a physical, immanent being like the greek gods, or a transcendent spiritual being, like the one that Christianity ultimately supports.
I think the confusion you're seeing is the evolution from god being one of many in a localized context to a recognizable monotheism. So in most time periods I think the existing model was well-understood.
Now, you keep trying to call god a model and compare it to evolution. Evolution is a word used to describe a process of allele frequency change over time, and clearly, as you say, biology is rubbish without it.
Well, biology becomes stamp-collecting without it, but go on...
God as used by man, is, once again, described not as an action, like evolution, but as a being.
And that description is an approximation, much like the mathematical formulations of evolution are an approximation. This is a good thing. (There are a couple of interesting corner cases where this doesn't hold --- Quakerism comes to mind --- but I'll grant that it's the common case.
It's resemblance to you or I varies by religion. But in any case, It exists.
Not sure what you mean by "it" here. The description certainly exists, but this does not summon forth what is described. However, this does not necessarily make the description less useful.
Evolution, on the other hand, happens. Noun versus verb.
Oh fer crying out loud. Are you seriously proposing a "parts of speech" argument to support your position?
Let me show you what evolution is. This is taken from Barton's textbook _Evolution_ which I used when I took a graduate course on the topic:
The probability that a single copy of an allele with selective advantage $s$ will be fixed in a population of effective size $N_e$ is $2s(N_e/N)(1-e^{-4N_es}) where N is the actual number of individuals.
(p. 493)
"Allele" is a model. "Effective population size" is a model. "Fitness" is one of the least intuitive models I know of, but quite useful even so. And here in one equation we can relate all three concepts together.
Pretty cool, huh?
Now, why on earth would I want to reduce the above to "noun" or "verb"?
The concept is far richer than the box you're trying to put it into.
"I think the confusion you're seeing is the evolution from god being one of many in a localized context to a recognizable monotheism."
Well, yes, and a refusal on the pro-theists's side of the argument to allow 'god' to have any properties at all that can't be whisked away if it serves their argument to whisk them away.
It's why atheists always end up discussing creationism - at least a creationist will say 'the Bible says God does this, so I believe it'.
If we are discussing *anything* like the Christian God, that is a god that's worshipped by at least one Christian, you have to have some conception, however false, of what that god is. Even if it's 'deserving of worship' or 'hears prayers' or 'likes you to go to church on a Sunday'.
Are there any Christians, at all, who don't believe God can hear prayers? Perhaps there are some Christians who believe their god only hears some prayers, I don't know. Are there any Christian sects or traditions where God *can't* hear prayers?
So ... one property God is meant to have, according to any and every Christian tradition: 'God can hear prayers'. Agreed?
God has some control over the afterlife. Agreed?
God had an important role in the creation of the universe. Agreed?
God has some sort of external existence, so that if - say - the human race ceased to exist, God would not and that God existed before human beings came along. Agreed?
God knows things and has abilities beyond those of the human race. Agreed?
Any of all of these might or might not be true. Some are difficult to prove or disprove - the afterlife one, for example. But these are all statements that can usefully describe the Christian god, at least as the basis for a discussion. Agreed?
"Now, why on earth would I want to reduce the above to "noun" or "verb"?
The concept is far richer than the box you're trying to put it into."
OK ... so what's the equivalent God Equation?
Church = exempt from tax and criminal law?
Anonymous says:
Are there any Christians, at all, who don't believe God can hear prayers?
God has some control over the afterlife. Agreed?
God has some sort of external existence, so that if - say - the human race ceased to exist, God would not and that God existed before human beings came along. Agreed?
God knows things and has abilities beyond those of the human race. Agreed?
Not in the Quaker tradition, no, and not much in the Unitarian Universalist tradition (and that's just in the extant denominations).
I think you'll have an easier time of this if you limit yourself to, say, the official Catholic position (there's only one at a given time --- modulo a few schisms --- and it's written down).
Larry's challenge wasn't restricted to any particular god, so I'm considering the class of all possible gods.
> Anonymous: Here's my definition, for what it's worth: 'an event is supernatural if it's so unusual that a description of how it fits with the standard scientific model looks more like special pleading and raises more questions for a trained specialist in that field than it answers'.
So continued failure to rebuild Babylon by people who could have done so? After a certain number of repetitions I think this fits that definition.
> Anonymous: Wine vinegar', as I say, is a modern translation (NIV, 1973) that is not translated to mean that anywhere else... The *original* says 'oinos'...
No, the word is "oxous", it means "sour wine", i.e. vinegar is what wine turns to when it goes sour.
> Anonymous: The older gospel, Mark, has Jesus saying he won't drink wine again, then 'tasting' 'wine'.
It does not, Mark says Jesus refused wine, and then later they offered him "oxous".
> Anonymous: and Luke, written later, has Jesus actively refusing the wine on the Cross (contradicting Mark).
But Luke does not say this.
Anonymous asks:
OK ... so what's the equivalent God Equation?
Can we fast forward this a bit.
Me: There's isn't a equivalent equation for (nearly all) gods. (Godel provides an interesting exception to this rule, Pythagorous possibly another.)
You: Ha!
Me: But there's not a mathematical definition of models such as "gene" either, and Darwin amassed a pretty impressive body of work without relying on mathematical modeling.
You can certainly define science (in opposition to religion) to be "that which can be described accurately using mathematical models", but I think you run a risk of eliminating most biology before 1930 from your definition of science.
> Larry's challenge wasn't restricted to any particular god, so I'm considering the class of all possible gods. <
If your signifier can slide to encompass any meaning, including contradictory ones ('god can hear prayers', 'god can't hear prayers'), though, then what's the point of asking any questions of it?
Are you satisfied with that concept of a god?
If your signifier can slide to encompass any meaning, including contradictory ones ('god can hear prayers', 'god can't hear prayers'), though, then what's the point of asking any questions of it?
My signifier can also slide to encompass numbers that are even, odd, zero, non-zero, rational, irrational, complex and transcendental.
When you want to have a sophisticated conversation about numbers, people don't generally pick just one. I'm not sure why this should be different for gods.
Garamond Lethe says,
Larry has a terrible argument for atheism and as a scientist he really should know better.
Say what?
I don't believe I've offered any argument for atheism. All I've said is that I've not been convinced by any arguments in favor of supernatural beings. Thus, I remain a non-believer in supernatural beings just as was when I was born.
I promised myself that I wouldn't get involved in your hair-splitting sophistry but I couldn't let you get away with lying about my position.
> So continued failure to rebuild
> Babylon by people who could have
> done so? After a certain number > of repetitions I think this fits
> that definition.
Then you're easily pleased. There are plenty of mundane reasons why building projects don't happen.
If someone who'd tried to rebuild Babylon had been killed by the Archangel Michael as he laid the foundation stone, I might be persuaded.
> No, the word is "oxous"
No. The earliest manuscripts say 'oinos', the later ones say 'oxos' and there's at least one example where 'oinos' has been erased and 'oxos' written in its place.
>> Anonymous: and Luke, written
>> later, has Jesus actively
>> refusing the wine on the Cross
>> (contradicting Mark).
>But Luke does not say this.
Luke 23:36. 'Offered' as opposed to 'tasted', as in Matthew.
John, the last gospel to be written has Jesus drinking oxos, but didn't have the line earlier about how he wouldn't drink the fruit of the vine.
The Gospels were almost certainly composed in the order Matthew, Luke, John.
Matthew: Jesus said he wouldn't drink 'fruits of the vine' again, drinks oinos. Later versions say oxos. At least one manuscript has oinos erased and oxos overwritten. Oxos is sour wine, ie: wine, ie: still comes from vines.
Luke: Jesus says he won't drink the fruit of the vine again, and is merely 'offered' oxos.
John: Jesus doesn't predict he won't drink wine, he drinks oxos.
Here's a working theory, then: some smartass heard Matthew being read out and went 'hang on, he said he wouldn't drink wine, he just did'. When they wrote Luke, they fudged it, but some other smartass wasn't convinced. Third time, they just ditched the prediction. Problem solved.
Isn't that more plausible than 'although it says wine, we mean - in this one place only - sour wine, which doesn't come from vines, er ... er ... we meant vinegar and vinegar doesn't come from vines'?
This is important for two reasons:
1. One failed prediction is all it takes to disprove the idea that Biblical prophecy represents infallible evidence in favour of the existence of God.
2. We see the Christian authorities caught out and frantically, and very probably cynically, responding by changing their story.
Garamond Lethe says,
My came from the philosophy of mind literature (Dennett's _Consciousness Explained_ is probably your best starting point). In doing so, I have the advantage that people who know far more about this topic than I do think that this is a pretty reasonable definition.
Having just heard Dennet give a horrible talk here in Montreal (at 8:30 AM), I now have a much better idea of where you are going wrong.
Your first mistake was in assuming that Dennet is an expert. It's pretty much downhill for you from then on.
> When you want to have a
> sophisticated conversation about
> numbers, people don't generally
> pick just one.
Well, if that person's 'sophisticated conversation' began 'I've got a book written in the Iron Age that's convinced me there are no other numbers but 15', you'd probably decide he was rather the opposite of sophisticated.
And if he said 'I don't think any numbers exist', you'd be able to reply 'Let me demonstrate ways in which you are wrong: 1) Oh look, I just said "1", I win'.
I understand the point you're making. Again, this is because the point you're making is very, very easy to understand. But the whole point of numbers is that they are defined, that they exist within a framework that relates them to each other. You can work with that set, even though it's literally beyond infinite.
Your saying 'gods are like numbers' just demonstrates how unlike numbers gods actually are. You want 'god' to mean something like 'possible animals' ... well, all sorts of things are possible, particularly if we decide we can put exhibits from other planets and our imaginations in that zoo.
Your god is best suited for science fiction, in other words, not zoology.
Larry says:
I don't believe I've offered any argument for atheism.
I'm referring to your asking for evidence while contemporaneously stating there isn't any.
We create gods just like we create any other model --- based on the evidence we have at hand at the moment. I think we agree that scientific models are better for most if not all purposes, but that does make the evidence for the earlier models disappear.
All I've said is that I've not been convinced by any arguments in favor of supernatural beings. Thus, I remain a non-believer in supernatural beings just as was when I was born.
This, on the other hand, is entirely sensible.
Bother.
"does make evidence disappear"
should read
"doesn't make evidence disappear"
Larry says:
Your first mistake was in assuming that Dennet is an expert.
He's certainly not an expert on biology (and yes, I've heard him give a talk in a biology department setting as well --- the prof who taught my grad evo class asked several pointed questions he was unable to answer well.)
But in terms of philosophy of mind I'm not aware that anyone questions his expertise. Yes, _Consciousness Explained_ was written for a popular audience, but I still think that's a better place to start than Jaegwon Kim.
"I think you run a risk of eliminating most biology before 1930 from your definition of science."
You miss my point. You say:
"I don't define either god or evolution to be either an internal state or a sensory input. They're models."
OK.
What's the god model?
If you refuse to define any terms, at all, or to allow all terms, ever, it's certainly not a *good* model and I can't really see why you'd describe it as a model at all.
Your god is best suited for science fiction, in other words, not zoology.
As an atheist I wasn't aware that I had any gods. I'll check under the bed just to be sure, though. I never cease to be amazed at what the cats can bring in....
I have been making a few points about evidence and models as they relate to gods in general. Did you have anything to add to that discussion?
Garamond Lethe writes: If you define "miracle" as "phenomenon that violates the standard model", then quarks are a miracle.
I very much doubt he wanted to define scientific progress as miraculous.
Let's get beyond nitpicking and talk about what's interesting. With regard to evidence of the existence of deities, or beings sufficiently advanced to be (at least initially) indistinguishable from same, there are some reasonable candidates. The miracle of the loaves and fishes; stopping the sun in the sky; the parting of the Red Sea; virgin birth (of a male human child); those are some of the types of things that would certainly make me sit up and take notice.
Some folks believe these things have already occurred, but I would like to see them take place in front of modern recording devices. (Interesting that in places where recording devices are present and working, there seem to be no miracles.)
> that doesn't make the evidence
> for the earlier models
> disappear.
It changes the verdict, though, surely?
Old model: Zeus often makes thunderbolts when we do something that makes him angry.
New model: Storms form in atmospheric processes that, while so complex even the most sophisticated computers have trouble accurately modeling them, are entirely physical.
We still have a *record* of the old model, but we know now, beyond any (actual) doubt that it's nothing to do with Zeus. We know now, again beyond any actual doubt, that Zeus doesn't even exist.
These are not theories out there competing in the marketplace of ideas. One is true, one is false.
> Interesting that in places where
> recording devices are present and
> working, there seem to be no
> miracles.
And interesting that there are many, many examples of faked miracles, in all religious traditions.
This is another strong argument against religion: known fraudsters. Without naming names, because we wouldn't want to offend Mormons or Scientologists, we know that modern religions are often devised by imaginative men, some previously convicted of fraud, who collect vast financial and sexual reward, as well as, often, immunity from tax and criminal law because they head a religion.
It's a common pattern in cults, so common we can all think of many, many modern examples. It's clear from history that the pattern is an ancient one, one that probably predates writing.
To the first approximation, we can say that *all* leaders of cults are fraudsters. That is, essentially, the Christian position, after all. Christians even define other Christian sects in those terms.
Anonymous asks:
What's the god model?
That usually goes under the name of "theology" when it has been codified, but you can find informal versions pretty much anywhere.
Several examples:
Tony Hillerman notes that while Christians in the Southwest of the US tend to pray for rain to end a drought, Navajos pray (in a very loose sense of that word) to become more in harmony with the drought. This particular local Christian model contains a god that can control the weather, that can be influence by the prayers of the believers, and who encourages attempts that that kind of influence. The Navajo model may contain the first two, but not the third.
There's a particularly malignant model of Christianity that makes the rounds every now and again. The most recent version I'm aware of is called the "Prosperity Gospel". This essentially models god as an ATM that the faithful can use to withdraw cash and goodies. Given the correct performance of the ritual, wealth appears. And this will happen to some members of the congregation (although a more parsimonious model might rely on chance and confirmation bias). If wealth doesn't appear, then it's *your* fault (and this belief can be quite toxic).
Quakers have an excellent model, and while I've learned quite a bit about it I'm not confident in my ability to summarize it. To give you some idea: my partner has her Ph.D. in physics, does not believe in a creator god or the supernatural, and has been an active member of her Quaker meeting for decades.
> That usually goes under the name
> of "theology" when it has been
> codified,
Well, no.
What you go on to describe is 'religious activity', rather than 'god'.
All your examples involve the supposition of god altering the course of events. We've discussed this - this seems to be an agreed property of a god: that he can (even if he hasn't) alter ... whatever you want to call it 'the course of nature', say.
Or, in other words, we're simply back to miracles.
I think this is useful, though. It's probably tricky to define a miracle, it's certainly a word that's misused, but it's something that can be observed. Or not.
So ... it's Saturday 2 October, 2010. How many miracles were on the news today?
> that doesn't make the evidence
> for the earlier models
> disappear.
It changes the verdict, though, surely?
Absolutely.
Anonymous asks:
So ... it's Saturday 2 October, 2010. How many miracles were on the news today?
Depends on which model you use.
Quakers and Navajo would say zero. Some Hindus would claim the number was infinite (as all of nature is animated by supernatural forces).
BTW: I think your definition of "miracle" leaves a little to be desired. The Dali Lama is considered a god yet affects nature (in a decidedly non-supernatural manner) as he goes about day-to-day living. But I do appreciate that you're trying to define your terms.
Garamond: "Because you don't have much of an understanding of the standard model, you didn't realize that there have been several. The first that was known as such was the Glashow-Weinberg-Salam model from 1967-1968. This model did not account for quarks, and so the model was amended in 1970."
Of course you miss the point per usual and failed to address the problem.
For instance, do you anticipate a fundamental change in how we currently understand the standard model as it applies to everyday phenomena in the next hundred or thousand years?
If not then my original call for reasonable evidence of god or miracles still stands.
Garamond: "I don't define either god or evolution to be either an internal state or a sensory input. They're models...But I can't observe them."
If you want to definite observation in a way that excludes observed bacterial evolution, an uncontroversial fact, then you're wasting everyone's time with sophistry.
Garamond: "My came from the philosophy of mind literature (Dennett's _Consciousness Explained_ is probably your best starting point). In doing so, I have the advantage that people who know far more about this topic than I do think that this is a pretty reasonable definition."
I respect Dennett because his philosophy is informed by science, most of the time. However, I read Dennett's "Freedom Evolves" and he seems to want it both ways: free will and determinism. It's not convincing. For a pop lit book on human consciousness, I recommend Joseph LeDoux, as I mentioned previously.
@lee_merrill
"If I say this ball will never bounce (but it does) and this spoon will never tarnish (but look, it's tarnished) and no one will ever walk around this mountain again (and they can't), then we clearly have a supernatural event going on in this last prohibition."
Not quite. Let me demonstrate with another hypothetical example (and forgive me for the vaguely condescending example :-) I have no idea how much probability theory you know).
Let's say we have 3 prophecies, 3 events, each with a 5% chance of coming true just by luck and without supernatural intervention. Let's say 1 has come true and 2 have failed. Does that mean that the likelihood of this is 5%?
Here is a list of each possibility and its corresponding probability. "T" is "the prophecy comes true" and "F" is for "false":
Event : probability
--------------------
T, T, T : 0.000125
T, T, F : 0.0023750
T, F, T : 0.0023750
F, T, T : 0.0023750
T, F, F : 0.045125
F, T, F : 0.045125
F, F, T : 0.045125
F, F, F : 0.85737
(Check sum = 1 ... yep, good)
So if each prophecy has only a 5% chance of coming true, is the likelihood of 1 prophecy coming true 5%? No, in this case it is actually 0.045125*3 ~ 14%. In other words, if you choose to count only on the one that comes true, you will exaggerate its unlikelihood.
Remember that the Bible has not just 3 prophecies, but probably millions, considering how "prophecies" are often read into scriptures that do not explicitly identify themselves as prophecy and have an alternate non-prophetic natural reading.
I agree with you that the Babylon prophecy is rather unlikely - hence the creepiness of it - but our primitive reflexes aren't so great at probability theory. If we count all the other possible prophecies including the ones that failed, we will find that creepy Babylon even looking a lot more mundane, in the same way the 5% grew to 14% in our hypothetical example.
@lee_merrill:
"but our primitive reflexes aren't so great at probability theory."
Or more specifically, they're not so good at considering the *whole* sample space when faced with a rare event. Understandably, because by the time you've sat down and finished your calculations, the Tiger-shaped-shadow has already jumped out of the bushes and eaten you.
gillt asks:
For instance, do you anticipate a fundamental change in how we currently understand the standard model as it applies to everyday phenomena in the next hundred or thousand years?
My opinion doesn't count for much here, so I called up someone with a Ph.D. in physics. Her answer was "Hell, yes."
As it's wise to defer to one's significant other, I think I'll leave it at that.
If you want to definite observation in a way that excludes observed bacterial evolution, an uncontroversial fact, then you're wasting everyone's time with sophistry.
If you're an undergraduate or a technician you don't have to worry too much about the finer points of what constitutes an observation. Once you start writing papers for publication, though, you'll find that there are lots of crabby reviewers out there who spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about just this topic.
Richard Lenski's work on E. coli is an excellent case in point. He has his 2008 PNAS paper on his webpage; let's take a look.
Occasional contaminants that grow on citrate have been seen over the 20 years of this experiment. These contaminated cultures reach much higher
turbidity owing to the high concentration of citrate in the medium, which allows the contaminants to reach high density. (When contamination occurs, the affected population is restarted from the latest frozen sample.) After 33,127 generations, one population, designated Ara-3, displayed significantly elevated turbidity that continued to rise for several days (Fig. 1). A number of Cit+ clones were isolated from the population and checked for phenotypic markers characteristic of the ancestral E. coli strain used to start the LTEE: all were Ara-, T5-sensitive, and T6-resistant, as expected (2). DNA sequencing also showed that Cit+ clones have the same mutations in the pykF and nadR genes as do clones from earlier generations of the Ara-3 population, and each of these mutations distinguishes this population from all of the others (30).
Each of these statements depend on a huge chains of inferences, but at this particular point in time, if you're writing a paper on cell biology these are trusted enough to be classified as observations (but notice that he still cites the relevant work if you want to examine a particular chain.)
After laying out all of those observations, we get the (small, but necessary) payoff:
Therefore, the Cit+ variant arose
within the LTEE and is not a contaminant.
That's just one brick, and there are several more paragraphs of dense prose needed to assemble the rest of the structure. Once all of that is in place, he can finally say:
We demonstrated that the evolution of this new function was contingent on the history of the population in which it arose.
Is parsing the word "observation" this finely a waste of your time? Perhaps. But I not only write papers, I review other people's papers as well. Their careers depend in large part on their publication records. If I'm going to recommend a paper be rejected because they're inferring where they should have observed and concluding where they should have inferred, I need to know enough to be able to provide a precise explanation of where they went off the rails.
First, issuing an unannounced challenge to the entire world with a deadline of one week, as if you were a god, demonstrates a profound arrogance or at least that you were drunk at the time.
Second, the use of emotional language indicating that you have already made up your mind turns it into nothing more than bigoted rant. Were you drunk at the time?
But enough of pleasantries.
If you can clear your head for a moment, you may wish to ask yourself why such a large proportion of humanity believes in god(s) or supernatural agencies, and has done so from prehistory. What are the evolutionary, social or cultural purposes for our species?
Perhaps you could collect together peer reviewed papers based on empirical evidence, and post links here. Try to avoid philosophical arguments, stick to the science.
I’ll wait for one week.
Best regards
Steve says,
First, issuing an unannounced challenge to the entire world with a deadline of one week, as if you were a god, demonstrates a profound arrogance or at least that you were drunk at the time.
I don't understand. Will it take you longer than a week to come up with a reason why you believe in God? Have you never thought of it before?
Second, the use of emotional language indicating that you have already made up your mind turns it into nothing more than bigoted rant. Were you drunk at the time?
I'm an atheist. Of course I've already made a decision about the issue. I haven't been convinced by any arguments for the existence of God.
I asked theists and accommodationists to present their very best arguments or else stop pretending that there are any such things.
It has not escaped my notice that you haven't offered anything except criticism of my challenge.
Sort of proves my point, doesn't it?
But enough of pleasantries.
If you can clear your head for a moment, you may wish to ask yourself why such a large proportion of humanity believes in god(s) or supernatural agencies, and has done so from prehistory. What are the evolutionary, social or cultural purposes for our species?
I'm not sure if there are any evolutionary advantages in believing things that aren't true. I've often asked myself why such a a large proportion of humanity supported slavery and the subjugation of women for so long.
What was the evolutionary advantage in believing that evil supernatural beings caused bad weather and disease? If you know why humans were so stupid in the past, please post the answer.
Perhaps you could collect together peer reviewed papers based on empirical evidence, and post links here. Try to avoid philosophical arguments, stick to the science.
I’ll wait for one week.
Sorry. I don't think anyone knows for sure why humans are so gullible and why they believe things that later turn out to be very, very wrong. It doesn't seem like a good survival strategy to me. Does it seem like that to you?
Larry
I admire your candor about being an atheist. I just sent a message to two other atheist biologsts, Paul Zachary Myers and Clinton Richard Dawkins. You can find it below -
http://jadavison.wordpress.com/2007/12/25/evolution-is-finished/#comment-3053
comment #293
jadavison.wordpress.com
I'm looking back and trying to see what evidence, or even justification, people have come up with that people are happy to stand behind (no one here seems willing to back a couple of the more common ones like the 'prime mover' one).
It seems to boil down to:
"1. Miracles would be evidence."
Which is true, and points to another issue: theists are defining God, now, as anti-science. So many of the things that are meant to be 'evidence of god' are actually 'criticism of science'. The creationists do it in their crude, shambling way by asserting that the Bible trumps reality. There's a more sophisticated version of exactly the same argument, though, which runs something like 'science is just another story we tell each other' or 'there are so many things scientists don't know and will never know'. And three seconds later, some scientist is accused of being ignorant or arrogant or meddling in forces he is not equipped to understand. Usually by a theologian who, I suspect, would stumble recounting a high school level description of an atom or evolutionary theory.
Scientists know there are things we don't know. We're trying to find them out. If you don't have the foggiest, you don't worship the fog.
Both the creationist and sophisticreationist arguments are arguments *from* ignorance, but also arguments *celebrating* personal ignorance. If they really thought God was in the few picoseconds at the beginning of creation, then every church in the world would be funding vast telescopes and particle accelerators. Instead you have the Pope telling Hawking not to look there. Why not?
A miracle, basically is defined as 'something that would shut one of those strident atheist scientists up'. And the thing is ... it wouldn't. If the Red Sea parted tomorrow and a group of Jews escaped and a group of Egyptians chasing them drowned, scientists would *love* it, they would be all over it. There would be ten Nobel Prizes in it for someone.
Oh ... and the fact that the Catholic church is reduced to seeing 'the pain of a man treated with painkillers goes away' as a 'miracle' is itself rather telling as to the *actual* scale and frequency of miracles, as well as the capabilities of the self-appointed miracle assessors.
"2. There must be some evolutionary advantage to belief, as it's so common."
I think you can dismiss the second instantly. I can see how a tribe united by a strong belief in something greater than themselves could have advantages, but that 'something' doesn't have to exist, and it doesn't have to be a god.
More to the point, it's (again) a bit of linguistic sleight of hand. A tribe who believe in Christ and a tribe who believe in Odin. don't believe in *the same thing*. They might have some commonalities (by accident or design), but if a sense of *the actual* god was innate, then why would it express itself in so many different, mutually contradictory ways?
It's noticeable that on his recent visit to the UK, Mr Ratzinger declared that the conflicts of the world were between the forces of theism and secular humanists. Can he really look at the world and really think that? But it's all part of the big lie that when any human being says 'god' they somehow mean some facet of the one, true god.
It's literally like saying that Palestinians and Israelis believe in 'the same thing' because they believe in their own nationhood. At one level, yes. At the other level: bombs and blockades and bulldozers.
What's defined this discussion: theists and theist sympathizers being utterly unwilling to define any property or ability of this 'god', not even 'existence'.
Of *course* we can't make useful statements about this 'god'.
What I don't understand ... why a theists happy with that? It's such a *rubbish* thing to worship, such a feeble, useless god. God should be as obvious as the Sun, He should be radiating and informing everything, there constantly. Not thought to be skulking in some distant cave in some mathematical or linguistic loophole.
Larry says
Does it seem like that to you?
My “pleasantries” were aimed at getting your attention amongst all the comments. Thanks for replying, and pleased to meet you.
I’m not for or against here, but even so tarry a while.
The reason why people should form such beliefs and hang on to them is much more interesting to me. As you say, humans may be gullible, but these systems of belief may also have survival advantages in terms of defining tribes and holding them together.
Compare “god on our side”, the worship of dictators, “my country right or wrong” and even the sometimes unnaturally heated arguing in a bar over the merits of Bach compared to Mozart. None is particularly rational, yet we all participate in one way or another. In essence, we’re doing it now in this conversation. If we were completely rational, the only reason for communicating would be to aid our individual and collective survival, and perhaps we’re doing just that - trying to influence the direction of a tribe or form a new tribe.
It would seem useful to go beyond the particulars of any given belief and ask why we do it at all. Philosophizing doesn’t really help, some science would be useful.
I have an uneasy feeling that if we could convince everyone on the planet to give up their cherished beliefs, other beliefs would immediately spring up in their place because beliefs in general serve a purpose until we out-evolve them.
Am I talking junk, is a scientific explanation untenable or else done and dusted?
Garamond: "My opinion doesn't count for much here, so I called up someone with a Ph.D. in physics. Her answer was "Hell, yes."
As it's wise to defer to one's significant other, I think I'll leave it at that."
And I deferred to Sean Carroll, whose thoughts on this are actually published, for a definitive "NO!"
Garamond: "If you're an undergraduate or a technician you don't have to worry too much about the finer points of what constitutes an observation. Once you start writing papers for publication, though, you'll find that there are lots of crabby reviewers out there who spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about just this topic."
Typical grad student. Yes, I've written and edited manuscripts for publication. Is this some sort of pissing match now?
Garamond: "Is parsing the word "observation" this finely a waste of your time?"
If anyone is parsing, it is you. You apparently don't know or pretending ignorance with how science works. What I'm saying is that your remark about never having seen evolution in action--intended to be taken as some sort of meaningful comment on the philosophical nature observations--is silly and irrelevant in this context. The fact that bacterial evolution as been recorded in the literature is what counts. Have you personally witnessed neural migration in a developing brain? It's a cool process we can see in real-time by using fluorescent proteins and time course imaging.
Do you have something else besides, evolution can't be observed and neither can god, therefore...?
gillt says:
And I deferred to Sean Carroll, whose thoughts on this are actually published, for a definitive "NO!"
Oh, it's certainly a common opinion not only throughout the history of physics but sciences in general. The last time it was this strong is physics was just before special relativity was discovered --- there were a couple of loose ends to tie up about the nature of light but aside from that, physics was mostly a solved problem. (That sentiment is particularly strong in chemistry right now; witness the dearth of Nobel prizes in chemistry going to what most folks would consider to be chemistry.)
So there's always a temptation there to write a popular books with a title like The End of Physics. After all, we just need to tie up a few loose ends regarding gravity and QM, right? Other than that, physics is pretty much a solved problem....
(If you have a cite for the Carrol quote handy, I'd like to see it. If not, no big deal.)
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/09/23/the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-are-completely-understood/
followup
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/09/29/seriously-the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-really-are-completely-understood/
gillt comments:
Typical grad student.
Postdoc, actually. Not sure why it matters....
If anyone is parsing, it is you.
I certainly am, and I wish you'd start. I find science gets a lot more interesting when you start pinning down precise definitions of words like "observation", "evidence" and "model".
What I'm saying is that your remark about never having seen evolution in action--intended to be taken as some sort of meaningful comment on the philosophical nature observations--is silly and irrelevant in this context.
Look, all I can tell you is that both my research and my writing improved when I stopped trying to mimic the peer-reviewed literature in my field and instead sat down and figured out what "observation", "model", "evidence" and "error" mean.
For example: the best models are not the ones that give the smallest error.
Shocking, no?
Before I was taught that, I spent far too much time trying to wring the last little bit of error out of my models, making them incredibly convoluted and brittle in the process. There are lots of published models like this --- they don't get cited much. (Linear regression without explanation is a dead giveaway.)
The famous models don't do nearly so well at predicting, but they kick butt when it comes to providing explanations. Once I have that explanation in hand I can transfer it to similar problems, extend it to clean up the error, or use it as a basis of an entirely new model. And those characteristic are what leads to it being cited for decades.
I can also tell you that just because I observe a set of numbers on my computer screen, I cannot conclude that these necessarily have any relationship to what I thought I was measuring. I do things with my instruments that they weren't designed to do, and this means that not only do I need a model of the phenomena I'm trying to measure, but I need a model of my instrument as well. That's easily said. What's not so easy is figuring out that this model needs to be validated just as much as the model that I want to publish.
So I find this kind of "parsing" to be terribly practical in getting papers published. I find it useful thinking about other fields as well. For example, you might think it silly for me to say:
I don't observe gravity. Gravity is a model. I observe effects that can be explained by gravity.
That's parsing, right?
But making this distinction means it's much easier for me to say:
I don't observe gravity. I observe effects that may be explained by gravity, acceleration, or some combination of both.
Have you personally witnessed neural migration in a developing brain? It's a cool process we can see in real-time by using fluorescent proteins and time course imaging.
No. That technology probably arrived after I had left biotech. We were using fluorescent dyes to gauge cellular activity in nanoliter volumes for drug discovery. We fit 3,456 wells onto one microtiter plate and had robotics to handle everything from dispensing the growth medium, cells and drugs to reading the ratio of blue/green signal after incubation. But that was 15 years ago...
Do you have something else besides, evolution can't be observed and neither can god, therefore...?
Gods are models based on evidence, as is evolution. It's just as incorrect for Larry to say there is no evidence for gods as it is for a creationist to say there is no evidence for evolution. Is also just as incorrect for someone (not Larry) to demand to be shown a god as it is for someone to demand to be shown evolution.
We have perfectly good methods of performing comparative evaluations of models and these are sufficient to discard most forms of creationism (and all of the toxic ones).
That, and learning a bit of epistemology will make you a better scientist.
Challenge over--results are in.
gillt:
Thanks for the cites. Given a sufficiently narrow definition of "everyday" he's trivially right --- most people's everyday experience never exceeds what Newton described.
However, if you allow that computers are everyday devices, and that the amount of computational power and bandwidth does have a measurable effect on your day-to-day living, then I think he's wrong.
It only took decades for computers to go from vacuum tubes to integrated circuits, and it's only going to take decades for quantum computing to finally get out of the lab. That leaves a lot of time in your thousand-year timeframe for scientists to come up with how to scale computer down even smaller. For them to do so will require a fundamental change in how we view the standard model. If that came about, I'd say that would have a profound effect in at least some aspects of our day-to-days lives.
It might not happen, but if you don't think it will you're having to bet against hundreds of years worth of well-funded science.
(I'm glad he did the follow-up piece. I know what that feels like.)
> Nadiah: So if each prophecy has only a 5% chance of coming true, is the likelihood of 1 prophecy coming true 5%? No, in this case it is actually 0.045125*3 ~ 14%. In other words, if you choose to count only on the one that comes true, you will exaggerate its unlikelihood.
I would have computed this as 1 - .95^3.
But what you will first need to do is to convince me that I am saying "let's see if any prophecy comes true." This I am not doing, my view is that Biblical prophecies are arguably 100% correct. The probability of this happening by chance is small.
And indeed if the probability that Babylon will not be rebuilt is say 5%, and three people try, and fail, then the probability of this is .01%. If all the other prophecies are defensibly correct.
Dan L stated:
"Again, for a skeptic, this is not a problem because we're not committing to any particular metaphysics or ontology -- we're building it up piecemeal through tentative scientific results. When, for example, Eric asks me for an explanation of the universe that doesn't involve a person-like god, I'm inclined to say, "A so-far undiscovered scientific theory," and for me that's fine. I'd say something similar if someone asked me to explain abiogenesis -- we have some interesting ideas, some interesting empirical results, but nothing definitive.
But the important part is, I don't need to be able to come up with an example. I'm not arguing that "There is no God." I'm simply arguing AGAINST the proposition "There is a God." Theists and atheists are not making equivalent claims. I don't need to assent to any particular explanation for the universe to reject god as an explanation."
-Dan L.
This is really helpful in understanding the nature of this debate. Dan has hit the nail on the head, from a philosophical standpoint the atheist can always exercise faith that even though currently they can not muster a counter argument against the proof for God, they can take hope in the fact future minds building off of current understanding will be able to fabricate just such an argument. There is no abiogenesis argument which stands up to empirical testing. There is no rational “first cause” explanation, even Stephen Hawkin’s so called “poof theory” is actually a non cause, sort of a scientific equivalent to Alexander’s Gordian Knot solution. The atheist’s position is always to cast doubt rather than offer proof; this position is always viable because the atheist chooses to always self impose the standard for proof as being equal to the distance of a stick separating the donkey of current known understanding and the carrot of future knowledge.
Steve (not him, the other Steve)
All this argument about the Babylon prophecy and we've missed one vital point. The prophecy does not say Babylon will never be rebuilt, rather it says Babylon will never again be inhabited. Isaiah 13:19-20:
"And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.
It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there."
And Jeremiah 50:39:
"Therefore the wild beasts of the desert with the wild beasts of the islands shall dwell there, and the owls shall dwell therein: and it shall be no more inhabited for ever; neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation."
And now from Wikipedia:
"Under the Parthian, and later, Sassanid Persians, Babylon remained a province of the Persian Empire for nine centuries, until about 650 AD. It continued to have its own culture and people, who spoke varieties of Aramaic, and who continued to refer to their homeland as Babylon. Some examples of their cultural products are often found in the Babylonian Talmud, the Mandaean religion, and the religion of the prophet Mani. Christianity came to Mesopotamia in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, and Babylon was the seat of a Bishop of the Church of the East."
That sounds fairly inhabited to me, in fact there are US troops stationed in the region now, so it's still inhabited. Oh and one more thing, Alexander the Great did not try to rebuild Babylon, as it still existed in his time, in fact he ruled it for the last few years of his life.
"the atheist can always exercise faith that even though currently they can not muster a counter argument against the proof for God"
If there was a proof of god, we wouldn't need to have this discussion.
What this discussion illustrates, as they always do, is that theists have trouble even coming up with *evidence* for God, and end up either playing the 'scientists are fools' or 'what is evidence anyway, man' cards
"they can take hope in the fact future minds building off of current understanding will be able to fabricate just such an argument"
There's a burden of proof issue, obviously.
The theist thinks that the onus on the atheist to prove him wrong.
Part of it, I think, is that theists see their position as the normal or default one.
The thing is ... when atheists are asked to show our cards, we do. Why don't I believe in gods? OK. four reasons:
1. Gods are a failed scientific hypothesis. Thor does not create thunderbolts, Yahweh did not create Adam and Eve. No person who's read two books argues with that. The Bible makes a big deal about God creating the universe. He didn't. This, by itself, ought to raise suspicions.
2. The human origins of religion are blatant, and barely disputed. Theists never look to their own religion when noting the obvious folly and self interest of other sects. Christianity started like every other cult started.
3. Emotionally, I find the idea that rain falls on me 'at random' far more comforting than the idea that I'm being targeting by some god. I find the idea of finding our own purpose far more satisfying than following rules laid down by a tyrant.
4. The feebleness of the arguments for God. I've read Aquinas, I've read Augustine. I've read Pascal. I've read modern theology, too - that, at least, seems to understand just how feeble the arguments sound. It's not because 'they didn't solve the problem of evil' or whatever. 'The problem of evil' means nothing to at least this atheist. It's because they'll begin and end by saying, in so many words, 'this explanation of the problem of evil doesn't really answer any of the objections, but does hope to clarify some of the definitions'.
These are not equivalents. We have no good reasons to believe God exists. That ought to be enough. We *also* have plenty of reasons God probably doesn't exist - or at the very least that he spends his day making it look like he doesn't.
There's not a mountain of evidence on one side and another mountain on the other. There's a sliver of hope on the theist side, and prove literally right up to the limits of an ever-expanding human capacity on the other.
Anonymous,
"It's evidence, in the legal sense."
Why do you think we should use the legal definition of evidence as opposed to the epistemic or even the scientific definition?
"Mr Ratzinger recently beatified Cardinal Newman because of a miracle, so let's take that miracle as an example."
Why not use the "water into wine" or the "loaves and fishes" miracles? These are the ones that more Christians know about and accept. In fact, chances are only Catholics even think about accepting your example as a miracle.
Note that I share your skepticism about that miracle, at least.
Anonymous,
""Support your contention of how I'm framing it"
No. I'm not slightly interested in you, I'm not making an ad hominem argument, I'm not interested in you turning it into a 'he said / she said' contest. I'm interested in the ideas, the evidence you can bring. "
The only problem is that the only reason you could possibly have for thinking that that demand was relevant to my position was your claim about how I framed it. Which was not what I was doing. Thus, unless you can show that I did frame it that way, your demand for evidence is basically an aside to the argument and could be seen as an attempt to derail it. More importantly, the whole thing indicates that you don't understand my position. Since my position is, well, very, very odd, that's understandable. What's not is the fact that you don't seem all that interested in finding out what my position is before making a challenge that is irrelevant to it.
Larry Moran's question and your demand are irrelevant to my position, but I think that despite that the claims of atheists needing to know more about the specific arguments is valid. Why is that? Well, at least in part because in a lot of cases what is happening there is what is happening here: challenges are tossed out without the understanding of the other position that would make such challenges relevant.
gillt,
"The only justification you gave for this minimum requirement for god is that someone said it long ago and popular vote."
Well, if I'm trying to say "These are the minimum things that have to be true to capture what most people mean when they say 'god'" I think that popular vote -- ie that this is the minimum common denominator in the concepts of god -- seems pretty much the way to go. Recall that I did say in my argument that this would establish "god" not "God", and that we'd have to figure out what god we actually had. But atheism would be in trouble.
"And that minimum requirement doesn't distinguish god from a sufficiently advanced alien race or some future human race."
I thought I had answered this:
In-universe aliens: Not gods.
Extra-universe aliens: What's the difference between and extra-universe alien and a god, except semantics? So that wouldn't matter.
Future humans: We aren't creating THIS universe, and if we created another one ... could we then be gods, even if only deist ones?
So I don't see how that point matters. You seem to. Tell me why.
"Multiverse is not off the table just because you don't like it."
I explicitly addressed it, actually, so it's hardly that I don't like it ...
"It annoys me right now because you aren't being clear. What do you mean just like any other belief? Like my belief that the sun will rise tomorrow, that if I close my eyes reality doesn't cease to exist? Those beliefs are evidence-based. That is not what belief in an undetected entity is like."
Epistemically, belief is just holding that a proposition p is true. It says nothing about source. If I wanted to distinguish these cases, though, I'd call it the difference between knowledge and belief: I know that your "evidence-based" beliefs are true, but only believe that God exists. This is not a problem for me, but we'd need to get into a lot of epistemology to settle it.
"Faith is perhaps through a stretch only trivially rational or internally so and evidence-based reasoning is irrelevant to the type of faith used in god-belief, otherwise we wouldn't have to call it blind faith.
What reason do you imagine this type of faith a valid way of knowing?"
That you call it blind faith does not make it so, and considering all the arguments levelled for the existence of God over the years it seems that blind faith is not a requirement of religious faith. Let me toss this definition of faith at you: Faith -- of all kinds -- is holding a degree of confidence in the truth of a proposition that exceeds the evidence supporting it. So, we could have evidence and reason in play (and often do), but it's more than the evidence demands. Isn't that the sort of faith that I've described? Why don't you think religious people have it?
Jud,
"Oh yeah, a sample of 2 is large enough (not). Read, talk to more than one physicist or interested layperson."
Thus, you do exactly what Larry Moran is arguing against with this post: telling me that I don't know what I'm talking about and that I have to read something. Should I start a challenge to see if anyone can come up with a good explanation of the models in a short blog post?
"I would say he was blissfully ignorant of the definition of the word "causation." "
But what if he claimed that YOU were? How would you prove that you were right and he was wrong? What if he replied to your water example by saying that that effect followed the cause and therefore counted, which was not the case here? What if, as I already asked, he stated that that's fine in QM but not in cosmology? How would you settle the question scientifically?
"Yes, physics says we START with something as opposed to nothing. Or more accurately, there is no START. Go back as far as you want, there's something. "
Oh, THAT theory. Doesn't solve the problem. After all, if you take us at this time we aren't in any sort of infinite time, but in a finite time from any Big Bang. You have no reason to posit that these Big Bangs have been going on forever ... unless, of course, you have something that is necessary: the expanding and contradicting universe. Since I already conceded the possibility of such a universe, WHAT did you think that reading that book would teach me? After all, the philosophical problem does allow itself to be solved by things with necessary existence, you know, and my whole point was to take that position.
Unless you want to argue for an utterly bizarre notion of this infinite loop that never has a start, which doesn't even really work in mathematics and certainly doesn't seem to work in real-life. And evidence of more than one Big Bang, of course, doesn't in any way prove that there never was a first one.
It seems that all you've demonstrated is that you really don't understand what my position actually is.
"Why do you think we should use the legal definition of evidence as opposed to the epistemic or even the scientific definition?"
I'm generous. I'll let theists offer any evidence, of any kind.
The thing is, you're not offering evidence, you're offering to define what evidence is. That's not the same thing.
"Why not use the "water into wine" or the "loaves and fishes" miracles?"
Before we go on: you're happy to present these as exhibits in the case that god exists, ones that you personally vouch for?
"Faith -- of all kinds -- is holding a degree of confidence in the truth of a proposition that exceeds the evidence supporting it."
No. Linguistic sleight of hand again.
Mathematically, you are correct: confidence > evidence. But evidence = 0. That's the point.
It's not a case where there are 49 pieces of evidence for God, 51 against it, or even 1 for and 99 against.
Belief/faith in god is not based on evidence.
More than that, it actively cuts *against* the sort of scientific, rhetorical and logical evidence that the same people would use in every other aspect of their lives. You see muddy pawprints on the kitchen floor, you see a muddy dog at the end of the trail, you don't need to have observed it to come to an understanding.
God belief requires a suspension of those faculties. It requires an imposition of a supernatural element that is simply not needed to fully explain what's there.
And you can see I'm right by the sheer equivocation and mealymouthedness of the theists in this discussion. The 'I never said I believed the thing I'm positing', the 'I don't believe in that myself', the inability for one person who believes in god to state one reason why that's the case.
Faith is the ability to come to a religious conclusion *despite* the evidence.
Verbosestoic:
"Well, if I'm trying to say "These are the minimum things that have to be true to capture what most people mean when they say 'god'"
Verbosestoic: "What's the difference between and extra-universe alien and a god, except semantics?"
While everyone can agree that god must be an intelligent creator, nobody believes (deists aside) god is only an intelligent creator. Your minimum requirement fails it's own argumentum ad populum justification.
Case in point: How can god be extra-universe while at the same time impregnating a human that would birth human/deity hybrid that warns humans of the second coming of himself while splitting loaves and ascending back into the supposed ex-universe form whence he came after we killed him, and later on appearing before Francis Collins in a waterfall.
Verbosestoic: "I know that your "evidence-based" beliefs are true, but only believe that God exists. This is not a problem for me, but we'd need to get into a lot of epistemology to settle it."
No we don't. Knowledge is "justified true belief." That's what we're concerned with here: your ability to move god-belief beyond a set of bald assertions toward knowledge and truth. You haven't explained how god-belief qualifies as justified true belief. In other words, as something we should take seriously.
Verbosestoic: "considering all the arguments levelled for the existence of God over the years it seems that blind faith is not a requirement of religious faith."
Really? There are plenty of believers (some on this very thread) who say these arguments are irrelevant because faith is all that's required. Why are they wrong?
Besides all those previous arguments for god are bad arguments. Why is clinging to them preferable to blind faith?
Verbosestoic: "Let me toss this definition of faith at you: Faith -- of all kinds -- is holding a degree of confidence in the truth of a proposition that exceeds the evidence supporting it."
Nice try. If faith must always exceed the available evidence (otherwise it's no longer faith) then evidence is irrelevant to faith. Which is just what I said previously. Is there a rule somewhere that says faith exceeds available evidence by no greater than 10 leaps and no less than 2?
If faith always exceeds evidence, please tell us the direct relationship between evidence and faith. After all, lies and other fictions can be grounded in evidence. How is faith different?
Anonymous,
"Mathematically, you are correct: confidence > evidence. But evidence = 0. That's the point."
And, obviously, people disagree on that point. Thus, my questions on what counts, for you, as evidence. Because I do disagree with the evidence being 0 (but do consider it to be weak). So, what counts as evidence for you?
"More than that, it actively cuts *against* the sort of scientific, rhetorical and logical evidence that the same people would use in every other aspect of their lives."
And yet, arguments from personal experience, from design, or from the texts seem to be using exactly what people do use for every other belief. Why does that not count here?
"God belief requires a suspension of those faculties. It requires an imposition of a supernatural element that is simply not needed to fully explain what's there."
Some disagree. Surely you wouldn't think to dismiss the arguments without examining them, would you?
"I'm generous. I'll let theists offer any evidence, of any kind.
The thing is, you're not offering evidence, you're offering to define what evidence is. That's not the same thing."
We probably should define what evidence is before I even try to offer some, no? Or else we'll get into the standard loop of "This is evidence." "That's not evidence!". So, now, I try to avoid it by defining evidence up front. So, care to define what you mean by evidence?
"Before we go on: you're happy to present these as exhibits in the case that god exists, ones that you personally vouch for?"
Why do I get the feeling that you're trying to set me up for something?
At any rate, I'm curious, so go ahead: tell me what's wrong with those examples.
"While everyone can agree that god must be an intelligent creator, nobody believes (deists aside) god is only an intelligent creator. "
I completely agree. I'm only trying to get what everyone agrees on, hence the first statement. I was explicit in my argument that the extra details -- ie which god it was -- had to be established later. So, I've already addressed and conceded this, and you've agreed with me. What, then, is the problem?
"Case in point: How can god be extra-universe while at the same time impregnating a human that would birth human/deity hybrid that warns humans of the second coming of himself while splitting loaves and ascending back into the supposed ex-universe form whence he came after we killed him, and later on appearing before Francis Collins in a waterfall. "
An extra-universe being may well be able to influence the universes they create, so this isn't actually a problem. My argument would neither establish nor rule out such a god, if it was true.
"No we don't. Knowledge is "justified true belief." That's what we're concerned with here: your ability to move god-belief beyond a set of bald assertions toward knowledge and truth. You haven't explained how god-belief qualifies as justified true belief. In other words, as something we should take seriously."
Congratulations! You seem to be walking down the path of asserting that the only things we can ever believe are those that we know to be true. The problem is that without making the conditions for knowledge very, very lax, it's clear we believe things that we do not know. And I've never claimed to know that God exists, and think that anyone that does is flat-out wrong.
Some may use faith to elevate their God belief to the level of knowledge. I do not, and think it wrong to do so. This may mean that I in actual fact do not have faith. I'm okay with that, personally.
"Really? There are plenty of believers (some on this very thread) who say these arguments are irrelevant because faith is all that's required. Why are they wrong? "
Well, we disagree. You can't hold me to their positions. I very much could argue with them, but that's not relevant here. You rationally must be limited to attacking me for the positions I actually hold, not those that people who share my belief hold.
"Nice try. If faith must always exceed the available evidence (otherwise it's no longer faith) then evidence is irrelevant to faith."
Why? You may need to have evidence and use reason, but the overall confidence is just higher. Why is it not sufficient to just have evidence to count as evidence-based?
"If faith always exceeds evidence, please tell us the direct relationship between evidence and faith. After all, lies and other fictions can be grounded in evidence. How is faith different?"
I'm not sure there is much, or even to regular beliefs, until the evidence means that you know that the lies and fictions are false. This determination, to me, is made at each individual, and must be. But I'm not quite sure what precisely your point is. Care to expand on it?
An argument in favour of assuming a deist god:
Premise 1. People are forced to assume they have free will. The contrary might be true, but in the latter case we do not choose anything in our life - it's not a productive hypothesis.
Premise 2. Free will means people's action can be influenced by something not pre-determined. Worldview of atheism (and, wider, materialism) gives no place for it.
NB Both points above are taken from J. Coyne's various posts on probable non-existance of free will on whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com Mr Coyne therefore rejects free will as theory, but seemingly doesn't reject is as an assumption.
Conclusion The free will (what we are forced to assume) means that mind is not just a function of organized matter (in the case of the contrary, there is no place for free will - all our thoughts are determined by atom structure of brains etc.), but something primary (idealism) or equally primary as matter (dualism).
P.S. The subject of this original mind might be called god for the sake of traditional use or somehow else.
P.P.S. This is admittedly not a 100% convincing argument, as will is not fully understood by current science.
"Conclusion The free will (what we are forced to assume) means that mind is not just a function of organized matter (in the case of the contrary, there is no place for free will - all our thoughts are determined by atom structure of brains etc.), but something primary (idealism) or equally primary as matter (dualism). "
If you accept idealism, all things are ideas and we don't actually need any sort of overmind at all. Basically, everything could very well be individual minds. And if you accept dualism, we don't need a mind either, for pretty much the same reasons. That individual things have a mind in no way necessitates an originating mind.
Basically, this falls into my main objection to the cosmological argument: just because a set of dependent beings needs something independent to start it doesn't mean that that thing has to be a being. In this case, just because minds MIGHT need something to originate them doesn't mean that that thing need be a mind.
Thus, no need for an original mind, so no need for any sort of deist assumption.
just because minds MIGHT need something to originate them doesn't mean that that thing need be a mind
I agree with this. Maybe our minds really are just functions of mindless matter.
The problem is that this supposition leads us to nowhere, like a supposition that this world is only your dream. It can't be disproven, but if it's true, any our actions and thoughts have no sense (dream hypothesis) or they aren't our choices (matter-determined mind hypothesis).
Therefore we're forced to assume this world is real. And it seems to me we're close to forced to assume that mind is basically independent from matter, despite the fact that this looks unlikely. I'm not fully sure about this argument myself, but I haven't found a flaw yet.
@lee_merrill
Okay, so given you understood the importance of counting the prophecies that fail, the next q is, are you sure you're counting all relevant prophecies when you make a statement like this?
"my view is that Biblical prophecies are arguably 100% correct. The probability of this happening by chance is small." - Lee
Let me give a particularly extreme example of what I mean.
Matthew 2:14 is one of the Bible's own examples of a prophecy fulfilled. About young Jesus, it reads
---
14So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son[f]."
---
The [f] refers to Hosea 11:1, which reads
---
"When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
---
Impressive, except that Hosea 11 also has a natural, non-prophetic reading. If you go through the whole chapter - http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=hosea%2011&version=NIV - you'll see that the natural reading of it is a reference not to the capital-S Son of God, but to Israel as a metaphorical son of God and the story of Exodus. Indeed, it starts "When Israel was a child...".
So given that a prophetic reading can be taken from verses that have a straightforward natural reading, how many misses are there in the Bible if we count all possible interpretations compared to the number of hits?
You say that "Biblical prophecies are arguably 100% correct", but you are only counting those that are known to be correct *after* the fact. If Matt 2:14 is God's own standard, then there are quite literally millions of prophecies in the Bible that went unfulfilled.
Verbosestoic: "An extra-universe being may well be able to influence the universes they create..."
How? You're pulling things out of your ass from a rich tradition that does likewise. Let me guess, another necessity of god is that it's all powerful, too, because that's the only way you could assume such a thing.
Verbosestoic: "Congratulations! You seem to be walking down the path of asserting that the only things we can ever believe are those that we know to be true."
That's what you got from "Knowledge is justified true belief"?
Two things. You don't understand basic epistemology or you're intentionally twisting my words so you won't have to address the challenge.
I'm asking for justifications -- which everyone has noticed you still haven't come close to providing -- for god-belief.
Verbosestoic:"Why is it not sufficient to just have evidence to count as evidence-based?"
Sweet mother of god. Because that's not what evidence-based means! Look it up. Evidence-based maintains that the conclusions or decisions are based on the best available evidence. That's the justification. Now please provide your own justification for god so we can decide whether these god-beliefs are in fact truth beliefs or more likely plain old assertions. Why cant' you do this?
Verbosestoic: "you rationally must be limited to attacking me for the positions I actually hold, not those that people who share my belief hold."
What positions? What are they concerning faith and god? All you've been doing is playing devils advocate.
Verbosestoic: "I'm not sure there is much, or even to regular beliefs, until the evidence means that you know that the lies and fictions are false. This determination, to me, is made at each individual, and must be. But I'm not quite sure what precisely your point is. Care to expand on it?"
Objective truth is obviously not something you put much stock in, which begs the question as to why you are here.
«Maybe our minds really are just functions of mindless matter.
The problem is that this supposition leads us to nowhere, like a supposition that this world is only your dream.»
What?
It leads to the inference that minds arise from matter, and therefore that by studying matter, we can understand mind.
«It can't be disproven»
Sure it can. De-brain yourself, and demonstrate a brainless mind for all to see.
«but if it's true, any our actions and thoughts have no sense (dream hypothesis) or they aren't our choices (matter-determined mind hypothesis).»
Neither of your conclusions make sense.
«Therefore we're forced to assume this world is real.»
That would indeed be a parsimonious inference...
«And it seems to me we're close to forced to assume that mind is basically independent from matter, despite the fact that this looks unlikely.»
...and this would be a non-parsimonious and logically fallacious inference.
«I'm not fully sure about this argument myself, but I haven't found a flaw yet.»
HTH, HAND
@lee_merrill
The obvious way around this of course is to say that you restrict your count only to those that are explicitly identified as prophecy.
> Nadiah: If Matt 2:14 is God's own standard, then there are quite literally millions of prophecies in the Bible that went unfulfilled.
It's possible, and I'm thinking we need to know the Jewish mind of the first century, to know which seemingly innocuous statements they might take to be prophetic of the Messiah. I would give them the credit of saying they had some criteria.
> The obvious way around this of course is to say that you restrict your count only to those that are explicitly identified as prophecy.
Certainly apart from knowing the above, I would likely be reduced to guesswork.
So indeed, the plain prophecies were the ones I meant.
My friend and longtime supporter has been kind enough to reprint my latest essay on his weblog.
http://tao.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=207
It is time to take the gloves off which I hope this essay establishes beyond any doubt. After all, as an octagenarian, I can’t live forever!
I hope you are listening Clinton Richard Dawkins and Paul Zachary Myers.
R.S.V.P.
"'> Anonymous: Here's my definition, for what it's worth: 'an event is supernatural if it's so unusual that a description of how it fits with the standard scientific model looks more like special pleading and raises more questions for a trained specialist in that field than it answers'.'
So continued failure to rebuild Babylon by people who could have done so? After a certain number of repetitions I think this fits that definition."
Depends. How many people have actually *tried* to "rebuild Babylon"? You mention only two, so it doesn't seem like it's a very popular sport - people tried dozens of times to climb Mt. Everest, fer example, before succeeding. By your logic, a prophecy that "it will never be climbed" would be an example of a "successful" prophecy for thousands of years, clear up until 1953.
Further, what do you mean by "rebuild Babylon?" You mean the province/state of Babylon (which is probably what the Bible was referring to, rather than simply the city)? If so, well, it's there now. Oh, it's called the province of Babil rather than Babylon, but it's doing quite well, thank you, about a million and a half population and at no time has it actually been destroyed/uninhabited.
If you mean rebuild the actual city right smack on top of the actual site of the ancient city, well, that's unlikely simply because the Euphrates has moved over the intervening centuries and Babylon's "reason to be" is now held by the city of Al Hillah, about three miles to the west. I strongly suspect though that at least some, modern buildings are next to/on top of ruins/sites that were considered part of "the City of Babylon" back in the day, so technically some of Babylon has been "rebuilt."
In fact, come to think of it, Al Hillah could easily be called "Modern Babylon" as it is an urban descendant of that city (with the ruins of ancient Babylon being its "Old Town").
I think you think the ancient site of the city of Babylon is a pile of ruins with nothing around it for a hundred miles. No. It is a pile of ruins surrounded by farmland and road and a new city of 300,000+ just an hour's walk to the west. Quite frankly, the area is pretty damn "rebuilt" right now.
All and all, a rather vague and silly prophecy to hang the existence of a god on...especially since he doesn't
"'> Anonymous: Here's my definition, for what it's worth: 'an event is supernatural if it's so unusual that a description of how it fits with the standard scientific model looks more like special pleading and raises more questions for a trained specialist in that field than it answers'.'
So continued failure to rebuild Babylon by people who could have done so? After a certain number of repetitions I think this fits that definition."
Depends. How many people have actually *tried* to "rebuild Babylon"? You mention only two, so it doesn't seem like it's a very popular sport - people tried dozens of times to climb Mt. Everest, fer example, before succeeding. By your logic, a prophecy that "it will never be climbed" would be an example of a "successful" prophecy for thousands of years, clear up until 1953.
Further, what do you mean by "rebuild Babylon?" You mean the province/state of Babylon (which is probably what the Bible was referring to, rather than simply the city)? If so, well, it's there now. Oh, it's called the province of Babil rather than Babylon, but it's doing quite well, thank you, about a million and a half population and at no time has it actually been destroyed/uninhabited.
If you mean rebuild the actual city right smack on top of the actual site of the ancient city, well, that's unlikely simply because the Euphrates has moved over the intervening centuries and Babylon's "reason to be" is now held by the city of Al Hillah, about three miles to the west. I strongly suspect though that at least some, modern buildings are next to/on top of ruins/sites that were considered part of "the City of Babylon" back in the day, so technically some of Babylon has been "rebuilt."
In fact, come to think of it, Al Hillah could easily be called "Modern Babylon" as it is an urban descendant of that city (with the ruins of ancient Babylon being its "Old Town").
I think you think the ancient site of the city of Babylon is a pile of ruins with nothing around it for a hundred miles. No. It is a pile of ruins surrounded by farmland and road and a new city of 300,000+ just an hour's walk to the west. Quite frankly, the area is pretty damn "rebuilt" right now.
All and all, a rather vague and silly prophecy to hang the existence of a god on...
"Therefore we're forced to assume this world is real. And it seems to me we're close to forced to assume that mind is basically independent from matter, despite the fact that this looks unlikely. I'm not fully sure about this argument myself, but I haven't found a flaw yet."
The problem is that even if this argument is true, there is no need for any sort of god in the picture. Mindless things could originally produce minds, whether those other mindless things are material or not.
gillt,
"How? You're pulling things out of your ass from a rich tradition that does likewise. Let me guess, another necessity of god is that it's all powerful, too, because that's the only way you could assume such a thing. "
Um, I was replying to your contention that an extra universe god had to be deistic. Thus, I was pointing out that you had no reason to assume that such a god COULDN'T intervene in the universe it created. How does my pointing out your unsupported assumption suddenly mean that I'M assuming ANYTHING? I'm not assuming it at all. I'm saying it's a possibility, when you seemed to be denying for no reason at all that it was.
"That's what you got from "Knowledge is justified true belief"?"
No, that's what I got from your statement that justified true belief was the only thing worth considering. Which seems, then, to be a pretty fair interpretation. If you meant something else, then feel free to correct what you stated.
"I'm asking for justifications -- which everyone has noticed you still haven't come close to providing -- for god-belief. "
You seem to be the one who doesn't understand basic epistemology if you don't understand that the "justified" in "justified true belief" is a technical term and NOT the one used when we talk simply about whether it is justified for us to simply BELIEVE something. We all believe things that we could not possibly say that we know. For example, the other day someone asked me how to get to the third floor of the building I was in. I replied essentially that I BELIEVED it was through the stairwell just off the main lounge area, but that I didn't KNOW that. This seems to adequately describe both my psychological state and a reasonable position. Thus, I did not have justified true belief, although the belief was true and I had good reasons for believing that it was true. Thus, the separation. Do you deny this separation?
"Sweet mother of god. Because that's not what evidence-based means! Look it up. Evidence-based maintains that the conclusions or decisions are based on the best available evidence."
And where in that does it say that the confidence you hold that belief in has to conform precisely to, say, the probability based on that evidence? Why isn't a belief evidence-based if it considers and even adapts to the best evidence, even if the overall behaviour based on it and the confidence level of it is higher than that? You are making presumptions about what evidence-based means without realizing that you aren't just using the base definition to get there, but an entire epistemic system that some disagree with.
"What positions? What are they concerning faith and god? All you've been doing is playing devils advocate. "
And if you stopped demanding that I prove assumptions that I never made and demanding that I talk about other people's positions, and actually READ what I said when I outlined positions, then maybe you'd know what they are.
"Objective truth is obviously not something you put much stock in, which begs the question as to why you are here."
Obviously ... except not. Let me ask you this: if a proposition p is objectively true, but I don't have the evidence that proves it true (even if others do) is it irrational for me to believe it false? That's why these determinations must be made at the individual.
verbosestoic writes:
What if he replied to your water example by saying that that effect followed the cause and therefore counted, which was not the case here?
But of course it is the case "here," i.e., in the double slit experiment. Cover a slit, the interference pattern does not follow, whether electrons are sent through the remaining slit singly or in bunches. Leave both slits open, the interference pattern follows, whether electrons are sent through the double slits singly or in bunches.
Oh, THAT theory. Doesn't solve the problem. After all, if you take us at this time we aren't in any sort of infinite time, but in a finite time from any Big Bang.
Umm, no. You've made not one but two statements, only one of which is correct according to reliable scientific data.
The correct statement is that we are a finite time from the Big Bang. (This is in the COBE reports I referenced.) But this doesn't at all argue against an infinite time prior to that, or an infinite timeless period prior to that, or a condition of quantum/spacetime foam, or any number of other states.
You have no reason to posit that these Big Bangs have been going on forever
A cyclical universe isn't a necessary postulate for the scientific theories to which I refer.
... unless, of course, you have something that is necessary: the expanding and contradicting universe.
Nice Freudian slip, that "contradicting universe."
Since I already conceded the possibility of such a universe, WHAT did you think that reading that book would teach me?
The Guth book is not about a cyclical universe model.
After all, the philosophical problem does allow itself to be solved by things with necessary existence, you know, and my whole point was to take that position.
This is not about some philosophical pish-posh regarding "necessary existence," this is about what actual data and robust scientific models say regarding what led to the Big Bang.
Unless you want to argue for an utterly bizarre notion of this infinite loop that never has a start
As noted above, the cyclical universe is not a necessary postulate. And on the basis of what scientific data and reasoning do you call the notion "utterly bizarre"? In contrast to what everyday, unimpressive, utterly prosaic explanation for the origin of our entire universe?
which doesn't even really work in mathematics
What branch(es)? Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics? Lie groups? Non-abelian gauge theory? The geometric Langlands program(me)?
and certainly doesn't seem to work in real-life.
Yes, since we have so much experience of the origin of the universe in everyday life.
And evidence of more than one Big Bang, of course, doesn't in any way prove that there never was a first one.
Of course there's been at least one Big Bang, and of course we don't know whether there have been others. The best current scientific theories don't posit origin from "nothingness," no matter the answer to the question of the number of Big Bangs. You've wasted a lot of time arguing about a position no one's taking.
It seems that all you've demonstrated is that you really don't understand what my position actually is.
I don't care. Science has conclusively bested philosophy with regard to explaining the fundamentals of our universe, and has so far brought us far more thorough and specific information about the Big Bang and immediate post-Big Bang state. I see no reason whatever to suppose philosophy will have more detailed or correct data for me than science with regard to the universe's origin (or lack thereof).
verbosestoic writes:
What if he replied to your water example by saying that that effect followed the cause and therefore counted, which was not the case here?
But of course it is the case "here," i.e., in the double slit experiment. Cover a slit, the interference pattern does not follow, whether electrons are sent through the remaining slit singly or in bunches. Leave both slits open, the interference pattern follows, whether electrons are sent through the double slits singly or in bunches.
Oh, THAT theory. Doesn't solve the problem. After all, if you take us at this time we aren't in any sort of infinite time, but in a finite time from any Big Bang.
Umm, no. You've made not one but two statements, only one of which is correct according to reliable scientific data.
The correct statement is that we are a finite time from the Big Bang. (This is in the COBE reports I referenced.) But this doesn't at all argue against an infinite time prior to that, or an infinite timeless period prior to that, or a condition of quantum/spacetime foam, or any number of other states.
You have no reason to posit that these Big Bangs have been going on forever
A cyclical universe isn't a necessary postulate for the scientific theories to which I refer.
... unless, of course, you have something that is necessary: the expanding and contradicting universe.
Nice Freudian slip, that "contradicting universe."
Since I already conceded the possibility of such a universe, WHAT did you think that reading that book would teach me?
The Guth book is not about a cyclical universe model.
After all, the philosophical problem does allow itself to be solved by things with necessary existence, you know, and my whole point was to take that position.
This is not about some philosophical pish-posh regarding "necessary existence," this is about what actual data and robust scientific models say regarding what led to the Big Bang.
Unless you want to argue for an utterly bizarre notion of this infinite loop that never has a start
As noted above, the cyclical universe is not a necessary postulate. And on the basis of what scientific data and reasoning do you call the notion "utterly bizarre"? In contrast to what everyday, unimpressive, utterly prosaic explanation for the origin of our entire universe?
which doesn't even really work in mathematics
What branch(es)? Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics? Lie groups? Non-abelian gauge theory? The geometric Langlands program(me)?
and certainly doesn't seem to work in real-life.
Yes, since we have so much experience of the origin of the universe in everyday life.
And evidence of more than one Big Bang, of course, doesn't in any way prove that there never was a first one.
Of course there's been at least one Big Bang, and of course we don't know whether there have been others. The best current scientific theories don't posit origin from "nothingness," no matter the answer to the question of the number of Big Bangs. You've wasted a lot of time arguing about a position no one's taking.
It seems that all you've demonstrated is that you really don't understand what my position actually is.
I don't care. Science has conclusively bested philosophy with regard to explaining the fundamentals of our universe, and has so far brought us far more thorough and specific information about the Big Bang and immediate post-Big Bang state. I see no reason whatever to suppose philosophy will have more detailed or correct data for me than science with regard to the universe's origin (or lack thereof).
verbosestoic wrote: "WHAT did you think that reading that book would teach me?"
Science?
Jud,
From The Internet Encyclopedia of Science:
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/I/inflationary_model.html
"The latest version of inflation, known as chaotic inflationary theory, posits that the universe grew out of a quantum fluctuation in a pre-existing region of spacetime and that other universes could do the same from regions within our universe today. A new universe, or "babyverse," formed by this budding process, would have its own set of physical laws and material particles"
Thus, the inflationary model is compatible with the multiverse theory. The multiverse theory -- presuming we aren't the originating universe -- posits that something existed before our universe did. Multiverse theories, like the "Bang-crunch-bang-crunch" theory that I thought your discussions about infinity were aimed at, are attempts to solve the question of "Something from nothing" or "What happened/did we have before the Big Bang". Thus, a strict inflationary account does not answer the origins question, and so doesn't answer my question.
So instead of going on and on about how bad philosophy is and how science is better and how this model has answered everything, why don't you take 5 minutes and outline what theory you're talking about and why you think it solves the problem? I'm getting tired of guessing.
As for the problem of infinity, you are aware that infinites never resolve, meaning that they never finish. In any real-world case, having our past be something that never resolves is kinda a problem, since in order for us to exist it seems reasonable that the past would have, in fact, have to have resolved -- ie finished -- already for us to get to this point. If the past is still going, how in the world did we get to this point?
You might have an answer, but I'd really have to see it before I'll concede that. And your answer needs to be more than "Science says! Read the book!".
Larry,
I see you are deleting my comments again. That is a sure sign that you are terrified of my thesis and my sources. You have joined with Paul Zachary Myers, Clinton Richard Dawkins, Wesley Royce Elsbery, William Dembski and a bunch of other blogczars who are all scared fecesless that everything they hold dear is a pile of intelectual garbage. You are in excellent company.
Congratulations on letting the real Larry Moran expose himself one more as the cowardly lowlife atheist blowhard he has proved himself to be.
Enjoy yourself if you get my drift.
jadavison.wordpress.com
John A. Davidson says,
I see you are deleting my comments again.
No, I am not deleting your comments.
Why would I? They are among the most amusing examples of irrationality I've ever seen.
verbosestoic writes: As for the problem of infinity, you are aware that infinites never resolve, meaning that they never finish. In any real-world case, having our past be something that never resolves is kinda a problem, since in order for us to exist it seems reasonable that the past would have, in fact, have to have resolved -- ie finished -- already for us to get to this point. If the past is still going, how in the world did we get to this point?
You might have an answer, but I'd really have to see it before I'll concede that. And your answer needs to be more than "Science says! Read the book!".
Well, I'd've thought those intellectually curious about the origin of the universe might like to read Dr. Guth's book for the pure pleasure of it. And I make a much poorer interlocutor about these things than the scientists who are involved in doing the research or are keeping up with it. But to accede to your request, however inadequately it's in my power to do:
Let's do some conceptualizing about infinity, since it's a tough go for many folks. It's easier going forward in time. We can without a huge amount of trouble think about things going on and on forever amen and simply never coming to an end of existence.
OK, now for a bit of gymnastics, but it's solid science: All of the fundamental laws of physics that have been "discovered" so far are time-reversible. They all operate just as physically and mathematically validly backwards in time as forwards. So think of that in terms of what we've just talked about in the previous paragraph, that we have no conceptual problem thinking of the universe going on forever from here. In accordance with the laws of physics, there is equally little (that is, no) problem with the universe stretching back through infinity, having no beginning just as validly as no end.
The fact that people *do* quite evidently have a problem thinking about the universe having no beginning - that there was never a condition of nothingness out of which it arose, but an always-existing "something" in which there was a quantum fluctuation causing cosmic inflation - is a failure of our conceptual apparatus, not a physical or logical impossibility.
Another way of conceptualizing infinity in regard to the origin problem is as Cantor did in his diagonalization, which you'll recall I referred to in one of my earlier posts. Cantor showed through his diagonalization that there are different sizes of infinities - infinitely many of them, in fact. Using this concept in relation to the origin problem, let's think what it implies for the notion that the universe had to have a starting point: You go back as far as you like and say, OK, we're now infinitely far back and conceptually it just seems to me there must have been a point where there was nothing. But I can reply with proven mathematical validity that no, I can always extend the existence of the universe back an even greater infinite length.
Thus mathematically as well as in fundamental physics, there is no reason at all to require the universe to have emerged from nothing. And it does seem as if the scientific theory we have that accounts the best for current data (cosmic inflation arising out of a quantum fluctuation - by the way, this doesn't necessarily imply multiverses, though it doesn't at all foreclose them, as Guth explains in his book) doesn't require "initial nothingness" either; in fact, it strongly implies the opposite.
Hope this helps.
verbosestoic writes: As for the problem of infinity, you are aware that infinites never resolve, meaning that they never finish. In any real-world case, having our past be something that never resolves is kinda a problem, since in order for us to exist it seems reasonable that the past would have, in fact, have to have resolved -- ie finished -- already for us to get to this point. If the past is still going, how in the world did we get to this point?
You might have an answer, but I'd really have to see it before I'll concede that. And your answer needs to be more than "Science says! Read the book!".
Well, I'd've thought those intellectually curious about the origin of the universe might like to read Dr. Guth's book for the pure pleasure of it. And I make a much poorer interlocutor about these things than the scientists who are involved in doing the research or are keeping up with it. But to accede to your request, however inadequately it's in my power to do:
Let's do some conceptualizing about infinity, since it's a tough go for many folks. It's easier going forward in time. We can without a huge amount of trouble think about things going on and on forever amen and simply never coming to an end of existence.
OK, now for a bit of gymnastics, but it's solid science: All of the fundamental laws of physics that have been "discovered" so far are time-reversible. They all operate just as physically and mathematically validly backwards in time as forwards. So think of that in terms of what we've just talked about in the previous paragraph, that we have no conceptual problem thinking of the universe going on forever from here. In accordance with the laws of physics, there is equally little (that is, no) problem with the universe stretching back through infinity, having no beginning just as validly as no end.
The fact that people *do* quite evidently have a problem thinking about the universe having no beginning - that there was never a condition of nothingness out of which it arose, but an always-existing "something" in which there was a quantum fluctuation causing cosmic inflation - is a failure of our conceptual apparatus, not a physical or logical impossibility.
Another way of conceptualizing infinity in regard to the origin problem is as Cantor did in his diagonalization, which you'll recall I referred to in one of my earlier posts. Cantor showed through his diagonalization that there are different sizes of infinities - infinitely many of them, in fact. Using this concept in relation to the origin problem, let's think what it implies for the notion that the universe had to have a starting point: You go back as far as you like and say, OK, we're now infinitely far back and conceptually it just seems to me there must have been a point where there was nothing. But I can reply with proven mathematical validity that no, I can always extend the existence of the universe back an even greater infinite length.
Thus mathematically as well as in fundamental physics, there is no reason at all to require the universe to have emerged from nothing. And it does seem as if the scientific theory we have that accounts the best for current data (cosmic inflation arising out of a quantum fluctuation - by the way, this doesn't necessarily imply multiverses, though it doesn't at all foreclose them, as Guth explains in his book) doesn't require "initial nothingness" either; in fact, it strongly implies the opposite.
Hope this helps.
> Lee: So continued failure to rebuild Babylon by people who could have done so? After a certain number of repetitions I think this fits that definition.
> Trolleyfan: Depends. How many people have actually *tried* to "rebuild Babylon"? You mention only two...
But these were 1) Alex the Great, with an empire at his disposal, and 2) Saddam Hussein, a dictator with an oil-rich country at his disposal. They really had a good chance of succeeding, this is not like the summit of Everest back in the 40s.
> Further, what do you mean by "rebuild Babylon?" You mean the province/state of Babylon ...
No, the city, the "jewel of the kingdom" (Isa. 13:19).
> ... that's unlikely simply because the Euphrates has moved over the intervening centuries and Babylon's "reason to be" is now held by the city of Al Hillah, about three miles to the west.
I believe Al Hillah is near the ancient site, but not at it.
> I think you think the ancient site of the city of Babylon is a pile of ruins with nothing around it for a hundred miles.
Why do you think that?
> All and all, a rather vague and silly prophecy to hang the existence of a god on...
I mentioned a number of such prophecies, such as the Jewish and Assyrian and Egyptian people (yes, there are still descendants of the ancient Egyptians living still!) surviving as ethnic groups. That's pretty remarkable in and of itself, given the dispersal of Jewish and Assyrian people, and also the attempts to eradicate one of these groups.
Hitler might have gotten the atomic bomb first, and then he might have had a clear path to his goal. This came within a hair of failing--but it didn't fail.
I believe in God, I also believe in science. Science is actually part of the reason I believe in God - the knowledge that the world fits together so neatly and everything is so complex but doesn't seem to clash (for lack of a better term) is my proof. I don't believe that something this complex and well put together could have occurred without some form of design. Yes evolution plays a part and species have become extinct, but I don't believe that God has interfered with things like the make up of the universe in general since it was created.
I'm not trying to convince you that God exists, I don't need concrete proof - that's kind of the point of faith. Yes the whole not requiring concrete proof thing can seem like the world's biggest cop-out, as can free will, but that's why it's called a belief. There isn't a concrete way to prove or disprove it, but that doesn't mean it's wrong or right.
I f we are going to have a sophisticated discussion could we at least define what this god is . It's all insubstantial so far except it is He . Well it is at least a start and yes we are made in his image so we can reasonably assume looks a lot like us . Being infinite in a finite universe as a big black man with an infinite penis and absolutely nowhere to put on Saturday it would have a tendency to make moody and prone to coming up with concepts such as eternal damnation.
I became an atheist at 4 1/2. That does not explain my conversion I had a chat with your Man up there and got no reply and not a bit of what I had asked for with the right words . I told him to take a hike and then i realized this was Santa Claus all over again and the story I was told was bogus . Now I don't believe and I either know or don't know . Either I test it to see if it works for me or ask three people and compare answers .
If you think I am treating this flippantly you are correct . Most people don't even factor either side of this into their daily life . I am one of the most religious people I know , I say thank you to the Mom every day but that doesn't mean I have believe . It's symbolic not literal how do you joker miss this?
Read C,V Jung for further instructions .
The Pope quit . What does that tell you . party on Sinhoed O'Conner Yes!
If you are arguing for the existence of something that only seems to be contained in The Holy Bible
then you had better be clear . You are suggesting a deity who has the character of a psychopath . In his early days jealous , prone to smiting, which is a euphemism for infanticide and genocide . Not only that but promises clearly stated so that even a child could understand, are not kept I walked away at age 4 1/2 and never went back . Santa Claus all over again
The Bible is a product of Byzantine politics . When the first bishops came from Constantine s deathbed claiming that he had converted from Sol Invictus to Christianity that was the beginning of the worlds first State religion Let the myth making begin.
Now we have six hundred splinter religions pretending to be one . So when you win the debate you win this mess . Could the Spaghetti Monster be any more silly than your burning bush man
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