This matter of religious belief

@Zetherin,

Zetherin;132877 wrote:

Right, and I agree. The trouble came when you said that science can't exclude those things we have no evidence for. But it is not a matter of science, until there is something which can be evaluated. Isn't that true? We would not say that Little Bo Peep's existence is a matter of science, would we? Science would have nothing to evaluate in relations to Little Bo Peep's existence.

If you say that God has been excluded from science then I take that to mean "there is no God". If you really just mean "science can't say either way" then I agree. That also excludes extraterrestrial intelligence and many other promising ideas for which there is currently no evidence.

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@Zetherin,

Zetherin;132877 wrote:

T

Science would have nothing to evaluate in relations to Little Bo Peep's existence.

Why not? Whether LBP exists is an empirical question, isn't it? All statements of the form, " X exists" (with the exception, perhaps) of some mathematical statements, perhaps) are empirical statement. Certainly, all statements of that form are contingent statements. How else can we tell whether X exists or not (with the exception I made for mathematics and logic) if not empirically?

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@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper;132879 wrote:

If you say that God has been excluded from science then I take that to mean "there is no God". If you really just mean "science can't say either way" then I agree. That also excludes extraterrestrial intelligence and many other promising ideas for which there is currently no evidence.

Well, it wasn't to mean "there is no God". It just means that science does not concern itself with things which don't have evidence. That is all that's meant that these things are excluded from science.

But I want you to keep this in mind: Lack of evidence can be justification sometimes (as I noted in my earlier post). I can be justifed that unicorns do not live on earth based on auto-epistemic reasoning.

Here:

Quote:

Another type of reasoning is called "auto-epistemic" ("self-knowing") because it involves reasoning from premisses about what one knows and what one would know if something were true. The form of such reasoning is:

If p were true, then I would know that p.
I don't know that p.
Therefore, p is false.

Similarly, when extensive investigation has been undertaken, it is often reasonable to infer that something is false based upon a lack of positive evidence for it. For instance, if a drug has been subjected to lengthy testing for harmful effects and none has been discovered, it is then reasonable to conclude that it is safe.

Another example is: If there really were a large and unusual type of animal in Loch Ness, then we would have undeniable evidence of it by now.
We don't have undeniable evidence of a large, unfamiliar animal in Loch Ness. Therefore, there is no such animal.

As with reasoning using the closed world assumption, auto-epistemic reasoning does not commit the fallacy of Argument from Ignorance.

Logical Fallacy: Appeal to Ignorance

kennethamy wrote:

Why not? Whether LBP exists is an empirical question, isn't it? All statements of the form, " X exists" (with the exception, perhaps) of some mathematical statements, perhaps) are empirical statement. Certainly, all statements of that form are contingent statements. How else can we tell whether X exists or not (with the exception I made for mathematics and logic) if not empirically?

Right. But I don't consider LBP's existence, though an empirical matter, something which science should seek to prove or disprove. That's all I meant by: I consider it having nothing to do with science, until there is something which science could evaluate.

1 Reply

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper;132879 wrote:

If you say that God has been excluded from science then I take that to mean "there is no God". If you really just mean "science can't say either way" then I agree. That also excludes extraterrestrial intelligence and many other promising ideas for which there is currently no evidence.

Well science and reason show us that the universe is rationally intelligible and mathematically expressible. For me it is a rational speculation based on this to see mind and reason as important in the construction of nature and to postulate the possiblity of rational intelligence in the formation and construction of the universe. God as rational and creative agency.

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@jeeprs,

Quote:

If p were true, then I would know that p.

The problem is, when dealing with reality, there is always some probability that you could fail to know that p (See: Fallibilism). How much weight you put on that kind of reasoning depends on how small that probability is. For God, that probability is hard for me to even estimate. So, I guess that means it's fairly high, at least 50%.

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@Zetherin,

Zetherin;132883 wrote:

Well, it wasn't to mean "there is no God". It just means that science does not concern itself with things which don't have evidence. God, nor unicorns, have anything to do with science until there is evidence presented.

But I want you to keep this in mind: Lack of evidence can be justification sometimes (as I noted in my earlier post). I can be justifed that unicorns do not live on earth based on auto-epistemic reasoning.

Here:

Logical Fallacy: Appeal to Ignorance

Right.

Yes, I agree, although I never head of "auto-epistemic reasoning" and it is not clear to me what it is, or whether it is a different type of reasoning. It looks like good old modus tollens to me. Anyway, it is often held that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.But that is not true. What is true is that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence unless it would be unreasonable to expect evidence in this particular case. Donald Rumsfeld, the former secretary of defense, used this principle to defend his belief that there were WMDs in Iraq. The question is, was it reasonable to expect that there would be evidence of WMDs if there were WMDs? And the same goes for God. Is it reasonable to expect that if there is a God, that there would be evidence that there is a God, so that the absence of evidence for God makes it reasonable to conclude that God does not exist?

---------- Post added 02-26-2010 at 12:32 PM ----------

Night Ripper;132885 wrote:

The problem is, when dealing with reality, there is always some probability that you could fail to know that p (See: Fallibilism). How much weight you put on that kind of reasoning depends on how small that probability is. For God, that probability is hard for me to even estimate. So, I guess that means it's fairly high, at least 50%.

Probability or possibility? If the first, you are right (depending on how high the probability). If the second, then you are wrong. The possibility that you might be mistaken does not show you do not know (unless you demand certainty in order to know). Fallibilism is the view that knowledge is not certainty, so that the possibility of error is not inconsistent with knowing. Of course, if error is probable, let alone actual, it is a different story.

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;132887 wrote:

Is it reasonable to expect that if there is a God, that there would be evidence that there is a God, so that the absence of evidence for God makes it reasonable to conclude that God does not exist?

That depends on how you define God. If you just mean omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent then I would say the absence of evidence has no weight at all. If you think God is the Christian God, sending messages and performing miracles, then that weight increases.

1 Reply

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper;132891 wrote:

That depends on how you define God. If you just mean omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent then I would say the absence of evidence has no weight at all. If you think God is the Christian God, sending messages and performing miracles, then that weight increases.

And, your reasons?

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@jeeprs,

There is all this talk of omniscient beings, etc. I really do not know why people talk of such tings. I am no expert on the Bible, but I have yet to run into any such proclamations.

Understandably, however, there is a certain difficulty in reading a work that was composed nearly 2000 years ago- mainly because the words employed are often misinterpreted due to the fact that language changes over time.

One of the first lines, "And God said, Let there be light..." is an excellent example. Today, when speaking of light, people remark on the scientific explanations of reflecting wavelengths, etc. This conception of 'light' is a rather new development in our history, however.

But to assume that the Bible was trying to speak about such concepts is wrong headed. And even in looking at Greek conceptions of 'light' we see that they thought it emitted from the eyes- but what does that mean? 'Light' was the word employed to describe rationalization, or understanding of the world.

In this sense, I can see how terribly misunderstood the Bible could be in the hands of the illiterate, but we need not succumb to petty trivialities. And, of course, I am not responsible for the variant misunderstandings of certain books.

Genesis is quite clear to me in speaking of the evolution of language with mankind. One of the central theses is that whatever Adam named would be named as such. Looking for a proof or evidence is like looking for a proof that the letter B comes after the letter A in the alphabet.

Could it be otherwise? Sure, but so what?

1 Reply

@jack phil,

jack;132911 wrote:

There is all this talk of omniscient beings, etc. I really do not know why people talk of such tings. I am no expert on the Bible, but I have yet to run into any such proclamations.

Job 40 - PassageLookup - New International Version - BibleGateway.com

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@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper;132914 wrote:

Job 40 - PassageLookup - New International Version - BibleGateway.com

...

I didn't see any comments on omniscient beings.

I did see an if/then.

1 Reply

@jack phil,

jack;132916 wrote:

...

I didn't see any comments on omniscient beings.

I did see an if/then.

20 Bible Facts About God - 20 Facts About God from the Bible

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;132812 wrote:

[

I don't doubt for a moment that you have had religious experiences in the sense that you interpreted them as showing something about the truth of religion. But I do doubt that you have had religious experiences in the sense that they did show anything about the truth of religion. That distinction has to be carefully drawn.

How can you possibly hold doubt about something in which you seem to have never experienced? I have never experienced Haley's comet, but I don't doubt it's existence, or even suggest that people who have experienced the Comet merely misinterpreted it as giving them some sort of truth to it.

Religion, as you are talking about it, doesn't seem to be religion as jeeprs has experienced. His experience of religion is obviously something that you haven't experienced, therefore, your argument against it has no ground. You can speculate all you wish, but those who have experienced religious truth all use the same words to describe it, which shows there is some level of transcendence involved with it.

The distinction to be drawn is between your idea of religious experience, and those that jeeprs mentions.

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@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper;132852 wrote:

Science can't exclude the existence of anything. That doesn't really give a special place for the divine. We also can't exclude the existence of Santa Claus, Keebler Elves, Captain Crunch or the Super Mario Brothers.

I had written a sarcastic remark here, but have removed it. The point simply was that the principles of Judeo-Christian religion are essential to the formation and history of Western society, regardless of whether they can be empirically demonstrated or defended from the ridicule of atheists. The argument of comparing Deity with cartoon characters won't get a further response from me. It is something I have no wish to debate further, so I will drop it.

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@jeeprs,

MMP2506 wrote:

How can you possibly hold doubt about something in which you seem to have never experienced? I have never experienced Haley's comet, but I don't doubt it's existence, or even suggest that people who have experienced the Comet merely misinterpreted it as giving them some sort of truth to it.

Why couldn't he hold doubt about something which someone else claims to have experienced? Schizophraniacs claim to experience all sorts of things, and we often have good reason to doubt that what they are experiencing has anything to do with the truth. For instance, a patient in my mother's psyche hospital believes that he is building a spaceship in his stomach every time he consumes a piece of metal - he claims to be able to feel the "little people" in his stomach constructing the ship. You sincerely believe we should not doubt, and instead believe that what he says may be true since we have never experienced what it is like to have a spaceship built in our stomach?

We can most certainly believe that the person in question thinks he is experiencing a particular thing, and we can even believe that said person is experiencing something, but that does not mean we have to believe that said person is right about what he thinks he is experiencing. We can have doubt, and not only is there nothing wrong with that, we often have good reason to do so.

1 Reply

@jeeprs,

Science is a brilliant but limited method. Science depends on consensus. The scientific method is itself a leap of faith, for the scientific method cannot itself be scientifically "proven." Don't get me wrong: I love science. It's just that in my view, the ideal scientist is as aware as possible of the limits of his method.

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@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;132945 wrote:

Science is a brilliant but limited method. Science depends on consensus. The scientific method is itself a leap of faith, for the scientific method cannot itself be scientifically "proven." Don't get me wrong: I love science. It's just that in my view, the ideal scientist is as aware as possible of the limits of his method.

Here you go, once again, not distinguishing between faith and justified belief.

And, once again, I will have to tell you: They are not the same.

1 Reply

@Zetherin,

Zetherin;132946 wrote:

Here you go, once again, not distinguishing between faith and justified belief.

And once again I will have to tell you: They are not the same.

I don't think my post addressed that issue. I put "proof" in quotes because I view the scientific method as open to revision on principle. Science un-proves what it had once considered proven now and then.

Science depends on consensus. If you get cold fusion in your garage, and no one else sees it or can make it happen themselves, you will not be believed. Science is the democratization of truth. This is not by any means an exhaustive description, but objectivity and consensus are close indeed.

1 Reply

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper;132918 wrote:

20 Bible Facts About God - 20 Facts About God from the Bible

Looks more like 20 misinterpretations about the Bible. Once again, I am not responsible for the various misinterpretations of certain books.

Surprisingly, of the 20 facts listed on your link, not one said that God is the word. I think the Bible does say that God is the word ('the word was God'). How does that fit with your readings?

So, like the example I gave about the misunderstanding of the word 'light' on the first page of Genesis, so too are the various conclusions that such-and-such really means this or really means that (as per your list of facts) rather ignorant.

Simply put, Don't take the opinions of others as facts. Language is much deeper than Santa Clause.

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@MMP2506,

MMP2506;132929 wrote:

You can speculate all you wish, but those who have experienced religious truth all use the same words to describe it, which shows there is some level of transcendence involved with it.

I sometimes think that what belief really is meant to signify is just the 'willingness to consider'. It is not 'clinging to belief', but this is what it has become. Again I think this is where orthodoxy has really misunderstood the import of belief. It is as if your 'ability to believe' is worn like a badge of honor. This has led to a lot of foolishness in my view. This is where it becomes fundamentalism.

Obviously if you are to explore and discover spiritual ideas, you need to be open to experience. If you start with the attitude that there can be nothing to learn, then indeed there won't be. But the question of experience is still a very difficult one. The teachers who I used to read would always say that 'the mind experiences only what it projects', that the desire for experiences, spiritual or any other kind, is the cause of unhappiness. So what to do? Obviously in the practice of meditation, it takes some motivation to devote yourself to it. It is an arduous practice. I suppose, looking back on my experience of it (and it may be different for others) the whole journey has been learning to let go - letting go of expectations, letting go of cravings and many other defilements. I can see now it has been 'the experience of letting go of experience', but I couldn't see that this was what it was at the time. (And it is not finished by a long shot.)

This has been my experience of conversion. I say 'my experience' because it is nothing like what many people say that it is. It wasn't something overnight - it has been going on for decades, and externally nothing much has happened. But your personality begins to re-organise itself around a different principle. It is not being converted to belief, it is being converted to a different way of understanding. This is called Metanoia (not 'schizophrenia':bigsmile:).

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This matter of religious belief

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