Is there a god?
DavidH
Christian but I have , from an early age, never really believed. I am
getting on a bit in terms of age. I would like to believe for a lot of
reasons, one of which would be the righting of wrongs in this
world.Another would be to gain a sense of being part of something
greater and to feel God's love and to impart that to others.
I , however , have great difficulty with the evidence for a god. If
there is one he takes great pains to be as invisible/ unapproachable
as possible. It has been suggested to me if I prayed earnestly all
would be revealed. this has not worked - of course , the get-out
clause would be that I did not pray earnestly enough.
How have others come to feel the presence of God. Are there any
suggestions on the path I should take. Which Christian denomination is
the most true. Or should I follow another path?
Frederick Williams
>
> I shall probably go to my grave with this one! I was brought up as a
> Christian but I have , from an early age, never really believed. I am
> getting on a bit in terms of age. I would like to believe for a lot of
> reasons, one of which would be the righting of wrongs in this
> world.
If there is a God, how would that right wrongs done in this world? It
might lead to wrong-doers being punished, but how does that right the
wrongs that they did?
> Another would be to gain a sense of being part of something
> greater
Greater than what?
> and to feel God's love
If there is a God, is He necessarily a loving God?
> and to impart that to others.
>
> I , however , have great difficulty with the evidence for a god. If
> there is one he takes great pains to be as invisible/ unapproachable
> as possible. It has been suggested to me if I prayed earnestly all
> would be revealed. this has not worked - of course , the get-out
> clause would be that I did not pray earnestly enough.
>
> How have others come to feel the presence of God. Are there any
> suggestions on the path I should take. Which Christian denomination is
> the most true. Or should I follow another path?
Yes: atheism.
--
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
Richard Corfield
> How have others come to feel the presence of God. Are there any
> suggestions on the path I should take. Which Christian denomination is
> the most true. Or should I follow another path?
It's hard to answer for you as that's a very personal thing.
There are other paths that are easier to resolve agnostically and perhaps
still allow you to feel that connection at least or even that shared
love. Moving faith is potentially hard. There's both the change in world
view, though "that conversion effect" can be powerful. You still need to
fit in with people around you who may be attached to the old path. It
can be a change in life in some ways depending on what you go for and
how much - especially if it changes your outer appearance.
Within Christianity - is it possible to not hang on to the need for a
god and just see Christ as an example? Think about humanity and that
connected humanity and work on the community aspects? I'm not sure that
would fit in well with a church though, at least judging by some of the
discussions here and the strong evangelical direction my local church
takes. This is where I get stuck in Christianity.
Different denominations or different churches seem to suit different
types of people. It could be interesting to explore some.
Buddhism - various flavours - many do seem to add as much ritual and
in places as much belief as you'd be leaving from Christianity. With
people like the Dechen Zen for example you'd be leaving belief in heaven
and an active god for belief in reincarnation into various realms and
Bodhisattvas (souls of past Buddhas hanging around to offer help).
Still, there are currents in Buddhism that concentrate on our part within
a world that is just an interconnected set of wonderful processes. These
do very well for themselves. "Buddhism without Beliefs" by Stephen
Batchelor is a good book on this approach. The sense of interconnection
can be a wonderful thing and is the closest I've experienced to the
kinds of things Christians talk about here as religious experience. You
can orientate your mind to seeing yourself as part and parcel of a world
which is divine and from there to develop that 'love'.
Some elements of Buddhist practice, some say all that is Buddhism
really, can be overlayed onto whatever you have now making you more a
"Christian who meditates".
Hinduism varies from almost Buddhism with different pictures to all
out devotion to gods and gurus. You can still approach it from a fairly
agnostic standpoint taking Brahman as something less of a personal god and
more that underlying force or interconnectedness again. Seeing everyone
around you as inherently divine within ("Namaste" - I bow to the divine
within you, or something like that) allows that love. Combined with some
knowledge from Buddhism of the awareness of how we label things it can
be quite effective. The Bhagavad Gita (I have the Easwaren translation
which seems to have more a Buddhist lean) makes interesting reading.
Down sides are sermons in Hindi most of the time and a tendency for some
people who meet you to think you worship cows and with horror associate
with the caste system. It's a very misunderstood religion.
I think you end up finding that there's a common grain in all of these,
not just around the loving others parts but some of the deeper stuff
too. They all convey it and understand it in different ways but the
abstract pattern seems very similar. Dropping the details is
interesting, though it can separate you from people who hang on to the
details. Of course in order to say that I've already made the assumption
that it's not the external fact of worhsipping a specific deity that
counts but something more within in how you are and how you act.
I'm not sure that helps as it doesn't solve the question "Is there a
god?", and if there is "What kind?".
There's always atheism which does serve some people well. Maybe you
could look into Humanism. If you can find a positive experience from
there, other humanists or humanist resources to work with?
Have fun exploring. I hope it goes well.
- Richard
loiner2003
>>
>> How have others come to feel the presence of God. Are there any
>> suggestions on the path I should take. Which Christian denomination is
>> the most true. Or should I follow another path?
>
> Yes: atheism.
>
Atheism is not a path. It is more a decision that there is no path.
(Please keep off the grass!)
--
Revd. Eric Potts
"Go in peace, in the power of the Spirit
to live and work to God's praise and glory."
Simon Woods
> Frederick Williams wrote:
>
>>>
>>> How have others come to feel the presence of God. Are there any
>>> suggestions on the path I should take. Which Christian denomination is
>>> the most true. Or should I follow another path?
>>
>> Yes: atheism.
>>
>
> Atheism is not a path. It is more a decision that there is no path.
A realisation or a decision?
Frederick Williams
>
> Frederick Williams wrote:
>
> >>
> >> How have others come to feel the presence of God. Are there any
> >> suggestions on the path I should take. Which Christian denomination is
> >> the most true. Or should I follow another path?
> >
> > Yes: atheism.
> >
>
> Atheism is not a path. It is more a decision that there is no path.
> (Please keep off the grass!)
I think some atheists became atheists because after spending a lot of
time exploring the Christianity path they discovered that it led no
where--or, at least, not the places that it is supposed to. (Not me, I
have never been a believer so far as I can recall.)
Michael J Davis
<b900aceb-0932-4189...@p25g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,
DavidH <dah...@googlemail.com> writes
>I shall probably go to my grave with this one! I was brought up as a
>Christian but I have , from an early age, never really believed. I am
>getting on a bit in terms of age. I would like to believe for a lot of
>reasons, one of which would be the righting of wrongs in this
>world.Another would be to gain a sense of being part of something
>greater and to feel God's love and to impart that to others.
Noble and wise reasons. Welcome to the group, btw! (Have a jelly baby -
offered to all newcomers!)
> I , however , have great difficulty with the evidence for a god. If
>there is one he takes great pains to be as invisible/ unapproachable
>as possible.
My experience (see website below) is different - but I was all for
chucking it in before it happened.
>It has been suggested to me if I prayed earnestly all
>would be revealed. this has not worked - of course , the get-out
>clause would be that I did not pray earnestly enough.
No, you probably prayed so earnestly that you were looking at yourself
praying, rather than just relaxing and allowing Him to meet you where
you are/were! But I hasten to say that we are all different and what's
'worked' for me, probably won't for you.
> How have others come to feel the presence of God. Are there any
>suggestions on the path I should take. Which Christian denomination is
>the most true. Or should I follow another path?
My experience, now over three decades of helping others, is to say,
don't intellectualise - God is not to be reasoned into or out of our
existence! Work on the basis that there IS a God (the Christian God, but
I would say that, wouldn't I?), and simply ask Him to reveal Himself in
the 'ordinary' to you. I know many people who have then found an
extra-ordinary awareness of Him.
As to denominations - stick to the one you are most comfortable with
(unless there are cogent reasons for avoiding it) - otherwise you'll be
distracted by the peripherals of ritual and practise - which have
nothing to do with *finding* God (but may have a lot to do with walking
with Him).
Remember 'faith' isn't a nice feeling, it's the action of one who
accepts the reality of God, and so gets out on a limb on that basis,
(complete with one's doubts). Sitting in an armchair waiting for faith
to come is not what it's about.
Have you got a local church/community of believers who can help or
mentor you at this point? Here I'd direct you to the major
denominations, we know from experience on this group, that small free
churches can be either wonderfully encouraging or equally discouraging
depending on the personalities involved.
Please, a) keep coming back with questions, b) learn to ignore some of
the background noise here, and c) feel free to contact me direct if
there's anything you want to discuss in confidence.
Blessings
Mike
[The reply-to address is valid for 30 days from this posting]
--
Michael J Davis
http://www.trustsof.demon.co.uk
<><
For this is what the Lord has said to me,
"Go and post a Watchman and let
him report what he sees." Isa 21:6
<><
Richard Corfield
>>>> How have others come to feel the presence of God. Are there any
>>>> suggestions on the path I should take. Which Christian denomination is
>>>> the most true. Or should I follow another path?
>>>
>>> Yes: atheism.
>>
>> Atheism is not a path. It is more a decision that there is no path.
>
> A realisation or a decision?
I don't think it rules out having a path. It rules out some paths.
- Richard
Phil Saunders
news:48908002...@tesco.net...
> loiner2003 wrote:
>>
>> Frederick Williams wrote:
>>
>> >>
>> >> How have others come to feel the presence of God. Are there any
>> >> suggestions on the path I should take. Which Christian denomination is
>> >> the most true. Or should I follow another path?
>> >
>> > Yes: atheism.
>> >
>>
>> Atheism is not a path. It is more a decision that there is no path.
>> (Please keep off the grass!)
>
> I think some atheists became atheists because after spending a lot of
> time exploring the Christianity path they discovered that it led no
> where--or, at least, not the places that it is supposed to. (Not me, I
> have never been a believer so far as I can recall.)
To take one step on the path that is Christianity is to step beyond ever
becoming an atheist.
Phil
Gareth McCaughan
my response never reached uk.r.c. Don't know why. My apologies
if anyone ends up with two copies.)
"DavidH" wrote:
> I shall probably go to my grave with this one!
[etc.]
After a history a bit like yours (though I'm fairly
sure that I really *did* believe) I ended up with the
conclusion that there almost certainly is no god,
especially not the sort in whom Christians believe.
However: I don't see the slightest reason why you
need to wait to resolve that question before trying
to right wrongs in the world, become part of something
greater, and impart love to others. May I politely
urge you that if you think you ought to be religious
in order to do those things, then a fortiori you
ought to Just Do Them whatever your current state
of belief?
> How have others come to feel the presence of God. Are there any
> suggestions on the path I should take. Which Christian denomination
> is the most true. Or should I follow another path?
I'd suggest that you strive to do what's right (regardless
of what you believe) and strive to believe what's true
(regardless of what effects you hope or fear it might
have). Don't believe or disbelieve in God for the sake
of righting wrongs or feeling love; right what wrongs
you can, live as loving a life as you can, and look for
the truth as best you can.
--
Gareth McCaughan
.sig under construc
DavidH
I have always tried to do the "decent thing" and treat people fairly
and as I would like to be treated. There has not always been
reciprocation but what the hell !
I still have problems in believing in God. Does that mean if there is
a god and I have not accepted him I will suffer or will I be judged on
my honesty in sincerely seeking but not finding.
Nick Milton
<dah...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> I would like to believe for a lot of
>reasons, one of which would be the righting of wrongs in this
>world.Another would be to gain a sense of being part of something
>greater and to feel God's love and to impart that to others.
Admirable reasons - those longings in themselves are given by God
> I , however , have great difficulty with the evidence for a god. If
>there is one he takes great pains to be as invisible/ unapproachable
>as possible. It has been suggested to me if I prayed earnestly all
>would be revealed. this has not worked - of course , the get-out
>clause would be that I did not pray earnestly enough.
I think Mike is right - you may be looking for what you want to see
(evidence, proof, visibility etc) rather than waiting for what is
really there (knolwing, rather than proving)
I would just relax and be open to God - then see what and who arrives
> How have others come to feel the presence of God.
I think you just feel it. The still, small voice rather than the
hurricane or earthquake. A sense of rightness
>Are there any
>suggestions on the path I should take. Which Christian denomination is
>the most true.
You dont get there by being "most true"! You get there by openness. I
would just go with what feels rightest to you
Nick
Gareth McCaughan
> I have always tried to do the "decent thing" and treat people fairly
> and as I would like to be treated. There has not always been
> reciprocation but what the hell !
>
> I still have problems in believing in God. Does that mean if there is
> a god and I have not accepted him I will suffer or will I be judged on
> my honesty in sincerely seeking but not finding.
Opinions vary, which seems to me to be a good reason not to
trust anyone's opinion very much unless they have really good
actual evidence.
I think those who manage to believe simultaneously
(1) that everyone who doesn't believe in God will be damned,
(2) that God deliberately avoids making his existence plain, and
(3) that God is good and loving, have no place lecturing anyone
else on morality and justice and judgement.
(And, for roughly the same reason, I think that if there is
any being that deserves the name "God" then it won't both
damn everyone who doesn't have the right beliefs and make
the world such as to discourage the right beliefs. Which
means that I suppose my answer to your question is "no,
if there is a god then you won't be made to suffer on
account of not having accepted him". At least not if there's
*that* sort of god. If there's an evil or capricious god,
for instance, who knows what it might do?)
Michael J Davis
<dc819c92-78e6-4303...@t54g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>,
DavidH <dah...@googlemail.com> writes
>and as I would like to be treated. There has not always been
>reciprocation but what the hell !
>
>I still have problems in believing in God. Does that mean if there is
>a god and I have not accepted him I will suffer or will I be judged on
>my honesty in sincerely seeking but not finding.
Umm, I'm not sure that Gareth is the best person to address that
question to! ;-) [Sorry, Gareth!!]
The God in whom I believe (i.e. Father Son & Spirit) seems IME to value
honesty and integrity above most things. And I'm sure that hypocrisy is
the way to hell[1], for we may kid even ourselves, but we can't kid God.
Jesus seemed to express similar views regarding 'religious people'.[2]
Blessings
Mike
[1] Or whatever less than perfect destination you wish to believe in.
[2] Don't mistake me for a religious person - I'm a Christian!
[The reply-to address is valid for 30 days from this posting]
--
Michael J Davis
<><
We are immortals dreaming the terrible dream of mere mortality. [CSL]
<><
Michael J Davis
<Gareth.M...@pobox.com> writes
Excellent reply, Gareth!
Mike
[The reply-to address is valid for 30 days from this posting]
--
Michael J Davis
Richard Corfield
>
> I have always tried to do the "decent thing" and treat people fairly
> and as I would like to be treated. There has not always been
> reciprocation but what the hell !
It seems a good thing to do, and should be rewarding in itself. It can
be a good exercise to see other people as people just like you are,
something that can easily be forgotton. I think that helps you to do the
"love" bit. It can also lead you to see the pain in the world if not
careful. There's a lot of suffering out there, but we must also remember
a lot of good. I suppose it comes down to what you focus on.
> I still have problems in believing in God. Does that mean if there is
> a god and I have not accepted him I will suffer or will I be judged on
> my honesty in sincerely seeking but not finding.
I'd hope that if there is an independantly conscious god who does
judging then he/she/they/it would judge on your honesty in sincerely
seeking. The kind of god who presents his test subjects with at least 5
strong internally consistent possibilities at religion never mind the
strong possibility of no religion and expects them to pick the right
one on pain of eternal torture is not a pleasant thought.
Pascal's wager is a bit of a loser really. You can't achieve better than
50% given the mutual exclusivity of Islam and Christianity and in effect
achieve far worse once you consider the many possible outcomes. That
seems not worth considering.
Micheal's comments sound interesting from a religious point of view.
Gareth's are very interesting from an atheist point of view.
It seems that faith can work very well for those that live it. Gareth
has more experience there having seen both sides. I don't know the inner
doubts and goings on in the church life. On the other hand taking the
bet without really being able to believe can't be expected to work.
- Richard
1st Century Apostolic Traditionalist UK.RC
news:dnEOGYDc...@trustsof.demon.co.uk.invalid...
Here is truly Excellent advice to any seeking The Truth..... "16 He that
believes and is baptised shall be saved, and he that disbelieves shall be
condemned." Mark 16:16 (Darby)
Jeff...
Gordon Hudson
> I shall probably go to my grave with this one! I was brought up as a
> Christian but I have , from an early age, never really believed. I am
> getting on a bit in terms of age. I would like to believe for a lot of
> reasons, one of which would be the righting of wrongs in this
> world.Another would be to gain a sense of being part of something
> greater and to feel God's love and to impart that to others.
>
> I , however , have great difficulty with the evidence for a god. If
> there is one he takes great pains to be as invisible/ unapproachable
> as possible. It has been suggested to me if I prayed earnestly all
> would be revealed. this has not worked - of course , the get-out
> clause would be that I did not pray earnestly enough.
Or that you were not a Christian in the first place.
That seems to have been the let out clause used by most of my friends
when I told them I no longer believed.
I think it helps them to deal with it.
> How have others come to feel the presence of God.
Drinking large amounts of espresso coffee?
> Are there any
> suggestions on the path I should take. Which Christian denomination is
> the most true. Or should I follow another path?
Its possible to live a fulfilled life without believing in God.
Religious people suggest that everyone has a "God shaped hole".
It seems to me its a hole which religion can try and fill, but thats
not why the hole exists.
I have found meaning in my life without the need for a God:
http://www.hudson.nu/blog/2008/01/from-christian-to-atheist.html
http://www.hudson.nu/blog/2008/01/further-background-to-my-deconversion.html
Gordon
Gareth McCaughan
[David H.:]
>> I still have problems in believing in God. Does that mean if there is
>> a god and I have not accepted him I will suffer or will I be judged on
>> my honesty in sincerely seeking but not finding.
[Mike:]
> Umm, I'm not sure that Gareth is the best person to address that
> question to! ;-) [Sorry, Gareth!!]
Depends whether what he really means is (1) "Do those who believe
in a god think that ...?" or (2) "If in fact there is a god, is
it likely to be the case that ...?". There's no obvious reason
why people who believe X are the best people to answer the question
"What would it be like if X were true?", and indeed they surely
aren't in cases where X is really obviously false.
> [2] Don't mistake me for a religious person - I'm a Christian!
*cringe*
(1: "Religious" is not a term of abuse. 2: For any sane definition
of "religious", plenty of Christians are religious people. 3: For
the definitions I favour, you are in fact a religious person.)
Richard Corfield
> [David H.:]
>>> I still have problems in believing in God. Does that mean if there is
>>> a god and I have not accepted him I will suffer or will I be judged on
>>> my honesty in sincerely seeking but not finding.
>
> [Mike:]
>> Umm, I'm not sure that Gareth is the best person to address that
>> question to! ;-) [Sorry, Gareth!!]
>
> Depends whether what he really means is (1) "Do those who believe
> in a god think that ...?" or (2) "If in fact there is a god, is
> it likely to be the case that ...?". There's no obvious reason
> why people who believe X are the best people to answer the question
> "What would it be like if X were true?", and indeed they surely
> aren't in cases where X is really obviously false.
I took that along the lines of "If we allow people like Gareth to answer
that kind of question then there's a danger of the 'wrong' outcome. That
being that the questioner chooses against Christianity".
It's the same kind of logic that says "We must not allow the kids to see
the Golden Compass because they may be lured into reading books that
can be interpreted as presenting an argument for atheism".
I think it's good to see multiple viewpoints.
- Richard
(PS. I'll be AFK for a few days)
1st Century Apostolic Traditionalist UK.RC
message news:slrng959oj.o93....@EPIA.littondale.dyndns.org...
You may well think so, Richard, but "What sayeth the Scripture?"
"8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after
the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after
Christ." Col 2:8 (KJV)
"17 Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest
ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own
stedfastness." 2 Peter 3:17 (KJV)
Jeff...
Dianelos Georgoudis
> I shall probably go to my grave with this one! I was brought up as a
> Christian but I have , from an early age, never really believed. I am
> getting on a bit in terms of age. I would like to believe for a lot of
> reasons, one of which would be the righting of wrongs in this
> world.Another would be to gain a sense of being part of something
> greater and to feel God's love and to impart that to others.
>
> I , however , have great difficulty with the evidence for a god. If
> there is one he takes great pains to be as invisible/ unapproachable
> as possible.
Well, not really. God is spirit, and a spirit is indeed invisible in
the physical sense. So by being invisible God stays true to His/Her
nature. To do otherwise would be misleading. On the other hand of
course there is a lot of evidence that is invisible too, so it's not
like the fact that God is invisible implies that there is no evidence
for God.
> It has been suggested to me if I prayed earnestly all
> would be revealed. this has not worked - of course , the get-out
> clause would be that I did not pray earnestly enough.
This looks like an exercise in futility. You see, prayer is a kind of
communication. I can't imagine how one can earnestly communicate with
a person one does not believe is there.
> How have others come to feel the presence of God. Are there any
> suggestions on the path I should take.
Well, there are various paths. For an atheist I think the best path is
the intellectual one. One I would like to suggest goes like this:
There are two incompatible worldviews about reality, that of
monotheism (or theism for short) and that of naturalism (the
"scientific" worldview). More specifically according to naturalism the
most fundamental causal principle, or the most fundamental explanatory
principle if you prefer, is the existence of matter following
mechanical laws. According to theism the most fundamental causal or
explanatory principle is personal will, indeed mostly God's will.[1]
(God, in turn, is thought by virtually all theists to be the person
who is perfect in all respects.) So whereas in naturalism personal
will is supposed to be something that emerges from complex
configurations of matter, in theism matter and its lawful nature is
supposed to be something that emerges from God's will. The difference
between these two worldviews should be obvious. There are other
worldviews, but as a first approximation we may ignore them and assume
that atheism and naturalism are exhaustive. After all virtually all
atheists are naturalists; being both an atheist and a supernaturalist
is almost a contradiction in terms.
Now many people consider theism in isolation and try to find out if
believing in it is reasonable; often they fail to find such good
reasons and therefore fall back to naturalism by default. Instead I
here propose to compare one to one theism and naturalism in order to
find out which is *more* reasonable. If you do that I think you'll see
that naturalism suffers in comparison from very grave conceptual
problems. You see, one's worldview about reality should be compatible
with the rest of the beliefs one holds with great confidence. After
all reality is all there is and therefore all true beliefs must be
compatible with how reality actually is. And naturalism cannot account
and indeed contradicts the existence of objective moral values and of
libertarian free will - things accepted as given by almost all people.
[2] Naturalism has even great trouble accounting for propositions
being about something - what philosophers call the problem of
intentionality.[3] It is well known that naturalism has great trouble
accounting for the existence of consciousness (i.e. the basic human
condition) in the first place - the so-called mind-body problem. It is
less well known that naturalism has great trouble accounting for
scientific knowledge too, as it has turned out very hard to describe
what kind of a material reality could give rise to all the phenomena
that science, and specifically quantum mechanics, describes. In
comparison to naturalism theism is free from such fundamental
conceptual problems, and only suffers from its historical baggage:
dogmatism, mythology and superstition, exclusivism, and so on, things
a theist can easily eject without missing anything from the
fundamental position of theism. In conclusion, theism accounts far
better than naturalism for the human condition, i.e. for how it is to
be a human being, and therefore is the more reasonable worldview to
hold.
[1] In theistic parlance a "person" is a conscious being, a being able
to perceive, to think (and specifically to think ethically), and to
act. We humans are persons, as is God. Some theists believe in the
existence of other types of persons too, such as angels.
[2] To very quickly illustrate the first point: To most people it's
blindingly obvious that at least some moral propositions are
objectively true. By objectively true one means that the proposition
is true independently of one's personal opinion or of social
convention. An example of such a moral proposition would be "It is
wrong to torture a sentient being for fun". Naturalism contradicts the
truth, indeed the meaning, of such objective propositions. For an
exposition of this state of affairs I recommend reading " Ethics:
Inventing Right and Wrong" by J. L. Mackie (who is one of the best
atheist authors out there).
[3] For a very good exposition of some of these issues I recommend
reading "Naturalism in Question" edited by Mario De Caro and David
Macarthur.
> Which Christian denomination is
> the most true.
I think it makes little sense to discuss this without being convinced
of the truth of Christianity. And it makes little sense to discuss the
truth of Christianity without being convinced of the truth of theism.
But it may be useful to discuss what a religious denomination actually
is: God is something not primarily to be known about but something to
be experienced. Christian denominations are organizations that help
their members experience God by structuring a particular set of
beliefs, by upholding a particular kind of tradition, but mainly by
incorporating one in a community of fellow believers.
Gareth McCaughan
[David H.:]
>> I , however , have great difficulty with the evidence for a god. If
>> there is one he takes great pains to be as invisible/ unapproachable
>> as possible.
[Dianelos:]
> Well, not really. God is spirit, and a spirit is indeed invisible in
> the physical sense. So by being invisible God stays true to His/Her
> nature. To do otherwise would be misleading. On the other hand of
> course there is a lot of evidence that is invisible too, so it's not
> like the fact that God is invisible implies that there is no evidence
> for God.
Surely by "invisible", David meant "undetectable by reference
to the physical world" and not merely "not interacting directly
with photons"?
>> It has been suggested to me if I prayed earnestly all
>> would be revealed. this has not worked - of course , the get-out
>> clause would be that I did not pray earnestly enough.
>
> This looks like an exercise in futility. You see, prayer is a kind of
> communication. I can't imagine how one can earnestly communicate with
> a person one does not believe is there.
Of course one can, at least if for "does not believe is there"
you read "thinks may very well not be there" which seems to be
nearer to David's actual position.
Consider a SETI enthusiast, sending signals out to the stars
in the hope that someone is listening. (I think this is in fact
generally avoided, but obviously one can imagine it being done.)
Consider a prisoner, locked in a cell, who has seen no sign
of the warders for several days and fears that they may all
have gone away for some reason. When he yells "Please, is
anyone there? I need food and drink" he is perfectly sincerely
trying to communicate while strongly suspecting that in fact
there's no one to hear.
[SNIP: Dianelos makes his usual claims that a naturalistic
worldview cannot account for such things as consciousness,
whereas a theistic one can. Dianelos, you know the score
on this one: your arguments appear to me to consist of bluster,
equivocation, and attempts to win-by-definition, and my
requests for you to define your terms and state your evidence
rather than merely saying at great length that "everyone
knows what we mean by X" and "Y is blindingly obvious"
have gone unanswered.]
>> Which Christian denomination is
>> the most true.
>
> I think it makes little sense to discuss this without being convinced
> of the truth of Christianity. And it makes little sense to discuss the
> truth of Christianity without being convinced of the truth of theism.
So when one wants to decide whether atheism is right, one must
(you say) instead consider the merits of a much more specific
position, namely scientific naturalism; and if the more specific
position falls then so (allegedly) does atheism.
But when one wants to decide whether theism is right, it "makes
little sense" to consider a more specific position such as
Christianity; one should instead put the unmanageably broad
"there is some sort of god" up against the much more specific
"scientific naturalism is correct, and the only valid explanations
are scientific ones".
Hmm.
John Blake
Traditionalist UK.RC" <"broadband [remove] 1234"@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>"Richard Corfield" <Richard....@REVERSE.uk.me.littondale> wrote in
>message news:slrng959oj.o93....@EPIA.littondale.dyndns.org...
>>
>> I think it's good to see multiple viewpoints.
>
>You may well think so, Richard, but "What sayeth the Scripture?"
>"8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after
>the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after
>Christ." Col 2:8 (KJV)
>
>"17 Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest
>ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own
>stedfastness." 2 Peter 3:17 (KJV)
>
>Jeff...
Yes, well it would say that wouldn't it ;-)
Michael J Davis
<Gareth.M...@pobox.com> writes
>Mike Davis wrote:
>
>[David H.:]
>>> I still have problems in believing in God. Does that mean if there is
>>> a god and I have not accepted him I will suffer or will I be judged on
>>> my honesty in sincerely seeking but not finding.
>
>[Mike:]
>> Umm, I'm not sure that Gareth is the best person to address that
>> question to! ;-) [Sorry, Gareth!!]
>
>Depends whether what he really means is (1) "Do those who believe
>in a god think that ...?" or (2) "If in fact there is a god, is
>it likely to be the case that ...?".
"If there is a God...." predicates that someone who believes that may
just be better equipped to reply than one who doesn't. IMHO, of course.
Nothing more sinister than that.
>There's no obvious reason
>why people who believe X are the best people to answer the question
>"What would it be like if X were true?", and indeed they surely
>aren't in cases where X is really obviously false.
But how can someone who believes X to be *obviously* false be able to
answer such a question?
>
>> [2] Don't mistake me for a religious person - I'm a Christian!
>
>*cringe*
;-) Indeed. Gareth - I really do wonder about your soh sometimes. (Yes,
I know you can reciprocate!)
>(1: "Religious" is not a term of abuse.
agreed
>2: For any sane definition
>of "religious", plenty of Christians are religious people.
perhaps
>3: For
>the definitions I favour, you are in fact a religious person.)
;-)
I was separating myself from the definitions relative to Jesus'
condemnation of the Pharisees (implied somewhere above, IIRC). Ho hum.
But more importantly, pointing out a paradox that may give the OP
something to consider...
Michael J Davis
Richard Corfield <Richard....@REVERSE.uk.me.littondale> writes
>On 2008-08-01, Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote:
>> [David H.:]
>>>> I still have problems in believing in God. Does that mean if there is
>>>> a god and I have not accepted him I will suffer or will I be judged on
>>>> my honesty in sincerely seeking but not finding.
>>
>> [Mike:]
>>> Umm, I'm not sure that Gareth is the best person to address that
>>> question to! ;-) [Sorry, Gareth!!]
>>
>> Depends whether what he really means is (1) "Do those who believe
>> in a god think that ...?" or (2) "If in fact there is a god, is
>> it likely to be the case that ...?". There's no obvious reason
>> why people who believe X are the best people to answer the question
>> "What would it be like if X were true?", and indeed they surely
>> aren't in cases where X is really obviously false.
>
>I took that along the lines of "If we allow people like Gareth to answer
>that kind of question then there's a danger of the 'wrong' outcome. That
>being that the questioner chooses against Christianity".
Not at all - I thought you knew me better than that, Richard!
>It's the same kind of logic that says "We must not allow the kids to see
>the Golden Compass because they may be lured into reading books that
>can be interpreted as presenting an argument for atheism".
Absolutely not. Remember what I said about hypocrisy in my earlier post?
No, it's like asking someone who may be an expert in steam power if a
faulty carburettor in my car could lead to a fire. They may know the
right answer, but I'd rather have a reply from a practising motor
mechanic.
>I think it's good to see multiple viewpoints.
Always. Some think 2+2 = 4, and others think that 2+2 = 5 and some think
that 2+2 = 11 base 3.
>(PS. I'll be AFK for a few days)
Me2
DavidH
emotion most of the time. That may be a failing or perhapsnot. I have
spent my working life dealing with facts and figures so I have
difficulty in accepting a lot of the nebulous arguments for the
existence of God.
When examining religion it seems to me that many clergymen/women can
hold at least 2 contradictory opinions regarding aspects of belief/
morality.
My parents were practising Christians ( as is my sister and her
husband today) and I was brought up in the faith but I rejected it
towards the end of my primary school education and I found I was not
alone when I started secondary school - most pupils gave the Religious
Education teacher a hard time!
Despite what I have said, I would love to believe in God. Whether that
is a thowback to my parents' beliefs or a childhood affection for
fairy-tales or something deeper I do not know. But a longing for
belief and an actual belief based on some sort of experience are two
different things
Dianelos Georgoudis
wrote:
> DianelosGeorgoudis wrote:
>
> [David H.:]
>
> >> I , however , have great difficulty with the evidence for a god. If
> >> there is one he takes great pains to be as invisible/ unapproachable
> >> as possible.
>
> [Dianelos:]
>
> > Well, not really. God is spirit, and a spirit is indeed invisible in
> > the physical sense. So by being invisible God stays true to His/Her
> > nature. To do otherwise would be misleading. On the other hand of
> > course there is a lot of evidence that is invisible too, so it's not
> > like the fact that God is invisible implies that there is no evidence
> > for God.
>
> Surely by "invisible", David meant "undetectable by reference
> to the physical world" and not merely "not interacting directly
> with photons"?
I am not sure what your point is. God is spirit, and a spirit is
undetectable by reference to the physical world too. After all our own
spirit is undetectable by reference to the physical world; a famous
issue in the mind-body problem. Now God *could* have made Him/Herself
known by reference to the physical world, but there is some good
reason why God would not choose to do so. After all when there is so
much good non-physical evidence for God [1] why should God offer us
misguiding physical evidence too?
[1] A little playfully Plantinga has listed two dozen or so arguments
for God, see: http://philofreligion.homestead.com/files/Theisticarguments.html
> >> It has been suggested to me if I prayed earnestly all
> >> would be revealed. this has not worked - of course , the get-out
> >> clause would be that I did not pray earnestly enough.
>
> > This looks like an exercise in futility. You see, prayer is a kind of
> > communication. I can't imagine how one can earnestly communicate with
> > a person one does not believe is there.
>
> Of course one can, at least if for "does not believe is there"
> you read "thinks may very well not be there" which seems to be
> nearer to David's actual position.
>
> Consider a SETI enthusiast, sending signals out to the stars
> in the hope that someone is listening. (I think this is in fact
> generally avoided, but obviously one can imagine it being done.)
>
> Consider a prisoner, locked in a cell, who has seen no sign
> of the warders for several days and fears that they may all
> have gone away for some reason. When he yells "Please, is
> anyone there? I need food and drink" he is perfectly sincerely
> trying to communicate while strongly suspecting that in fact
> there's no one to hear.
I see your point, but I still don't find it plausible that an atheist
will *earnestly* pray to God. Perhaps an agnostic might.
> [SNIP:Dianelosmakes his usual claims that a naturalistic
> worldview cannot account for such things as consciousness,
> whereas a theistic one can.
That's not only my claim; there is a huge literature about the mind-
body problem. And as theism posits that a spirit (i.e. a conscious
being) forms the most basic level of reality theism does not need to
account for the presence of consciousness itself. Similarly a
naturalist need not account for whatever it is they believe forms the
most basic level of reality.
> Dianelos, you know the score
> on this one: your arguments appear to me to consist of bluster,
> equivocation, and attempts to win-by-definition, and my
> requests for you to define your terms and state your evidence
> rather than merely saying at great length that "everyone
> knows what we mean by X" and "Y is blindingly obvious"
> have gone unanswered.]
Yeah, we kind of tend to speak pass each other. Perhaps we could focus
on one issue which is extremely important, namely ethics. The
generally accepted view is that the existence of objective ethical
truths is not compatible with naturalism. Do you agree? I remember you
once explained that your ethics is based on axioms, such as that
everyone's pleasure (in the non-trivial sense) is good. But other
people may choose other axioms, perhaps that only their own pleasure
is good. To be objective truths must ultimately be rooted in objective
reality independently of personal opinion or social convention, and I
don't see how your own set or any set of ethical axioms can be thus
justified within the framework of naturalism's understanding of
reality. I'd be thankful if you explained this point to me.
> >> Which Christian denomination is
> >> the most true.
>
> > I think it makes little sense to discuss this without being convinced
> > of the truth of Christianity. And it makes little sense to discuss the
> > truth of Christianity without being convinced of the truth of theism.
>
> So when one wants to decide whether atheism is right, one must
> (you say) instead consider the merits of a much more specific
> position, namely scientific naturalism; and if the more specific
> position falls then so (allegedly) does atheism.
>
> But when one wants to decide whether theism is right, it "makes
> little sense" to consider a more specific position such as
> Christianity; one should instead put the unmanageably broad
> "there is some sort of god" up against the much more specific
> "scientific naturalism is correct, and the only valid explanations
> are scientific ones".
It's impractical to discuss with an atheist specific Christian beliefs
because one sooner or later finds oneself discussing whether Jesus was
really born of a virgin, or whether salvation is really pre-ordained,
and other similar points which are quite irrelevant to the question of
whether theism or naturalism is more reasonable. After all every
single specifically Christian belief may be false and theism may still
be more reasonable than naturalism. So to discuss theism with an
atheist on the denominational level is a distraction at best. My claim
is that plain vanilla theism works much better than scientific
naturalism for understanding the human condition, i.e. for
understanding the reality we find ourselves in.
Now you rightly point out that I restrict my criticism of atheism on
the more specific position of scientific naturalism. But all atheists
I know, and surely the great majority of atheists in any case, are
scientific naturalists, i.e. believe that objective reality is such as
scientific models describe. Perhaps there are atheistic worldviews
that are stronger than scientific naturalism. So what are your beliefs
about reality? Are you a scientific naturalist too or do you hold some
more sophisticated view?
Gareth McCaughan
>>> Umm, I'm not sure that Gareth is the best person to address that
>>> question to! ;-) [Sorry, Gareth!!]
>>
>> Depends whether what he really means is (1) "Do those who believe
>> in a god think that ...?" or (2) "If in fact there is a god, is
>> it likely to be the case that ...?".
>
> "If there is a God...." predicates that someone who believes that may
> just be better equipped to reply than one who doesn't. IMHO, of
> course. Nothing more sinister than that.
"May", for sure. As I say, I think it depends a lot on which
of those two questions David was really asking.
>> There's no obvious reason
>> why people who believe X are the best people to answer the question
>> "What would it be like if X were true?", and indeed they surely
>> aren't in cases where X is really obviously false.
>
> But how can someone who believes X to be *obviously* false be able to
> answer such a question?
By having a mental model of the world flexible enough to
handle cases where X turns out to be true. Example: if I
wanted an answer to "what should we do if the world isn't
getting warmer as a result of human activity?" then I would
probably turn first of all to the real climate scientists
(who just about all agree that it is, but could with sufficient
incentives probably be persuaded to figure out the least
improbable way for it not to be doing and do some simulations)
rather than the deniers (who so far as I can tell are motivated
by political and commercial considerations more than by
scientific ones, and who if they were right would be so
only by good luck).
Of course, if it turned out that anthropogenic global warming
weren't real then we'd need to re-evaluate the competence and
sincerity of the people involved; part of my reason for thinking
that the deniers are generally incompetent or dishonest is
that I think their claims are demonstrably wrong.
Figuring out how this sort of thinking applies, or doesn't,
to asking atheists what's likely to be true if there is a God
is left as an exercise for the reader.
>>> [2] Don't mistake me for a religious person - I'm a Christian!
>>
>> *cringe*
> ;-) Indeed. Gareth - I really do wonder about your soh
> sometimes. (Yes, I know you can reciprocate!)
I've heard that claim made, with a perfectly straight face
and a good deal of smugness, so many times that it doesn't
really seem very amusing. Sorry if that's a defect on my part.
Gareth McCaughan
>>> Well, not really. God is spirit, and a spirit is indeed invisible in
>>> the physical sense. So by being invisible God stays true to His/Her
>>> nature. To do otherwise would be misleading. On the other hand of
>>> course there is a lot of evidence that is invisible too, so it's not
>>> like the fact that God is invisible implies that there is no evidence
>>> for God.
>>
>> Surely by "invisible", David meant "undetectable by reference
>> to the physical world" and not merely "not interacting directly
>> with photons"?
>
> I am not sure what your point is. God is spirit, and a spirit is
> undetectable by reference to the physical world too.
Perhaps, then, we mean different things by "evidence".
> After all our own
> spirit is undetectable by reference to the physical world; a famous
> issue in the mind-body problem. Now God *could* have made Him/Herself
> known by reference to the physical world, but there is some good
> reason why God would not choose to do so. After all when there is so
> much good non-physical evidence for God [1] why should God offer us
> misguiding physical evidence too?
>
> [1] A little playfully Plantinga has listed two dozen or so arguments
> for God, see: http://philofreligion.homestead.com/files/Theisticarguments.html
Of which, at least, E,F,K,L,M,R*,T,V,W all make use of empirical
facts (or alleged facts) about how the world is, and therefore
rely on the idea that God is not in fact "undetectable by reference
to the physical world".
>>>> It has been suggested to me if I prayed earnestly all
>>>> would be revealed. this has not worked - of course , the get-out
>>>> clause would be that I did not pray earnestly enough.
>>
>>> This looks like an exercise in futility. You see, prayer is a kind of
>>> communication. I can't imagine how one can earnestly communicate with
>>> a person one does not believe is there.
...
> I see your point, but I still don't find it plausible that an atheist
> will *earnestly* pray to God. Perhaps an agnostic might.
It doesn't seem to me that David is exactly an atheist,
at least not in any sense that makes it impossible to
pray earnestly.
>> [SNIP:Dianelosmakes his usual claims that a naturalistic
>> worldview cannot account for such things as consciousness,
>> whereas a theistic one can.
>
> That's not only my claim; there is a huge literature about the mind-
> body problem.
Er, I never said or suggested that no one else makes the same
claims.
> And as theism posits that a spirit (i.e. a conscious
> being) forms the most basic level of reality theism does not need
> to account for the presence of consciousness itself. Similarly a
> naturalist need not account for whatever it is they believe forms
> the most basic level of reality.
I think your logic here is utterly broken; sorry.
>> Dianelos, you know the score
>> on this one: your arguments appear to me to consist of bluster,
>> equivocation, and attempts to win-by-definition, and my
>> requests for you to define your terms and state your evidence
>> rather than merely saying at great length that "everyone
>> knows what we mean by X" and "Y is blindingly obvious"
>> have gone unanswered.]
>
> Yeah, we kind of tend to speak pass each other.
Oh, no, I don't think *that* is the problem.
> Perhaps we could focus
> on one issue which is extremely important, namely ethics.
My past experience of attempting to have a substantial
discussion with you is as follows: you write at very great
length, repeatedly claiming that some dubious thing or other
is perfectly obvious, so obvious that every ten-year-old
can see it; when I muster the time and energy to respond
to everything you've written and seek clarification on the
many points at which you resort to bluster and hand-waving,
you then drop the conversation entirely.
This does not encourage me to try again.
> The
> generally accepted view is that the existence of objective ethical
> truths is not compatible with naturalism. Do you agree? I remember you
> once explained that your ethics is based on axioms, such as that
> everyone's pleasure (in the non-trivial sense) is good.
I hope I didn't quite say that my ethics is based on axioms;
I might well have said that one can construct a decent ethical
system on the basis of axioms, though.
For the reasons already discussed, I am not going to attempt
a substantial discussion with you on this topic: I think I will
find it too frustrating if I try. But here is a brief summary
of my thinking on this topic; I shall say no more about it
to you unless you somehow convince me that discussion with you
has become less futile.
1. The argument goes like this: "We know that there are
objective ethical truths; if there is no God then there
are no objective ethical truths; therefore there is a God".
(Here, as often, you prefer to state things in terms of
"naturalism", but I worry that that term is not precisely
enough defined to be useful; perhaps not precisely enough
definable to be useful. I shall, with only perfunctory
apologies, stick with the theistic rather than the anti-naturalistic
version of the argument.)
2. The argument is at any rate no stronger than its first
premise. I do not know whether moral nonrealism is in fact
correct, but I think it's quite clear that it isn't crazy;
so even if everything else in the argument were watertight,
it wouldn't be all that powerful.
3. It seems to me that anything that actually justifies
the claim that "we know that there are objective ethical
truths" is, in so far as it justifies that claim, evidence
against the second premise, that "if there is no God then
there are no objective ethical truths". (Because the only
support commonly given for that second premise is of the
form "well, go on then, show me any way to get objective
ethical truths in a godless world; betcha can't".)
4. I am entirely at a loss to see how the existence of a god
is of any use in generating objective ethical truths or
grounding our belief in them, unless God somehow *creates*
those objective truths, e.g. by deciding what is to be good
and what is to be bad; this seems to lead to the conclusion
that God could equally have decreed that murder, lies, rape,
cruelty, vanity, etc., are good and their opposites bad.
This seems basically impossible to square with that intuition
of objective moral truths on which the argument depends.
5. There are certainly plenty of difficulties associated
with the idea of objective moral truths: how do we know
they're there?, why should we trust our apparent knowledge
of them?, how do they actually give us reason to act in
particular ways?, etc., etc. But (a) these difficulties
seem to me just as severe for the theist (unless s/he
adopts the sort of divine-command theory I just objected
to) as for the atheist, and (b) in so far as they are
real difficulties, they undermine the claim that we
Just Know that there are objective moral truths.
> It's impractical to discuss with an atheist specific Christian beliefs
> because one sooner or later finds oneself discussing whether Jesus was
> really born of a virgin, or whether salvation is really pre-ordained,
> and other similar points which are quite irrelevant to the question of
> whether theism or naturalism is more reasonable.
1. I don't see that it's in the least inevitable that one will
end up having such specific discussions if they aren't relevant.
2. I think they might be more relevant than you think. Here's
one reason: You are (not merely a theist but) a Christian. So
presumably the variety of theism that you find most credible
is a Christian one. When trying to assess the credibility of
a very broad claim (e.g., "there is a god" or "there is no god")
it's perfectly reasonable to say: Let's look at some more specific
ways in which this claim might be true, and see how well they
work.
(This appears to me to be almost exactly the argument by which
you justify comparing theism with scientific naturalism rather
than with atheism.)
> After all every
> single specifically Christian belief may be false and theism may still
> be more reasonable than naturalism.
And every single specifically naturalist belief may be false
and atheism may still be more reasonable than Christianity.
Neither of which is terribly relevant if the actual question
at issue is "theism or atheism?" or "Christianity or naturalism?",
both of which seem to me to be better questions than "theism
or naturalism?".
> Now you rightly point out that I restrict my criticism of atheism on
> the more specific position of scientific naturalism. But all atheists
> I know, and surely the great majority of atheists in any case, are
> scientific naturalists, i.e. believe that objective reality is such as
> scientific models describe. Perhaps there are atheistic worldviews
> that are stronger than scientific naturalism. So what are your beliefs
> about reality? Are you a scientific naturalist too or do you hold some
> more sophisticated view?
Sorry, but I've already answered a whole lot of your questions
about my own view at great length and asked you some very basic
ones about your view, which you have so far not seen fit to
answer. Your worldview-questioning account is badly overdrawn
at present.
michaeld
> >>> [2] Don't mistake me for a religious person - I'm a Christian!
> >>
> >> *cringe*
> > ;-) Indeed. Gareth - I really do wonder about your soh
> > sometimes. (Yes, I know you can reciprocate!)
>
> I've heard that claim made, with a perfectly straight face
> and a good deal of smugness, so many times that it doesn't
> really seem very amusing. Sorry if that's a defect on my part.
My favourite example of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYAzoPvI_sM&feature=related
(In case it's not clear what we sort of theology we're dealing with here,
see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2ruQjSy2ZU&feature=related - in
particular the little bombshell he drops on 2:07. Or nearly any of his
other 300 or so videos.)
Michael
--
----== posted via PHP Headliner ==----
michaeld
[...]
> 3. It seems to me that anything that actually justifies
> the claim that "we know that there are objective ethical
> truths" is, in so far as it justifies that claim, evidence
> against the second premise, that "if there is no God then
> there are no objective ethical truths". (Because the only
> support commonly given for that second premise is of the
> form "well, go on then, show me any way to get objective
> ethical truths in a godless world; betcha can't".)
I don't see this. I think the common support for the second premise is
more like "go on show me any plausible *origin* or *foundation* of ethical
truths in a godless world". It may be possible to demonstrate the
existence of objective ethics, without giving any clue about how they
could plausibly be founded.
To put it another way, I think your objection may be like trying to
counter the problem of evil by saying: "How do you know there is evil in
the world? If you have any such justification then that's evidence against
the premise that if a perfect God created the world then evil can't arise
in it."
> 4. I am entirely at a loss to see how the existence of a god
> is of any use in generating objective ethical truths or
> grounding our belief in them, unless God somehow *creates*
> those objective truths, e.g. by deciding what is to be good
> and what is to be bad; this seems to lead to the conclusion
> that God could equally have decreed that murder, lies, rape,
> cruelty, vanity, etc., are good and their opposites bad.
> This seems basically impossible to square with that intuition
> of objective moral truths on which the argument depends.
Again, not sure I understand. Do you mean the intuition that objective
ethics exist? If so I don't see any conflict here, if one's intuition or
conscience is a sort of detector for the moral truths that God has
created. Just like there is no conflict in arguing 1) the monitor I'm
looking at is objectively here, independently of my or anyone else's
opinion on it, 2) it's here because God willed it to be so, and if he
willed otherwise it wouldn't be.
1st Century Apostolic Traditionalist UK.RC
news:b0b42cc6-9835-42a2-8e37->
>When examining religion it seems to me that many clergymen/women can
>hold at least 2 contradictory opinions regarding aspects of belief/
>morality.
This is because they refuse to adhere to what either Christ or the Apostles
taught and practiced.
For in the case of 'clergywomen' they would not be doing what Paul the great
Apostle absolutely forbade.
Neither would there be highly immoral same-sex fornicating clergyfolks [or
bishops, as in the shameful Anglican Religion], which are now to be seen in
many of the heretical, Truth-forsaking sects.
"God gave them up unto VILE affections: for even their women did change the
natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men,
leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward
another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in
themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. 28 And even as
they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a
reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient."
Romans 1:26-28 (KJV)
Jeff...
Alec Brady
<Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote:
>I am entirely at a loss to see how the existence of a god
>is of any use in generating objective ethical truths or
>grounding our belief in them, unless God somehow *creates*
>those objective truths, e.g. by deciding what is to be good
>and what is to be bad; this seems to lead to the conclusion
>that God could equally have decreed that murder, lies, rape,
>cruelty, vanity, etc., are good and their opposites bad.
>This seems basically impossible to square with that intuition
>of objective moral truths on which the argument depends.
An ethical position is, at root, an appraisal or evaluation of a
course of action. Evaluations can only be carried out by intentional
systems. So if an ethical position is objectively true independently
of whether some human being holds it, what is the intentional system
that's making the associated evaluation?
Or maybe I've misunderstood the idea of objective ethics.
Gareth McCaughan
[me:]
>> I am entirely at a loss to see how the existence of a god
>> is of any use in generating objective ethical truths or
>> grounding our belief in them, unless God somehow *creates*
>> those objective truths, e.g. by deciding what is to be good
>> and what is to be bad; this seems to lead to the conclusion
>> that God could equally have decreed that murder, lies, rape,
>> cruelty, vanity, etc., are good and their opposites bad.
>> This seems basically impossible to square with that intuition
>> of objective moral truths on which the argument depends.
[Alec:]
> An ethical position is, at root, an appraisal or evaluation of a
> course of action. Evaluations can only be carried out by intentional
> systems. So if an ethical position is objectively true independently
> of whether some human being holds it, what is the intentional system
> that's making the associated evaluation?
>
> Or maybe I've misunderstood the idea of objective ethics.
I'm not at all sure that I know what it means for an ethical position
to be objectively true. But if, as you suggest, it means *by definition*
that some intentional system approves and disapproves of things
then I see no grounds for accepting that we all Just Know that
any ethical position is objectively true, and any argument that
starts with that premise and ends with belief in God is circular
because the premise already contains something far too much like
that belief.
(I suppose there might be some interest in an argument that
merely started with the premise that *some* intentional system's
ethical evaluations have universal validity, and ended up showing
that that system has the attributes traditionally ascribed to God.
But the ethical arguments I've heard don't do that; at the most,
they purport to show that there's a perfectly good being or something
like that; in other words, they don't go substantially beyond what
is, according to your account, already assumed in the premise.)
Gareth McCaughan
[me:]
>> 3. It seems to me that anything that actually justifies
>> the claim that "we know that there are objective ethical
>> truths" is, in so far as it justifies that claim, evidence
>> against the second premise, that "if there is no God then
>> there are no objective ethical truths". (Because the only
>> support commonly given for that second premise is of the
>> form "well, go on then, show me any way to get objective
>> ethical truths in a godless world; betcha can't".)
[Michael:]
> I don't see this. I think the common support for the second premise is
> more like "go on show me any plausible *origin* or *foundation* of ethical
> truths in a godless world". It may be possible to demonstrate the
> existence of objective ethics, without giving any clue about how they
> could plausibly be founded.
Well, sure, it *may*, but I have yet to see any sign that
it *is* possible to do that.
But I agree that if someone has a way of demonstrating
(without assuming the existence of God, of course) that
there are objective ethical truths, but the demonstration
doesn't give us any way to see how there *could be*
objective ethical truths, then that would invalidate
the argument in my paragraph quoted above. Anyone want
to offer such a demonstration?
>> 4. I am entirely at a loss to see how the existence of a god
>> is of any use in generating objective ethical truths or
>> grounding our belief in them, unless God somehow *creates*
>> those objective truths, e.g. by deciding what is to be good
>> and what is to be bad; this seems to lead to the conclusion
>> that God could equally have decreed that murder, lies, rape,
>> cruelty, vanity, etc., are good and their opposites bad.
>> This seems basically impossible to square with that intuition
>> of objective moral truths on which the argument depends.
>
> Again, not sure I understand. Do you mean the intuition that objective
> ethics exist?
What I mean is that the intuition people really have (I think)
isn't "objective ethics exist", but "such-and-such particular
objective ethics exist". They say things like "I am as sure that
it's Objectively Wrong to torture small children to death just
for fun as I am of anything". And the idea, I think, is generally
that this feels like an insight into how things absolutely,
non-negotiably must be; not merely into how they contingently
happen to be (e.g. because of the way human brains are wired
or how our societies are structured).
> If so I don't see any conflict here, if one's intuition
> or conscience is a sort of detector for the moral truths that God has
> created. Just like there is no conflict in arguing 1) the monitor I'm
> looking at is objectively here, independently of my or anyone else's
> opinion on it, 2) it's here because God willed it to be so, and if he
> willed otherwise it wouldn't be.
It's certainly possible in principle to have a strong intuition
that (say) torturing small children is objectively wrong, but also
to admit that God could have made it otherwise. But it seems to me
that the character of the strong intuitions people actually have
isn't like that; it feels as if not even God could have made it
better to torture small children than not to, and that sense of
inevitability is part of what inclines us to be so confident that
the intuitions are objectively right.
Perhaps I'm wrong, or at least overgeneralizing.
michaeld
The usual argument - that people's moral intuitions overlap to a large
extent even if they come from independent cultures - seems to be of this
form. Similar to the argument for the objectivity of physical reality that
uses the fact that different people's observations of it have a high level
of consistency. Likewise this doesn't give any clue about the "origin" of
physical reality. (Of course I think the latter argument is much stronger
than the former for more than one reason. But in principle I think the
arguments are analogous.)
> >> 4. I am entirely at a loss to see how the existence of a god
> >> is of any use in generating objective ethical truths or
> >> grounding our belief in them, unless God somehow *creates*
> >> those objective truths, e.g. by deciding what is to be good
> >> and what is to be bad; this seems to lead to the conclusion
> >> that God could equally have decreed that murder, lies, rape,
> >> cruelty, vanity, etc., are good and their opposites bad.
> >> This seems basically impossible to square with that intuition
> >> of objective moral truths on which the argument depends.
> >
> > Again, not sure I understand. Do you mean the intuition that objective
> > ethics exist?
>
> What I mean is that the intuition people really have (I think)
> isn't "objective ethics exist", but "such-and-such particular
> objective ethics exist". They say things like "I am as sure that
> it's Objectively Wrong to torture small children to death just
> for fun as I am of anything". And the idea, I think, is generally
> that this feels like an insight into how things absolutely,
> non-negotiably must be; not merely into how they contingently
> happen to be (e.g. because of the way human brains are wired
> or how our societies are structured).
I think the idea is that it gives insight to how things *are*
(independently of society, the human brain, etc.) rather than necessarily
how things *must* be.
Of course some theists may well think that God couldn't have set up his
moral law any differently because that would mean acting against his
nature as a "maximally perfect being" or whatever. (This obviously opens
up new questions, and I'm not primarily addressing this view.)
> > If so I don't see any conflict here, if one's intuition
> > or conscience is a sort of detector for the moral truths that God has
> > created. Just like there is no conflict in arguing 1) the monitor I'm
> > looking at is objectively here, independently of my or anyone else's
> > opinion on it, 2) it's here because God willed it to be so, and if he
> > willed otherwise it wouldn't be.
>
> It's certainly possible in principle to have a strong intuition
> that (say) torturing small children is objectively wrong, but also
> to admit that God could have made it otherwise. But it seems to me
> that the character of the strong intuitions people actually have
> isn't like that; it feels as if not even God could have made it
> better to torture small children than not to, and that sense of
> inevitability is part of what inclines us to be so confident that
> the intuitions are objectively right.
Well I don't know about the character of strong intuitions that most
people have, but I don't see that this sense of inevitability is at all
necessary for the argument.
Richard
>I shall probably go to my grave with this one! I was brought up as a
> Christian but I have , from an early age, never really believed. I am
> getting on a bit in terms of age. I would like to believe for a lot of
> reasons, one of which would be the righting of wrongs in this
> world.Another would be to gain a sense of being part of something
> greater and to feel God's love and to impart that to others.
>
> there is one he takes great pains to be as invisible/ unapproachable
> would be revealed. this has not worked - of course , the get-out
> clause would be that I did not pray earnestly enough.
>
> the most true. Or should I follow another path?
You will have read the new testament gospels I presume.
Are you prepared to put some faith in them (and old testament scriptures) by
studying these scriptures looking for meaning and understanding?
As you ponder the scriptures and seek to figure out their meaning you will
get more confidence that they are true.
The church that has to greatest truth offers a plan of salvation that truly
shows God's mercy and wisdom. A plan of salvation that offers hope to all
people, believing or otherwise.
Gareth McCaughan
[me:]
>> But I agree that if someone has a way of demonstrating
>> (without assuming the existence of God, of course) that
>> there are objective ethical truths, but the demonstration
>> doesn't give us any way to see how there *could be*
>> objective ethical truths, then that would invalidate
>> the argument in my paragraph quoted above. Anyone want
>> to offer such a demonstration?
[Michael:]
> The usual argument - that people's moral intuitions overlap to a large
> extent even if they come from independent cultures - seems to be of this
> form. Similar to the argument for the objectivity of physical reality that
> uses the fact that different people's observations of it have a high level
> of consistency. Likewise this doesn't give any clue about the "origin" of
> physical reality. (Of course I think the latter argument is much stronger
> than the former for more than one reason. But in principle I think the
> arguments are analogous.)
The "usual argument" seems to me to be obviously extremely weak;
the idea that it demonstrates that moral values have objective
reality seems to me not worth taking seriously.
(At least, if "objective reality" is taken to mean something
strong enough to have any hope of making an argument for God
or against naturalism work. In particular, something more
than intersubjectivity.)
>> What I mean is that the intuition people really have (I think)
>> isn't "objective ethics exist", but "such-and-such particular
>> objective ethics exist". They say things like "I am as sure that
>> it's Objectively Wrong to torture small children to death just
>> for fun as I am of anything". And the idea, I think, is generally
>> that this feels like an insight into how things absolutely,
>> non-negotiably must be; not merely into how they contingently
>> happen to be (e.g. because of the way human brains are wired
>> or how our societies are structured).
>
> I think the idea is that it gives insight to how things *are*
> (independently of society, the human brain, etc.) rather than
> necessarily how things *must* be.
But it seems to me (and, again, I'm open to persuasion otherwise)
that what makes these insights seem like they're into something
"independent of society, the human brain, etc." is precisely that
they feel like insights into how things *must* be.
> Of course some theists may well think that God couldn't have set up his
> moral law any differently because that would mean acting against his
> nature as a "maximally perfect being" or whatever. (This obviously opens
> up new questions, and I'm not primarily addressing this view.)
Sure.
>> It's certainly possible in principle to have a strong intuition
>> that (say) torturing small children is objectively wrong, but also
>> to admit that God could have made it otherwise. But it seems to me
>> that the character of the strong intuitions people actually have
>> isn't like that; it feels as if not even God could have made it
>> better to torture small children than not to, and that sense of
>> inevitability is part of what inclines us to be so confident that
>> the intuitions are objectively right.
>
> Well I don't know about the character of strong intuitions that most
> people have, but I don't see that this sense of inevitability is at all
> necessary for the argument.
I dunno. When the argument is basically "we have these intuitions,
and they feel like X, so X must be the case", it seems to me that
the actual nature of those intuitions is pretty fundamental; and
saying "well, you might have intuitions that only felt like Y instead,
and they'd have led to a slightly different conclusion" rather misses
the point.
Dianelos Georgoudis
wrote:
> DianelosGeorgoudis wrote:
[snip]
> > I am not sure what your point is. God is spirit, and a spirit is
> > undetectable by reference to the physical world too.
>
> Perhaps, then, we mean different things by "evidence".
By "evidence" I understand any datum one feels confident enough to use
as a premise in an argument. Surely one's observations of the
phenomenal physical world are evidence, and surely objective reality
must be such as to produce them. By "phenomenal physical world" I mean
our direct observations of the universe around us unencumbered by any
ontological presuppositions. Unfortunately people do not always agree
about what constitutes evidence. For example for me the objectivity of
some moral propositions, or my possession of libertarian free will, do
constitute evidence but others may disagree. In general naturalists
tend to reject any evidence that is not physical, which kind of begs
the question I think.
> > After all our own
> > spirit is undetectable by reference to the physical world; a famous
> > issue in the mind-body problem. Now God *could* have made Him/Herself
> > known by reference to the physical world, but there is some good
> > reason why God would not choose to do so. After all when there is so
> > much good non-physical evidence for God [1] why should God offer us
> > misguiding physical evidence too?
>
> > [1] A little playfully Plantinga has listed two dozen or so arguments
> > for God, see:http://philofreligion.homestead.com/files/Theisticarguments.html
>
> Of which, at least, E,F,K,L,M,R*,T,V,W all make use of empirical
> facts (or alleged facts) about how the world is, and therefore
> rely on the idea that God is not in fact "undetectable by reference
> to the physical world".
Well, at least E (the argument from physical constants) clearly
references the physical world (or to be precise references physical
phenomena). I happen to think that this is a wrong argument, because I
believe one is within one's epistemic rights to claim that the most
fundamental causal/explanatory principles of reality are brute facts
and do not require nor admit further justification. So a naturalist
need not explain why the fundamental physical constants or laws are as
they are. Similarly a theist need not explain why, say, God is good. I
am not sure the other arguments you quote above require references to
the physical world. In any case I myself have suggested such an
argument, namely that naturalists have found it very difficult to
describe a physical reality that would produce the physical phenomena
we know about. In any case I stand by my original argument that if God
exists then one would expect God not to supply us with misleading
evidence, and physical evidence of the kind that atheists often demand
(that God were somehow directly visible or else necessary to explain
physical phenomena) is misleading evidence for the simple reason that
God is a spiritual being and not in any way a physical being. One way
or the other I pointed at Plantinga’s paper to support my claim that
there is a lot of non-physical evidence for God, at least for a
theist.
One more note on what you write above: Unless one begs the question by
implicitly assuming naturalism, "empirical facts about the world" is a
much broader concept than "detectable by reference to the physical
world". For example the fact that I am a conscious being, or even how
red looks like, belong to the former but not to the latter.
[snip]
> >> [SNIP:Dianelosmakes his usual claims that a naturalistic
> >> worldview cannot account for such things as consciousness,
> >> whereas a theistic one can.
>
> > That's not only my claim; there is a huge literature about the mind-
> > body problem.
>
> Er, I never said or suggested that no one else makes the same
> claims.
Many of the philosophers who are uneasy by the mind-body problem are
naturalists. That naturalism has grave trouble accounting for
consciousness is as close to a fact as it goes. So I was just claiming
something that is well-known and well accepted.
> > And as theism posits that a spirit (i.e. a conscious
> > being) forms the most basic level of reality theism does not need
> > to account for the presence of consciousness itself. Similarly a
> > naturalist need not account for whatever it is they believe forms
> > the most basic level of reality.
>
> I think your logic here is utterly broken; sorry.
Why?
[snip]
> My past experience of attempting to have a substantial
> discussion with you is as follows: you write at very great
> length, repeatedly claiming that some dubious thing or other
> is perfectly obvious, so obvious that every ten-year-old
> can see it; when I muster the time and energy to respond
> to everything you've written and seek clarification on the
> many points at which you resort to bluster and hand-waving,
> you then drop the conversation entirely.
I am sorry you feel that way, but it is true that I have not yet
answered in detail your long message from back November 2006. (As for
my mentioning the ten-year-old that was in the context of answering
your challenge to define "consciousness": I was pointing out that even
a ten-year-old understands the difference between a being that
possesses consciousness and a thing that doesn't. My point was that
when even children are able to coherently and intelligently use the
concept of consciousness the fact that this concept is hard to define
is irrelevant to our discussion because we all already understand what
it means. And from where I stand it is clear why consciousness is not
only hard but actually impossible to define: it represents the most
basic level of reality and cannot therefore be further analyzed.
Rather, ultimately, all other concepts are defined contingently to
consciousness.)
[snip]
> > The
> > generally accepted view is that the existence of objective ethical
> > truths is not compatible with naturalism. Do you agree? I remember you
> > once explained that your ethics is based on axioms, such as that
> > everyone's pleasure (in the non-trivial sense) is good.
>
> I hope I didn't quite say that my ethics is based on axioms;
> I might well have said that one can construct a decent ethical
> system on the basis of axioms, though.
>
> For the reasons already discussed, I am not going to attempt
> a substantial discussion with you on this topic: I think I will
> find it too frustrating if I try. But here is a brief summary
> of my thinking on this topic; I shall say no more about it
> to you unless you somehow convince me that discussion with you
> has become less futile.
>
> 1. The argument goes like this: "We know that there are
> objective ethical truths; if there is no God then there
> are no objective ethical truths; therefore there is a God".
> (Here, as often, you prefer to state things in terms of
> "naturalism", but I worry that that term is not precisely
> enough defined to be useful; perhaps not precisely enough
> definable to be useful. I shall, with only perfunctory
> apologies, stick with the theistic rather than the anti-naturalistic
> version of the argument.)
Well, ok, but I'd like to point out that sometimes atheists kind of
bash on theism while being distinctly unwilling to offer or discuss
their own alternative ontological worldview. As I have argued the only
way to decide which of two alternative ontological worldviews is the
more reasonable or successful is to directly compare them one to one.
And in this context I think that theism gives a coherent account for
ethics whereas naturalism (which is the typical atheist's worldview)
has grave trouble accounting for it. More about this later.
As for definitions, I would like to propose the following: Naturalism
is the belief that reality is at its most basic level mechanical, i.e.
governed by algorithmic/mathematical laws. Scientific naturalism is
the belief that science describes all there is to reality, and
specifically that scientific models not only describe the order
present in physical phenomena but also the objective reality that
produces them.
> 2. The argument is at any rate no stronger than its first
> premise. I do not know whether moral nonrealism is in fact
> correct, but I think it's quite clear that it isn't crazy;
> so even if everything else in the argument were watertight,
> it wouldn't be all that powerful.
I think it is crazy. For example I think it is crazy to suspect that
to torture a sentient being for fun is wrong only because of personal
opinion or because of social convention or because of the way our
brains have evolved. Of course ethical beliefs are personal opinions,
on the matter of torture for fun there is a clear social convention in
place, and it may well be true that our instinctive aversion to
torturing others for fun is hard-wired in the structure of our brain
as the result of an evolutionary process. But I still think it is
crazy to believe that torturing others for fun is wrong not
objectively but only as an implication of these factors. And I here
mean "crazy" literally: I think that a human being who truly believes
that torturing for fun is not objectively wrong suffers from some kind
of serious cognitive malfunction. In any case I understand you
personally do believe in ethical realism, i.e. in the proposition that
at least some ethical values are objective.
> 3. It seems to me that anything that actually justifies
> the claim that "we know that there are objective ethical
> truths" is, in so far as it justifies that claim, evidence
> against the second premise, that "if there is no God then
> there are no objective ethical truths". (Because the only
> support commonly given for that second premise is of the
> form "well, go on then, show me any way to get objective
> ethical truths in a godless world; betcha can't".)
Well, if a particular ontological theory fails to account for a
proposition the truth of which one is certain about, then this
certainly decreases the probability or reasonableness of that theory
from one’s point of view. In the case at hand naturalist philosophers
have tried to find ways to account of objective ethical truths but
with no success. Similarly they have tried to find ways to account for
consciousness, again with no success. And they have tried to find ways
to account for beliefs having content, again with no success. They
even have tried to find ways to account for the physical phenomena we
now know about, again with no success. A naturalist can argue that all
this evidence does not conclusively disprove naturalism because all
these conceptual problems may be solved in the future – but still the
evidence against naturalism is mounting and in my judgment is already
overwhelming.
> 4. I am entirely at a loss to see how the existence of a god
> is of any use in generating objective ethical truths or
> grounding our belief in them, unless God somehow *creates*
> those objective truths, e.g. by deciding what is to be good
> and what is to be bad; this seems to lead to the conclusion
> that God could equally have decreed that murder, lies, rape,
> cruelty, vanity, etc., are good and their opposites bad.
> This seems basically impossible to square with that intuition
> of objective moral truths on which the argument depends.
This is an age old misunderstanding known as Euthyphro's Dilemma. The
solution is really simple: Something is good not because God *says*
so, but because God *is* so. In short, something is good to the degree
that it resembles God. And of course what God says is consistent to
His/Her nature.
> 5. There are certainly plenty of difficulties associated
> with the idea of objective moral truths: how do we know
> they're there?, why should we trust our apparent knowledge
> of them?, how do they actually give us reason to act in
> particular ways?, etc., etc. But (a) these difficulties
> seem to me just as severe for the theist (unless s/he
> adopts the sort of divine-command theory I just objected
> to) as for the atheist, and (b) in so far as they are
> real difficulties, they undermine the claim that we
> Just Know that there are objective moral truths.
That there are objective moral truths is a basic belief; to ask how
one knows the truth of basic beliefs amounts to sterile skepticism and
renders any kind of cognitive advancement impossible.
How one discovers what is ethically right is fairly easy for a
Christian to answer: Just realize in your life Christ's new
commandment and you can hardly go wrong in your ethical decisions. But
here I'd like to propose a purely theistic answer: We are spiritual
beings in the image of God, and our deeds not only affect the physical
world around us but also affect us: how we choose to act transforms
our spiritual selves. A deed is ethically good to the degree that it
makes us more similar to how God is. And how does one know one is
becoming more similar to God? Experientially. One who does become more
similar to God won't miss the fact - obviously. Indeed the human
condition we currently find ourselves in is the optimal environment
for us to grow in that spiritual sense. Returning to Christian-speak,
to do what Christ asks of us is to follow Christ - and to follow
Christ is to come closer to God. In conclusion I don't think there are
any difficulties whatsoever for a theist (and more specifically for a
Christian) in respect to explaining ethics in a way that is both
natural and illuminating.
Compare this state of affairs with the moral nihilism that many
naturalists find themselves drawn to. Here is a quote from Richard
Dawkins’ book River out of Eden: "In a universe of blind physical
forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt,
other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or
reason in it, or any justice. The universe that we observe has
precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no
design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless
indifference."
Of course whatever naturalism’s conceptual problem with ethics it does
not follow that naturalists are therefore incapable or ethical action.
After all, whatever one’s ontological beliefs, one is still a
spiritual being made in the image of God, and hence a being with
ethical cognitive capacity, and a being in whose nature it is to
treasure ethical advancement. Still, all other factors being the same,
a theist is apt to behave more ethically than a naturalist, simply
because the theist has one more reason to do so. Namely the
recognition that one’s life here on Earth is just the beginning of
one’s eternal spiritual life, and the recognition of how vain the
goals are that typically move one towards unethical behavior.
> > It's impractical to discuss with an atheist specific Christian beliefs
> > because one sooner or later finds oneself discussing whether Jesus was
> > really born of a virgin, or whether salvation is really pre-ordained,
> > and other similar points which are quite irrelevant to the question of
> > whether theism or naturalism is more reasonable.
>
> 1. I don't see that it's in the least inevitable that one will
> end up having such specific discussions if they aren't relevant.
All these nested negatives :-)
Anyway I am saying the above from experience. Here’s is some indirect
evidence: If you google “new commandment” in richarddawkins.net you’ll
get 9 hits, “theodicy” will get you 280 hits; “problem of evil” will
get you 531 hits; but “virgin birth” will get you 1710 hits.
> 2. I think they might be more relevant than you think. Here's
> one reason: You are (not merely a theist but) a Christian. So
> presumably the variety of theism that you find most credible
> is a Christian one. When trying to assess the credibility of
> a very broad claim (e.g., "there is a god" or "there is no god")
> it's perfectly reasonable to say: Let's look at some more specific
> ways in which this claim might be true, and see how well they
> work.
Certainly I think Christianity is the most powerful expression of
theism, but I don’t need to bring up Christianity when I judge that
plain vanilla theism is already more powerful than scientific
naturalism. You are right that one should not equate atheism with
scientific naturalism, but then I am waiting for an atheist to suggest
a more powerful ontology than scientific naturalism.
> (This appears to me to be almost exactly the argument by which
> you justify comparing theism with scientific naturalism rather
> than with atheism.)
I don’t see that. I think it’s a perfectly practical decision not to
bring on the table specific ontological beliefs when doing so is
superfluous and only complicates the discussion.
> > After all every
> > single specifically Christian belief may be false and theism may still
> > be more reasonable than naturalism.
>
> And every single specifically naturalist belief may be false
> and atheism may still be more reasonable than Christianity.
True. So, again, let’s hear about the atheistic ontology that is more
reasonable the plain theism. What is clearly unreasonable is for an
atheist to argue that some undefined and unnamed atheistic ontology is
more reasonable than theism.
> Neither of which is terribly relevant if the actual question
> at issue is "theism or atheism?" or "Christianity or naturalism?",
> both of which seem to me to be better questions than "theism
> or naturalism?".
I think I don’t need to use Christianity’s deeper truths in order to
defend the claim that theism is more reasonable than atheism. One can
only compare positive ontological theories, atheists’ common worldview
is scientific naturalism, so that’s the one I use in my comparison.
> > Now you rightly point out that I restrict my criticism of atheism on
> > the more specific position of scientific naturalism. But all atheists
> > I know, and surely the great majority of atheists in any case, are
> > scientific naturalists, i.e. believe that objective reality is such as
> > scientific models describe. Perhaps there are atheistic worldviews
> > that are stronger than scientific naturalism. So what are your beliefs
> > about reality? Are you a scientific naturalist too or do you hold some
> > more sophisticated view?
>
> Sorry, but I've already answered a whole lot of your questions
> about my own view at great length and asked you some very basic
> ones about your view, which you have so far not seen fit to
> answer. Your worldview-questioning account is badly overdrawn
> at present.
Fine, but until you suggest a more powerful atheistic ontology than
scientific naturalism I have no option but to keep comparing the
reasonableness of theism with it.
Dianelos Georgoudis
[snip]
> An ethical position is, at root, an appraisal or evaluation of a
> course of action. Evaluations can only be carried out by intentional
> systems. So if an ethical position is objectively true independently
> of whether some human being holds it, what is the intentional system
> that's making the associated evaluation?
>
> Or maybe I've misunderstood the idea of objective ethics.
Well consider this analogy: Physical things are thought to have an
objective mass. What the value of this mass is can be known only if
somebody actually measures it one way or the other. And sometimes it
can be very difficult to actually find out the mass of a thing; for
example we don't know the mass of a neutrino. But the fact that the
mass of a thing can be known only if somebody intentionally and
successfully discovers it does not imply that the mass is not there
objectively. Similarly a particular course of action has an objective
ethical value. That value can be known only if somebody intentionally
and successfully discovers it, but this does not imply that that value
was not there objectively in the first place.
Richard Corfield
> I am the type of person who tends to hold logical reasoning above
> emotion most of the time. That may be a failing or perhapsnot. I have
> spent my working life dealing with facts and figures so I have
> difficulty in accepting a lot of the nebulous arguments for the
> existence of God.
> When examining religion it seems to me that many clergymen/women can
> hold at least 2 contradictory opinions regarding aspects of belief/
> morality.
I wonder if partitioning of belief is common, or finding a form of
belief that's a lot more liberal than you'd expect.
> My parents were practising Christians ( as is my sister and her
> husband today) and I was brought up in the faith but I rejected it
> towards the end of my primary school education and I found I was not
> alone when I started secondary school - most pupils gave the Religious
> Education teacher a hard time!
> Despite what I have said, I would love to believe in God. Whether that
> is a thowback to my parents' beliefs or a childhood affection for
> fairy-tales or something deeper I do not know. But a longing for
> belief and an actual belief based on some sort of experience are two
> different things
Is it something to do with what they have? The way they live life or are,
but something you can't approach because of logic getting in the way?
Is it a comfort for yourself, or a question of your own future?
Disatisfaction with life? "There must be something more"? I don't know
how you've lead life so far. It seems that there's a text-book pattern
of coming to faith that is much the same whatever the religion. I've
had Christians question me on the assumption I follow that pattern.
You can, apparently, get an 'experience' on the Alpha Course. Some love
it. Some don't get on with it. (I didn't get on with it having fallen
at the first or second week's hurdle.) Alternately explore churches
and see what you find.
- Richard
Richard Corfield
>
> I am not sure what your point is. God is spirit, and a spirit is
> undetectable by reference to the physical world too. After all our own
> spirit is undetectable by reference to the physical world; a famous
> issue in the mind-body problem. Now God *could* have made Him/Herself
> known by reference to the physical world, but there is some good
> reason why God would not choose to do so. After all when there is so
> much good non-physical evidence for God [1] why should God offer us
> misguiding physical evidence too?
But even if you can say that there must be a god (I'm not convinced yet
by those arguments) you've not gone as far as proving the very big jump to
"Chrisitianity provides the one correct definition of this god".
Brahman seems to fulfill your requirement just as well. Brahman is
a very different kind of thing to the Christian god. (Unless you see
the Christian god along with hundreds of other deities and billions of
individual internal representations as specialisations of Brahman which
is therefore unknowable unless you've 'been there').
In fact reading your discussion of Spirit being the _underlying_
thing in our world seems a closer picture of (Para)Brahman than of the
Christian god who seems to normally be an entirely external creator. I
think such discussion is already at too deep a level of detail than we
can really know.
It may be a more agnostic viewpoint, or may be within normal atheism, to
say "We just are. This is what we have. We do our best with this". That
world view can be very powerful and work very well for those that hold
it. All the good things that we promote - social cohesion, helping others,
non-greed, selflessness, are all things that serve humanity as a whole
very well. Religion can help achieve this, but it can also go wrong.
> Yeah, we kind of tend to speak pass each other. Perhaps we could focus
> on one issue which is extremely important, namely ethics. The
> generally accepted view is that the existence of objective ethical
> truths is not compatible with naturalism. Do you agree? I remember you
> once explained that your ethics is based on axioms, such as that
> everyone's pleasure (in the non-trivial sense) is good. But other
> people may choose other axioms, perhaps that only their own pleasure
> is good. To be objective truths must ultimately be rooted in objective
> reality independently of personal opinion or social convention, and I
> don't see how your own set or any set of ethical axioms can be thus
> justified within the framework of naturalism's understanding of
> reality. I'd be thankful if you explained this point to me.
The Dharmin does quite well here, but that's just another viewpoint.
Dharma could be just our observation of things in the world. It seems
to work better if such and such, yet that's us humans. People past
have observed patterns in life and found that certain behaviours lead
to something - enlightenment perhaps - which they see as very good and
explain in terms of their understanding of the world. Other creatures
have other ways and other goals.
Why do we help others? Because we follow Jesus' example? So we go to
heaven? Because we believe that Karma Yoga [coming closer to god through
action] brings us closer to god? Because anything which brings us closer
to god will be rewarding? Because we see the divinity within them? Because
we seem them as god's creation? Because we can empathise? Because they
are human like us? If we were in that situation? Because we want to
convert them? For social standing?
We do find that if we get on and start helping others, doing all the
community things, maybe even practicing our religion, then it can help
us. Interesting.
> It's impractical to discuss with an atheist specific Christian beliefs
> because one sooner or later finds oneself discussing whether Jesus was
> really born of a virgin, or whether salvation is really pre-ordained,
> and other similar points which are quite irrelevant to the question of
> whether theism or naturalism is more reasonable. After all every
> single specifically Christian belief may be false and theism may still
> be more reasonable than naturalism. So to discuss theism with an
> atheist on the denominational level is a distraction at best. My claim
> is that plain vanilla theism works much better than scientific
> naturalism for understanding the human condition, i.e. for
> understanding the reality we find ourselves in.
But it's still a big jump to the kinds of beliefs which a lot of
Christians have - maybe you don't - that belief in specifically Christ
is the most important thing. Christianity narrows it down to a single
deity and a single story.
You stated in your first post in this thread that we can just discard
viewpoints outside monotheism and naturalism, but did not back that
claim up. I don't think you can justify discarding them, but leaving
them in makes this argument a lot more complex.
The jump from "Scientific naturalism doesn't seem to explain consciousness
or morality very well" to all the things that come with Christian belief
is huge. There are many things that theism does not explain well.
> Now you rightly point out that I restrict my criticism of atheism on
> the more specific position of scientific naturalism. But all atheists
> I know, and surely the great majority of atheists in any case, are
> scientific naturalists, i.e. believe that objective reality is such as
> scientific models describe. Perhaps there are atheistic worldviews
> that are stronger than scientific naturalism. So what are your beliefs
> about reality? Are you a scientific naturalist too or do you hold some
> more sophisticated view?
Scientific Naturalism does not seem unsophisticated.
- Richard
Gareth McCaughan
I'll wait a day. Some punctuation characters etc. may have been
lightly mangled in the retrieving-and-resending process. I also
changed a couple of words for clarity, not that it matters.)
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
> On Aug 3, 4:38 am, Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.McCaug...@pobox.com>
> wrote:
>> DianelosGeorgoudis wrote:
> [snip]
>>> I am not sure what your point is. God is spirit, and a spirit is
>>> undetectable by reference to the physical world too.
>>
>> Perhaps, then, we mean different things by "evidence".
>
> By "evidence" I understand any datum one feels confident enough to use
> as a premise in an argument.
Oh dear.
[...]
> In general naturalists
> tend to reject any evidence that is not physical, which kind of begs
> the question I think.
In our other discussions you have said, contrariwise, that naturalists
*must* reject anything that is not physical, which you regard as
absurd on its face, therefore naturalism is wrong, QED.
It seems that naturalists cannot win. At least, not in a discussion
with someone whose definition of "evidence" is "anything someone
feels confident about".
[about some arguments listed by Alvin Plantinga:]
> Well, at least E (the argument from physical constants) clearly
> references the physical world (or to be precise references physical
> phenomena). I happen to think that this is a wrong argument, because I
> believe one is within one's epistemic rights to claim that the most
> fundamental causal/explanatory principles of reality are brute facts
> and do not require nor admit further justification. So a naturalist
> need not explain why the fundamental physical constants or laws are as
> they are.
I think your framing of the issue in terms of "epistemic rights"
is ill-conceived. It is better to ask: what views fit how well
with the evidence? than: what views am I "entitled" to hold?. And
the claim made by advocates of fine-tuning arguments is that the
available evidence is much more probable on a theistic hypothesis
than on an atheistic one, and that the evidence therefore favours
theism over atheism.
I think it's far from clear that the argument is correct, but
it seems absolutely barmy to me to dismiss it by saying that
"one is within one's epistemic rights" to do so.
Your claim is that naturalist views can't, *and theistic views
can*, account for consciousness and matter and the relationships
between them. This is not, in fact, something that everyone agrees
upon.
Anyway. I am not going to respond further to your bluster
about consciousness, with its constant appeals to what everyone
(or every 10-year-old, or every philosopher, or everyone called
Dianelos Georgoudis) knows, until you make a credible attempt
to explain what you actually mean by the term. Sorry.
(And I mean actually explain, not just wave your hands and say
"all *this*" or whatever. I have explained at great length why
your purported explanations to date don't seem to me to be
useful.)
>>> And as theism posits that a spirit (i.e. a conscious
>>> being) forms the most basic level of reality theism does not need
>>> to account for the presence of consciousness itself. Similarly a
>>> naturalist need not account for whatever it is they believe forms
>>> the most basic level of reality.
>>
>> I think your logic here is utterly broken; sorry.
>
> Why?
It amounts to saying: anyone gets to postulate whatever they like
as "the most basic level of reality", and then questions about
how plausible that postulation is are off limits -- and furthermore,
it seems, whatever's claimed to be "most basic" is then just assumed
to have been explained adequately. If you take that idea seriously,
then I can make up some loony theory about how reality is, at its
most fundamental level, made up of jokes or cream cakes or rabbits
or something. And then claim that my theory ipso facto tells us
all we need to know about jokes or cream cakes or rabbits.
Now, of course I do agree that any theory is going to have
some point at which it says "sorry, no idea why that's the case",
and the mere fact of having such a point isn't a strike against
the theory. But it's perfectly reasonable to look at two theories
and compare the assumptions they need to make; or to look at
one theory, and say "that assumption seems awfully implausible".
(Though if you want to have much of an argument in the latter
case, you'd better have some evidence that there are theories
whose assumptions are less implausible.)
>> My past experience of attempting to have a substantial
>> discussion with you is as follows: you write at very great
>> length, repeatedly claiming that some dubious thing or other
>> is perfectly obvious, so obvious that every ten-year-old
>> can see it; when I muster the time and energy to respond
>> to everything you've written and seek clarification on the
>> many points at which you resort to bluster and hand-waving,
>> you then drop the conversation entirely.
>
> I am sorry you feel that way,
That was not a description of my feelings, it was a description
of your behaviour. (I did go on to say "This does not encourage
me to try again". *That* was a description of my feelings.)
> but it is true that I have not yet
> answered in detail your long message from back November 2006.
To be more precise, you haven't yet made the slightest gesture
in the direction of answering any of what I said in it. (In case
anyone else is reading this, I should add that the admittedly
extreme length of that message was as nothing compared with the
aggregate length of the ones from Dianelos to which it was a
response :-). )
(Of course you aren't under any obligation to answer anything
I've written, and I hope nothing I've said gives the impression
that I think you are.)
> (As for
> my mentioning the ten-year-old that was in the context of answering
> your challenge to define "consciousness": I was pointing out that even
> a ten-year-old understands the difference between a being that
> possesses consciousness and a thing that doesn't. My point was that
> when even children are able to coherently and intelligently use the
> concept of consciousness the fact that this concept is hard to define
> is irrelevant to our discussion because we all already understand what
> it means.
See my "long message from back in November 2006" for a response
to all that.
>> For the reasons already discussed, I am not going to attempt
>> a substantial discussion with you on this topic: I think I will
>> find it too frustrating if I try. But here is a brief summary
>> of my thinking on this topic; I shall say no more about it
>> to you unless you somehow convince me that discussion with you
>> has become less futile.
(I'm doing as I said.)
> As for definitions, I would like to propose the following: Naturalism
> is the belief that reality is at its most basic level mechanical, i.e.
> governed by algorithmic/mathematical laws.
On the face of it, this excludes the possibility of randomness,
but there are views that I would certainly call naturalistic
that claim that there is irreducible randomness in the way the
world behaves.
> Scientific naturalism
> is the belief that science describes all there is to reality, and
> specifically that scientific models not only describe the order
> present in physical phenomena but also the objective reality that
> produces them.
I think I would want clarification on a lot of points before
admitting, even tentatively, to being a "scientific naturalist"
in that sense.
> Compare this state of affairs with the moral nihilism that many
> naturalists find themselves drawn to. Here is a quote from Richard
> Dawkins' book River out of Eden: "In a universe of blind physical
> forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt,
> other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or
> reason in it, or any justice. The universe that we observe has
> precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no
> design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless
> indifference."
Yes, those words appear in "River out of Eden", and so far as
I can tell Dawkins really means them. But I don't think he means
by them what you are trying to claim he means. In particular,
this doesn't appear to me to be a statement of moral nihilism
(that there are no real moral values); rather, it is a statement
that the universe does not *behave* according to moral values.
>>> It's impractical to discuss with an atheist specific Christian beliefs
>>> because one sooner or later finds oneself discussing whether Jesus was
>>> really born of a virgin, or whether salvation is really pre-ordained,
>>> and other similar points which are quite irrelevant to the question of
>>> whether theism or naturalism is more reasonable.
...
> Anyway I am saying the above from experience. Here's is some indirect
> evidence: If you google "new commandment" in richarddawkins.net you'll
> get 9 hits, "theodicy" will get you 280 hits; "problem of evil" will
> get you 531 hits; but "virgin birth" will get you 1710 hits.
Quite a lot of which appear to be about parthenogenesis
in lizards. I don't really see that this is much evidence
of anything. ("existence of god" -> 6690 hits; "intelligent
design" -> 9930 hits; <<evil suffering>> (no quotes) ->
5570 hits, of which about half seem to be to do with the
problem of evil.)
>> (This appears to me to be almost exactly the argument by which
>> you justify comparing theism with scientific naturalism rather
>> than with atheism.)
>
> I don't see that. I think it's a perfectly practical decision not
> to bring on the table specific ontological beliefs when doing so
> is superfluous and only complicates the discussion.
*Your* specific ontological beliefs are (you say) irrelevant,
superfluous and merely liable to complicate the discussion;
those nasty atheists keep pointing at Christian doctrines and
saying that they're hard to believe.
*My* specific ontological beliefs, however, are (you say)
of vital importance because you can point at them and say
that they're hard to believe.
Double standard.
>>> After all every
>>> single specifically Christian belief may be false and theism may still
>>> be more reasonable than naturalism.
>>
>> And every single specifically naturalist belief may be false
>> and atheism may still be more reasonable than Christianity.
>
> True. So, again, let's hear about the atheistic ontology that is more
> reasonable the plain theism.
And here we go again: it would be an irrelevant impertinence
to suggest that *you* be committed to any position more specific
than theism, whereas it is essential that *I* be pinned down
to something more specific than atheism.
Double standard.
> What is clearly unreasonable is for an
> atheist to argue that some undefined and unnamed atheistic ontology
> is more reasonable than theism.
What atheists in fact do much more often is to argue that atheism
is more reasonable than theism, or that (say) scientific naturalism
is more reasonable than (say) traditional Christianity.
Richard Corfield
>
> My favourite example of this:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYAzoPvI_sM&feature=related
Does he see a hole in the head as positive or negative?
Ah - negative. Hmmmm.
Could do with it in text form. He reads slowly.
You must react to "Abonimable Frock Religion" though ;-) He doesn't like
catholics. Other than that he's said only one bit of info. I've seen
such beliefs discussed here.
I'm afraid I didn't watch the whole thing.
- Richard
Richard Corfield
>
> (In case it's not clear what we sort of theology we're dealing with here,
> see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2ruQjSy2ZU&feature=related - in
> particular the little bombshell he drops on 2:07. Or nearly any of his
> other 300 or so videos.)
Someone's done a response at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyyfzTEfVe0&feature=related
- Richard
(Yes I know, should be responding to Eric, but it's a long post!)
- Richard
Gareth McCaughan
> You must react to "Abonimable Frock Religion" though ;-) He doesn't like
> catholics. Other than that he's said only one bit of info. I've seen
> such beliefs discussed here.
I think you're confusing two different Michael D's. The one
you're replying to is an atheist; he's not Mike Davis, the
Roman Catholic.
Richard Corfield
> Richard Corfield wrote:
>
>> You must react to "Abonimable Frock Religion" though ;-) He doesn't like
>> catholics. Other than that he's said only one bit of info. I've seen
>> such beliefs discussed here.
>
> I think you're confusing two different Michael D's. The one
> you're replying to is an atheist; he's not Mike Davis, the
> Roman Catholic.
>
Oops. I must keep up with goings on here.
- Richard
PG
> loiner2003 wrote:
> > Frederick Williams wrote:
>
> >>> How have others come to feel the presence ofGod. Arethereany
> >>> suggestions on the path I should take. Which Christian denomination is
> >>> the most true. Or should I follow another path?
>
>
> > Atheism is not a path. It is more a decision thatthereis no path.
>
> A realisation or a decision?
Neither. It is a very broad label covering the views of those who
maintain that there currently (in our opinions) lacks any
substantiation whatsoever for the claim that there is any purposefully
designed point of origin/creation, any marked paths beyond those we
trace out for ourselves, or any intended destination, deriving from
the existence, desires and actions of an alleged personal,
interventionist, omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent, creator god.
Alternatively, you could always add a conditional to the earlier
definitions (*"may not"* be a path), and that wouldn't be too far from
the mark.
pga
Knuje
> I shall probably go to my grave with this one! I was brought up as a
> Christian but I have , from an early age, never really believed. I am
> getting on a bit in terms of age. I would like to believe for a lot of
> reasons, one of which would be the righting of wrongs in this
> world.Another would be to gain a sense of being part of something
> greater and to feel God's love and to impart that to others.
>
> I , however , have great difficulty with the evidence for a god. If
> there is one he takes great pains to be as invisible/ unapproachable
> as possible. It has been suggested to me if I prayed earnestly all
> would be revealed. this has not worked - of course , the get-out
> clause would be that I did not pray earnestly enough.
>
> How have others come to feel the presence of God. Are there any
> the most true. Or should I follow another path?
Are you familiar with the theory of Pandeism? Pandeism follows from an
effort to use our current knowledge of the structure and nature and
origin of the Universe to determine the most probable purpose and
methodology of a Creator, and concludes that God probably became the
Universe to experience existence through the lens of the limitations
that face life in the Universe.... we are not judged by God, but all
of the experiences we have or create become the experiences of God, so
our moral obligation is to maximize the enjoyment of life by all....
Dianelos Georgoudis
<Richard.Corfi...@REVERSE.uk.me.littondale> wrote:
> On 2008-08-02,DianelosGeorgoudis <diane...@tecapro.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > I am not sure what your point is. God is spirit, and a spirit is
> > undetectable by reference to the physical world too. After all our own
> > spirit is undetectable by reference to the physical world; a famous
> > issue in the mind-body problem. Now God *could* have made Him/Herself
> > known by reference to the physical world, but there is some good
> > reason why God would not choose to do so. After all when there is so
> > much good non-physical evidence for God [1] why should God offer us
> > misguiding physical evidence too?
>
> But even if you can say that there must be a god (I'm not convinced yet
> by those arguments) you've not gone as far as proving the very big jump to
> "Chrisitianity provides the one correct definition of this god".
True. The basic point though is to agree whether it's more reasonable
to believe that reality is at bottom mechanical (as most atheists
believe) or whether it's at bottom personal (as theists of all stripes
believe). Advancement in knowledge is a hierarchical process: one
first decides the general truths and then the more specific ones. So
one first becomes convinced of theism and then of some specific form
of theism such as Christianity, and then perhaps of some even more
specific form of Christianity such as the theology of a particular
denomination. In any case I doubt one can even understand Christianity
before realizing that the fundamental principle that governs reality
is personal and not mechanical.
> Brahman seems to fulfill your requirement just as well. Brahman is
> a very different kind of thing to the Christian god. (Unless you see
> the Christian god along with hundreds of other deities and billions of
> individual internal representations as specialisations of Brahman which
> is therefore unknowable unless you've 'been there').
As I believe that God is everywhere and that the light of
understanding (of any understanding) is the light of God, I have not
doubt that people everywhere and in all centuries have discovered
pieces or aspects of spiritual truth. And it's quite possible that
Eastern religious writers have written about truths which Western
theistic writers haven't - or vice versa. Incidentally just a few days
ago I started reading the Upanishads.
I like your expression that Brahman is unknowable until you've been
there, because it comports well with the deep question of what truth
actually is. On one level truth is a property that propositions can
have; but on a deeper level truth is a property that a person can have
- or more specifically a person's life can have. Here is an analogy:
Suppose you visited two alien civilizations (perhaps on other planets)
and learned their language. Suppose further that in the first
civilization the proposition "walls are hard" was commonly accepted
but that people there routinely bumped into walls. In the second
civilization the proposition "walls are not hard" was commonly
accepted but people there successfully avoided bumping into walls.
(Assume that both peoples have good eyesight and so on). Which of the
two civilizations would you say are closer to truth? Wouldn't you
agree that it is the second one? The point of this primitive example
is that what is essential to truth is how one lives and not what one
believes; truth is fundamentally about experience and not about
knowledge. Indeed the meaning of what we mean by "true proposition"
must ultimately be contingent on personal experience. Returning to
Christianity, for me it is highly significant that Christ when
speaking about the new commandment (which arguably is the center piece
of all Christianity) didn't call disciples those who would believe as
He did but those who would do as He did (See John 13:34-35)
> In fact reading your discussion of Spirit being the _underlying_
> thing in our world seems a closer picture of (Para)Brahman than of the
> Christian god who seems to normally be an entirely external creator.
That's not quite true. One of the more memorable utterances of Christ
in the Gospels is "The kingdom of God is within you". Tolstoy wrote an
entire book under that title. The original quote is in Luke 17:20 ff:
"And having been questioned by the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God
does come, He answered them, and said, `The kingdom of God does not
come with observation; nor shall they say, Lo, here; or lo, there; for
lo, the kingdom of God is within you.' "
> It may be a more agnostic viewpoint, or may be within normal atheism, to
> say "We just are. This is what we have. We do our best with this". That
> world view can be very powerful and work very well for those that hold
> it. All the good things that we promote - social cohesion, helping others,
> non-greed, selflessness, are all things that serve humanity as a whole
> very well. Religion can help achieve this, but it can also go wrong.
I am not sure I understand your point. Indeed “we just are”. The
question is “What are we?” Are we complex agglomerations of material
particles which somehow bring forth consciousness, or are we spiritual
beings experiencing a physical environment as a part of our condition?
Incidentally, as we all agree that whatever it is we are we are part
of reality, an even more basic question is “What just is?” And that is
the ontological question that philosophers since the beginning of
civilization have been thinking about.
> > Yeah, we kind of tend to speak pass each other. Perhaps we could focus
> > on one issue which is extremely important, namely ethics. The
> > generally accepted view is that the existence of objective ethical
> > truths is not compatible with naturalism. Do you agree? I remember you
> > once explained that your ethics is based on axioms, such as that
> > everyone's pleasure (in the non-trivial sense) is good. But other
> > people may choose other axioms, perhaps that only their own pleasure
> > is good. To be objective truths must ultimately be rooted in objective
> > reality independently of personal opinion or social convention, and I
> > don't see how your own set or any set of ethical axioms can be thus
> > justified within the framework of naturalism's understanding of
> > reality. I'd be thankful if you explained this point to me.
>
> The Dharmin does quite well here, but that's just another viewpoint.
> Dharma could be just our observation of things in the world. It seems
> to work better if such and such, yet that's us humans. People past
> have observed patterns in life and found that certain behaviours lead
> to something - enlightenment perhaps - which they see as very good and
> explain in terms of their understanding of the world. Other creatures
> have other ways and other goals.
Right, that’s my view also as explained in a previous message in this
thread: we find out what is ethically right experientially, by seeing
which behaviors lead to something good inside – as you say,
enlightenment perhaps. Interestingly enough all great religious
traditions have taught that life’s meaning or goal is about a self-
transforming and self-transcending process realized by walking a
particular religious path; a goal which in the West is called
salvation and in the East is called enlightenment. And it seems to me
that all great religious traditions both East and West describe for
all practical purposes exactly the same path.
> Why do we help others? Because we follow Jesus' example? So we go to
> heaven? Because we believe that Karma Yoga [coming closer to god through
> action] brings us closer to god? Because anything which brings us closer
> to god will be rewarding? Because we see the divinity within them? Because
> we seem them as god's creation? Because we can empathise? Because they
> are human like us? If we were in that situation? Because we want to
> convert them? For social standing?
Well, I suppose the short answer is that we should help others because
that’s what ultimately profits us. Christianity (at least in my
reading of the Gospels – perhaps Christian mystics are clearer on this
point) teaches that there is an underlying unity in all persons, so
that helping others *is* helping yourself.
> We do find that if we get on and start helping others, doing all the
> community things, maybe even practicing our religion, then it can help
> us. Interesting.
Well, several studies have shown that practicing religion correlates
positively both with personal well-being and with charitable
behavior.
> > It's impractical to discuss with an atheist specific Christian beliefs
> > because one sooner or later finds oneself discussing whether Jesus was
> > really born of a virgin, or whether salvation is really pre-ordained,
> > and other similar points which are quite irrelevant to the question of
> > whether theism or naturalism is more reasonable. After all every
> > single specifically Christian belief may be false and theism may still
> > be more reasonable than naturalism. So to discuss theism with an
> > atheist on the denominational level is a distraction at best. My claim
> > is that plain vanilla theism works much better than scientific
> > naturalism for understanding the human condition, i.e. for
> > understanding the reality we find ourselves in.
>
> But it's still a big jump to the kinds of beliefs which a lot of
> Christians have - maybe you don't - that belief in specifically Christ
> is the most important thing. Christianity narrows it down to a single
> deity and a single story.
Right. It’s quite a jump, and before making that jump one must first
find one’s footing in theism. In any case Christianity may be false in
all particulars and theism may still be true. So it’s not like if you
see good reason to reject Christianity you have automatically good
reason to reject theism.
As for my own beliefs, I am a pretty orthodox Christian as far as the
foundations of its theology is concerned. So I believe in such things
as the Trinity, the incarnation of the second hypostasis of God in
Jesus of Nazareth, in Jesus’ bodily resurrection as experienced by his
followers, and in the living presence of the Spirit of Truth. But I
don’t believe that every word in the Bible is divinely inspired; on
the contrary I believe that many of the stories in the Bible up and
including the miracle stories in the Gospels are of a mythological or
symbolic nature. Also I don’t believe in hell, or more generally that
God punishes people for their errors in any way, or that God gets
angry or feels insulted by peoples’ behavior. And I believe in
universal salvation.
> You stated in your first post in this thread that we can just discard
> viewpoints outside monotheism and naturalism, but did not back that
> claim up. I don't think you can justify discarding them, but leaving
> them in makes this argument a lot more complex.
Perhaps there are other good ontological viewpoints outside of
monotheism and naturalism; but this does not affect my argument that
monotheism makes much more sense than naturalism. Naturalism is really
saddled with grave conceptual problems; I have already recommended a
book about this (“Naturalism in Question” written by naturalist
philosophers outside of the context of the debate between theism and
atheism). The reason I think so many people still think that
naturalism is a powerful ontology is that it is considered by many to
be implied by science, and everybody admires science.
As for the other good ontological viewpoints outside of monotheism and
naturalism – it would be interesting to learn about them. I have been
discussing with atheists for some years now and nobody has really
proposed any such alternative viewpoint. It’s really always scientific
naturalism because science this and science that.
> The jump from "Scientific naturalism doesn't seem to explain consciousness
> or morality very well" to all the things that come with Christian belief
> is huge. There are many things that theism does not explain well.
Give me an example of a thing that theism explains less well than
naturalism.
> > Now you rightly point out that I restrict my criticism of atheism on
> > the more specific position of scientific naturalism. But all atheists
> > I know, and surely the great majority of atheists in any case, are
> > scientific naturalists, i.e. believe that objective reality is such as
> > scientific models describe. Perhaps there are atheistic worldviews
> > that are stronger than scientific naturalism. So what are your beliefs
> > about reality? Are you a scientific naturalist too or do you hold some
> > more sophisticated view?
>
> Scientific Naturalism does not seem unsophisticated.
What I think is unsophisticated, or if you prefer uncritical, is
atheists’ trust in it. Actually I think this trust is the result of a
logical fallacy called the reification fallacy. The reification
fallacy is to take something that is abstract and assume that it is
real. Consider for example the statements “Our genes try to multiply
their numbers” or “a particle tries to reach the state of lowest
potential energy”. If one understands such statements as meaning that
our genes or that a particle have intentions then one is committing
the reification fallacy. Now what science plainly does is to construct
mathematical models that describe physical phenomena. Scientific
naturalism is the hypothesis that these models also describe the
objective reality that produces the physical phenomena; as such this
is a valid ontological hypothesis. But to believe that science implies
scientific naturalism, or to believe that science’s success evidences
scientific naturalism – this is to commit the reification fallacy. And
that’s an error that many smart people, including many fine
scientists, are committing. In fact scientific models only describe
patterns present in the physical phenomena we observe and really say
nothing about the underlying reality that produces them, except of
course that reality must be so as to produce them.
Here is an analogy: Suppose you are watching a movie. You know that
it’s not like the movie just happens; there must be something
producing it, perhaps some projection mechanism behind you. Now
suppose that after a while you notice some patterns in the movie.
Perhaps there are no green things in the movie. Or perhaps things in
the movie move in a particular way. All these things you discover
about the movie will not tell you anything about what it is that
produces it. For example the fact that there are no green things in
the movie does not imply that there are no green things in whatever it
is that produces the movie. Now fast forward to our condition in life:
We watch physical phenomena around us: the earth, the sky, the way
apples fall, and so on. We notice there are no angels in the physical
environment we observe. Or we notice that all things have mass which
resists accelerating them. But these observations do not of course
imply that whatever it is that produces the physical environment we
observe does not have angels in it, or that the things that are in it
have mass that resists acceleration.
At this juncture a scientific naturalist may argue thus: “Granted that
many different realities, including theistic realities, may equally
well produce the physical phenomena that science studies, isn’t it
more reasonable to hypothesize the simplest such reality? And what
could be simpler than to hypothesize that our observation of an apple
is produced just by the actual presence of an apple? Or that our
observation of how an apple falls, which science describes assuming
the presence of gravitational force field (or even more exactly by he
presence of a curvature in spacetime), is produced by the actual
presence of such an gravitational force field (or more probably by the
presence of curved spacetime)? Or that the electrical phenomena we
observe are produced by the actual presence of electrons? In short
what can be simpler than to hypothesize that science’s models of
phenomena also describe the underlying reality that produces them? And
given science’s previous successes isn’t it reasonable to assume that
science will also solve the admittedly difficult problem of how our
brain produces our consciousness?” I will leave aside the last point
and concentrate on the argument from simplicity: First of all,
simplicity and complexity are properties that can be quantified, and a
theist can device models of reality which coherently account for the
physical phenomena we observe and which are far simpler than
scientific naturalism’s model. More importantly though scientific
naturalism is not viable as a model of reality so that the question of
its comparative simplicity is rendered irrelevant. And it’s not viable
because it fails (or at least no naturalist has yet succeeded to show
how it succeeds) in accounting for such broadly accepted truths as the
objectivity of at least some ethical propositions, our possession of
libertarian free will, the fact that propositions possess content, and
so on. Amazingly enough scientific naturalism even fails to account
for the production of the physical phenomena themselves, hence all the
talk about the deep mystery of quantum mechanics. But quantum
mechanics is not at all mysterious from purely the scientific
viewpoint. Quantum mechanics is a mathematical formula that describes
with striking precision patterns of order present in a wide range of
physical phenomena. The mystery resides only in scientific
naturalists’ intent to describe what physical reality could possibly
produce the same, or in other words in the naturalistic
“interpretation” of quantum phenomena.
Finally one may ask this: If the above is true, why haven’t academic
philosophers moved away from scientific naturalism? Well some propose
to do exactly that and suggest the need to device non-naturalistic and
non-theistic models of reality, but with little success as far as I
can see. (Of course to suggest that theism is true is tantamount to
risk being laughed out of the room in most philosophy departments –
but this may be changing.) Others are still trying to find ways to
solve naturalism’s many conceptual problems. Some philosophers try to
invalidate the evidence that produces these conceptual problems in the
first place, arguing that ethics is not objective after all, that our
sense of free will is an illusion, even that much of what we know
about our own consciousness is fallacious and the result of “folk
psychology”. In any case things are definitely in movement.
Dianelos Georgoudis
wrote:
> (Resending; my first attempt bounced. If this bounces too then
> I'll wait a day. Some punctuation characters etc. may have been
> lightly mangled in the retrieving-and-resending process. I also
> changed a couple of words for clarity, not that it matters.)
>
> > On Aug 3, 4:38 am, Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.McCaug...@pobox.com>
> > wrote:
> >> DianelosGeorgoudis wrote:
> > [snip]
> >>> I am not sure what your point is. God is spirit, and a spirit is
> >>> undetectable by reference to the physical world too.
>
> >> Perhaps, then, we mean different things by "evidence".
>
> > By "evidence" I understand any datum one feels confident enough to use
> > as a premise in an argument.
>
> Oh dear.
:-) So, what do you mean by "evidence"?
> > In general naturalists
> > tend to reject any evidence that is not physical, which kind of begs
> > the question I think.
>
> In our other discussions you have said, contrariwise, that naturalists
> *must* reject anything that is not physical, which you regard as
> absurd on its face, therefore naturalism is wrong, QED.
I think there is a misunderstanding here. Naturalists do tend to
reject any evidence that is not physical/objective because their
ontology is based on the premise that at bottom all is physical or
explained on physical principles, and hence all evidence that is not
imaginary must be of this sort too. I don’t personally believe that
they must do so; in fact I agree with Chalmers that whether objective
or subjective data is data. But a person can choose to reject any
evidence they feel not confident about, and it’s a fact that many
naturalists insist to a fault on accepting only physical evidence of
the kind that scientists use (this is required by so-called
methodological naturalism). So far so good. On the other hand when
naturalists discuss with theists they should not insist that only
physical evidence is acceptable because to do so is to beg the
question. After all if naturalism is not true there may well exist
evidence that is not produced by the physical universe, but is rather
produced by God. What kind of evidence? Well our possessing
libertarian free will for example. Or how it is like to experience
beauty. Or that propositions have content.
> It seems that naturalists cannot win. At least, not in a discussion
> with someone whose definition of "evidence" is "anything someone
> feels confident about".
I think everyone’s use of evidence entails to some measure one’s
feeling confident about it. After all there are not a priori rules
about what can be admitted as evidence. For example most people would
agree that my memory that I had breakfast this morning is evidence
that I did have breakfast this morning, even though it’s possible that
the physical universe came about only 2 minutes ago; we simply feel
confident that the latter did not in fact take place. Scientists
routinely use each other measurements because they have confidence in
each other. Scientific naturalists use as evidence the existence of
the moon, because they feel confident about it not being the case that
we live in a computer simulation or that a Cartesian demon is playing
with our minds.
> [about some arguments listed by Alvin Plantinga:]
>
> > Well, at least E (the argument from physical constants) clearly
> > references the physical world (or to be precise references physical
> > phenomena). I happen to think that this is a wrong argument, because I
> > believe one is within one's epistemic rights to claim that the most
> > fundamental causal/explanatory principles of reality are brute facts
> > and do not require nor admit further justification. So a naturalist
> > need not explain why the fundamental physical constants or laws are as
> > they are.
>
> I think your framing of the issue in terms of "epistemic rights"
> is ill-conceived. It is better to ask: what views fit how well
> with the evidence? than: what views am I "entitled" to hold?. And
> the claim made by advocates of fine-tuning arguments is that the
> available evidence is much more probable on a theistic hypothesis
> than on an atheistic one, and that the evidence therefore favours
> theism over atheism.
I don't mind the way you put it, but then I don't see why a
naturalistic worldview somehow fails to fit with the evidence that
physical laws and constants are as they are. From the naturalistic
point of view these represent brute facts about reality. It seems to
me that to ask a naturalist why a physical constant has a particular
value is like asking a mathematician why the smallest natural number
has the value of 1. I think the error in this theistic argument
resides in the general tendency to believe that to explain something
is more than to just find patterns present in it.
> I think it's far from clear that the argument is correct, but
> it seems absolutely barmy to me to dismiss it by saying that
> "one is within one's epistemic rights" to do so.
Well, there must somewhere come a point in which one can reasonably
claim that further "Why?" questions, or "How do you know?" questions,
become meaningless. The alternative is skepticism which produces
infinite regressions and renders any justification impossible.
[snip]
> > Many of the philosophers who are uneasy by the mind-body problem are
> > naturalists. That naturalism has grave trouble accounting for
> > consciousness is as close to a fact as it goes. So I was just claiming
> > something that is well-known and well accepted.
>
> Your claim is that naturalist views can't, *and theistic views
> can*, account for consciousness and matter and the relationships
> between them. This is not, in fact, something that everyone agrees
> upon.
Yes, but I think that the latter is pretty easy to do within the
context of idealistic theism. Perhaps we can discuss about this in
some other ocasion.
> Anyway. I am not going to respond further to your bluster
> about consciousness, with its constant appeals to what everyone
> (or every 10-year-old, or every philosopher, or everyone calledDianelosGeorgoudis) knows, until you make a credible attempt
> to explain what you actually mean by the term. Sorry.
>
> (And I mean actually explain, not just wave your hands and say
> "all *this*" or whatever. I have explained at great length why
> your purported explanations to date don't seem to me to be
> useful.)
I've just reread your point #1 in the long post. As you put so much
importance in the definition of consciousness I think it would be best
for me to try to directly answer the points your raise there in a
separate message.
> >>> And as theism posits that a spirit (i.e. a conscious
> >>> being) forms the most basic level of reality theism does not need
> >>> to account for the presence of consciousness itself. Similarly a
> >>> naturalist need not account for whatever it is they believe forms
> >>> the most basic level of reality.
>
> >> I think your logic here is utterly broken; sorry.
>
> > Why?
>
> It amounts to saying: anyone gets to postulate whatever they like
> as "the most basic level of reality", and then questions about
> how plausible that postulation is are off limits -- and furthermore,
> it seems, whatever's claimed to be "most basic" is then just assumed
> to have been explained adequately. If you take that idea seriously,
> then I can make up some loony theory about how reality is, at its
> most fundamental level, made up of jokes or cream cakes or rabbits
> or something. And then claim that my theory ipso facto tells us
> all we need to know about jokes or cream cakes or rabbits.
Well it seems to me that one can indeed postulate anything one likes
about the most basic level of reality. I agree that prima facie
plausibility does play a role in reason, but only a limited one. (And
incidentally by far the more implausible ontological postulates I have
come across come from naturalists trying to interpret quantum
mechanics.) The important point though is that any hypothesis, whether
ontological or not, has implications on which that hypothesis can be
judged. If the hypothesis works well then it is justified no matter
how implausible it may appear at first. So I think it's fair to let
both theists and naturalists postulate whatever they like as the basic
level of reality and then study how well the resulting worldviews work
when compared one to the other. Of course if somebody proposes that
reality is at its most fundamental level made up of jokes or cream
cakes it will be easy to show that the resulting ontology is weak, for
example weaker than scientific naturalism when compared one to one
with it. But I agree that a person who postulates such a reality would
not have to analyze further what jokes are, because they are by their
lights of their model at the most basic level of reality.
[snip]
> >> For the reasons already discussed, I am not going to attempt
> >> a substantial discussion with you on this topic: I think I will
> >> find it too frustrating if I try. But here is a brief summary
> >> of my thinking on this topic; I shall say no more about it
> >> to you unless you somehow convince me that discussion with you
> >> has become less futile.
>
> (I'm doing as I said.)
A real pity. Perhaps you'll reconsider in the future. Ethics is hugely
important, and the field of ethics is one in which both the conceptual
and the experiential superiority of theism in comparison to naturalism
become especially clear, I think.
> > As for definitions, I would like to propose the following: Naturalism
> > is the belief that reality is at its most basic level mechanical, i.e.
> > governed by algorithmic/mathematical laws.
>
> On the face of it, this excludes the possibility of randomness,
> but there are views that I would certainly call naturalistic
> that claim that there is irreducible randomness in the way the
> world behaves.
Randomness is a mathematical concept, so I don't see why a reality
governed by algorithmic/mathematical laws excludes the possibility of
randomness.
> > Scientific naturalism
> > is the belief that science describes all there is to reality, and
> > specifically that scientific models not only describe the order
> > present in physical phenomena but also the objective reality that
> > produces them.
>
> I think I would want clarification on a lot of points before
> admitting, even tentatively, to being a "scientific naturalist"
> in that sense.
Well, frankly, it would be useful if you explained what your
ontological beliefs are. In your long post you don't really explain
that, but rather concentrate on criticizing my views and arguments -
which is quite fine. On the other hand I think there is no point in
rejecting some theory because of XYZ reasons unless one has a better
theory to substitute it with. Or perhaps you are an agnostic and see
not sufficient reason to embrace any ontological worldview?
> > Compare this state of affairs with the moral nihilism that many
> > naturalists find themselves drawn to. Here is a quote from Richard
> > Dawkins' book River out of Eden: "In a universe of blind physical
> > forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt,
> > other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or
> > reason in it, or any justice. The universe that we observe has
> > precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no
> > design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless
> > indifference."
>
> Yes, those words appear in "River out of Eden", and so far as
> I can tell Dawkins really means them. But I don't think he means
> by them what you are trying to claim he means. In particular,
> this doesn't appear to me to be a statement of moral nihilism
> (that there are no real moral values); rather, it is a statement
> that the universe does not *behave* according to moral values.
Well it seems to me that the clear implication of what he writes is
that as the universe we observe has the same properties we would
expect if there is at bottom no evil and no good one has therefore no
reason to believe that evil and good do at bottom exist. Why else
would have he written the above? After all he says that “we won’t find
any rhyme or reason” in the universe. This has the same structure as
the atheistic "God is an unnecessary hypothesis" argument: As the
universe we observe has the same properties we would expect if there
is at bottom no God one has therefore no reason to believe that God
does at bottom exist.
> >>> It's impractical to discuss with an atheist specific Christian beliefs
> >>> because one sooner or later finds oneself discussing whether Jesus was
> >>> really born of a virgin, or whether salvation is really pre-ordained,
> >>> and other similar points which are quite irrelevant to the question of
> >>> whether theism or naturalism is more reasonable.
> ...
> > Anyway I am saying the above from experience. Here's is some indirect
> > evidence: If you google "new commandment" in richarddawkins.net you'll
> > get 9 hits, "theodicy" will get you 280 hits; "problem of evil" will
> > get you 531 hits; but "virgin birth" will get you 1710 hits.
>
> Quite a lot of which appear to be about parthenogenesis
> in lizards. I don't really see that this is much evidence
> of anything. ("existence of god" -> 6690 hits; "intelligent
> design" -> 9930 hits; <<evil suffering>> (no quotes) ->
> 5570 hits, of which about half seem to be to do with the
> problem of evil.)
Well the frequency of "existence of god" in a site that discusses the
existence or non-existence of God is to be expected. The large
frequency of "intelligent design" speaks in favor of my argument,
namely that atheists often focus on red herrings. As for <<evil
suffering>> with no quotes it, this just measures the frequency of
these to common words and carries very little relevance. And I don't
think that a lot of the references to "virgin birth" refer to
parthenogenesis in lizards ("virgin birth" -lizard still produces 1650
hits). Anyway, that's not a really promising path to follow further.
The level of discussion in that site is embarrassingly low, atheist
posters mainly using their time to ridicule theism and to congratulate
each other. Dawkins's book (The God Delusion) which inspired that
crowd is quite mediocre too, and this even in the opinion of published
reviews by well-known fellow atheists I might add.
> >> (This appears to me to be almost exactly the argument by which
> >> you justify comparing theism with scientific naturalism rather
> >> than with atheism.)
>
> > I don't see that. I think it's a perfectly practical decision not
> > to bring on the table specific ontological beliefs when doing so
> > is superfluous and only complicates the discussion.
>
> *Your* specific ontological beliefs are (you say) irrelevant,
> superfluous and merely liable to complicate the discussion;
> those nasty atheists keep pointing at Christian doctrines and
> saying that they're hard to believe.
>
> *My* specific ontological beliefs, however, are (you say)
> of vital importance because you can point at them and say
> that they're hard to believe.
Oh, I did not mean your specific ontological beliefs at any level of
detail. I'd just like to know what your ontological beliefs in general
are, or even if you hold any positive ontological beliefs. The only
thing I know is that you don't believe in the existence of God as
described by Christian theology; this does not even tell me clearly
whether you are an atheist.
> Double standard.
Not really. Indeed I don't mind explaining to any level of detail my
own specific ontological beliefs, as well as why I believe in them, as
I trust you are not the kind of person who will resort to red
herrings. I tell you in discussions I've had with atheists it happened
that they on the one hand made fun of the various absurdities in the
Bible and on the other hand became irritated and directly accused me
of picking and choosing from it.
> >>> After all every
> >>> single specifically Christian belief may be false and theism may still
> >>> be more reasonable than naturalism.
>
> >> And every single specifically naturalist belief may be false
> >> and atheism may still be more reasonable than Christianity.
>
> > True. So, again, let's hear about the atheistic ontology that is more
> > reasonable the plain theism.
>
> And here we go again: it would be an irrelevant impertinence
> to suggest that *you* be committed to any position more specific
> than theism, whereas it is essential that *I* be pinned down
> to something more specific than atheism.
Well, atheism is not even a positive ontological position. It does not
tell what it is one believes about reality, and hence one can't
compare it one to one with theism in order to see which one is more
reasonable.
> Double standard.
>
> > What is clearly unreasonable is for an
> > atheist to argue that some undefined and unnamed atheistic ontology
> > is more reasonable than theism.
>
> What atheists in fact do much more often is to argue that atheism
> is more reasonable than theism, or that (say) scientific naturalism
> is more reasonable than (say) traditional Christianity.
For all it's worth I tend to agree that scientific naturalism is more
reasonable than traditional Christianity, if by traditional
Christianity you mean a worldview that entails that every word in the
Bible is true, or that it is a great sin to use condoms, or that God
will send a lot of His/Her creatures to everlasting torture perhaps
for no other reason than their failure to form exactly the appropriate
ontological beliefs. Scientific naturalism may have many problems but
at least they are more subtle than that.
Gareth McCaughan
>> But it's still a big jump to the kinds of beliefs which a lot of
>> Christians have - maybe you don't - that belief in specifically Christ
>> is the most important thing. Christianity narrows it down to a single
>> deity and a single story.
>
> Right. It’s quite a jump, and before making that jump one must first
> find one’s footing in theism.
"Must" seems rather strong. Surely rather a lot of people are
converted in the first instance to a particular religion, rather
than first of all becoming a theist and then searching around
to find a religion that fits.
(I'm sure that both happen -- for instance, the second is AIUI
what happened to C S Lewis and to at least one acquaintance
of mine.)
> What I think is unsophisticated, or if you prefer uncritical, is
> atheists’ trust in it. Actually I think this trust is the result of
> a logical fallacy called the reification fallacy. The reification
> fallacy is to take something that is abstract and assume that it is
> real.
This seems to me to be the error into which you fall (or at least
one of them) when you claim that materialists cannot coherently
talk about morals or beauty or consciousness or whatever: materialists
don't believe in non-material things; beauty is non-material; therefore
materialists don't believe in beauty. Obviously this doesn't work
if beauty isn't a "thing". (There are other problems with the
argument.)
I shall refrain from commenting further on this, for the usual
reason. But:
> I will leave aside the last point
> and concentrate on the argument from simplicity: First of all,
> simplicity and complexity are properties that can be quantified, and a
> theist can device models of reality which coherently account for the
> physical phenomena we observe and which are far simpler than
> scientific naturalism’s model.
You have made such claims before. I don't suppose you'd care to give some
evidence that this is true, for some sense of simplicity and complexity
that "can be quantified"?
Gareth McCaughan
>>> By "evidence" I understand any datum one feels confident enough to use
>>> as a premise in an argument.
>>
>> Oh dear.
>
> :-) So, what do you mean by "evidence"?
X is evidence for Y when P(Y|X) > P(Y). (Of course that could use
some refinement.)
>>> In general naturalists
>>> tend to reject any evidence that is not physical, which kind of begs
>>> the question I think.
>>
>> In our other discussions you have said, contrariwise, that naturalists
>> *must* reject anything that is not physical, which you regard as
>> absurd on its face, therefore naturalism is wrong, QED.
>
> I think there is a misunderstanding here. Naturalists do tend to
> reject any evidence that is not physical/objective because their
> ontology is based on the premise that at bottom all is physical or
> explained on physical principles, and hence all evidence that is not
> imaginary must be of this sort too. I don’t personally believe that
> they must do so; in fact I agree with Chalmers that whether objective
> or subjective data is data.
The following quotations are from uk.r.c articles of yours.
I've capitalized some bits.
| There are many examples, but I think the
| clearest one is the proposition "All people have the capacity of
| conscious experience". To virtually any conscious person this
| proposition has an obvious meaning and a clear truth value (namely
| "true"). FROM THE MATERIALISTIC POINT OF VIEW THIS PROPOSITION IS
| SIMPLY MEANINGLESS.
| In short the most momentous fact of our condition, namely the fact of
| how it is to experience life as a human being every single second we
| are awake, is something COMPLETELY OUTSIDE MATERIALISM'S
| EPISTEMOLOGICAL REACH.
[the "two cases" here are: hitting a person and hitting a drum.]
| Contrasted to this, FROM MATERIALISM'S POINT OF VIEW THERE IS NOT
| FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THESE TWO CASES: both are cases where
| sound waves are produces after some physical causal process.
| Well I think that my criticism of materialism is based only on its
| thesis that all there is is physical. For example I DON'T SEE HOW
| MATERIALISM CAN DEAL WITH THE MEANING AND TRUTH VALUE OF A WIDE RANGE
| OF OBVIOUSLY MEANINGFUL PROPOSITIONS and I claim that it simply can't
| deal with that. MATERIALISM HAS EVEN SOME PROBLEM DEALING WITH
| MATHEMATICS, BECAUSE MATHEMATICAL OBJECTS ARE NOT PHYSICAL.
I have no idea how I can interpret those statements, other than
as saying that adherents of materialism can't meaningfully talk
about (let alone coherently believe or disbelieve) propositions
like "I am conscious" or "Bach's music is beautiful" or "Eating
people is wrong".
>> It seems that naturalists cannot win. At least, not in a discussion
>> with someone whose definition of "evidence" is "anything someone
>> feels confident about".
>
> I think everyone’s use of evidence entails to some measure one’s
> feeling confident about it.
Only in the same way as everyone's use of "truth" does likewise.
That is: obviously, when I say "X is evidence for Y", what *you*
are entitled to infer from my saying that (at least if you assume
I'm sincere) is merely that I take a certain view of the relationship
between X and Y. But that doesn't mean that what I *mean* by that
statement is something about my own mental state.
The fact that planets appear to move in elliptical orbits is
evidence that gravity obeys an inverse-square law. The fact
that the world contains as much suffering and evil as it does,
distributed as they are, is evidence that Christianity is wrong.
The fact that some people claim to have been miraculously healed
at Lourdes is evidence that Christianity is right. All those
statements about evidence would remain true even if somehow
my brain were coaxed into a state in which none of them seemed
true to me. The fact that I can (sincerely, though of course
you'll have to take my word for that) affirm the foregoing
sentence demonstrates that what I mean by "X is evidence for Y"
is not some proposition about my own thoughts or feelings.
>> I think your framing of the issue in terms of "epistemic rights"
>> is ill-conceived. It is better to ask: what views fit how well
>> with the evidence? than: what views am I "entitled" to hold?. And
>> the claim made by advocates of fine-tuning arguments is that the
>> available evidence is much more probable on a theistic hypothesis
>> than on an atheistic one, and that the evidence therefore favours
>> theism over atheism.
>
> I don't mind the way you put it, but then I don't see why a
> naturalistic worldview somehow fails to fit with the evidence that
> physical laws and constants are as they are.
I didn't say that the fine-tuning argument is any good, only
that the best way to respond to it is unlikely to be "I'm
entitled to believe whatever I want to about the laws of
physics". Let me give an extreme example: suppose we found
a way of measuring the fine structure constant very accurately,
and discovered that if you write it in binary then bits
32 onwards spell out "Jesus is Lord" in ASCII. I think
that would count as something that atheistic scientific
naturalists would do well to have an explanation for.
(Fraud on the part of whoever did the experiment would
have to be high on the list of candidate explanations,
of course.)
> From the naturalistic
> point of view these represent brute facts about reality. It seems to
> me that to ask a naturalist why a physical constant has a particular
> value is like asking a mathematician why the smallest natural number
> has the value of 1.
I think *that* has to be wrong, if only because the question
of whether there are relationships between any given set of
(what we currently think of as) the fundamental constants,
or whether any of them have values that are derivable from
scratch given a good enough account of the form of the laws
of nature, is an empirical one to which we don't know the answer.
> I think the error in this theistic argument
> resides in the general tendency to believe that to explain something
> is more than to just find patterns present in it.
I think the "general tendency" is right on this point and you're
wrong. In so far as anyone can be said to be "right" or "wrong"
about a point of definition, that is; I suppose what I mean is
that (1) "explain" as generally used means something more than
"spot patterns in", (2) this stronger usage is, or at least can
be tweaked so as to be, both coherent and useful, and (3) it is
in fact more useful than the pure-pattern-spotting meaning that
you apparently prefer.
And, actually, it isn't just a point of definition, because
the question here is one about what counts as evidence for what,
and *that* isn't a merely definitional matter. It seems to me
that when A explains X better than B does, that's evidence for A
(at least if X is known to be true). I don't know whether that
can even be *stated* with a pattern-spotting definition of
"explain" (what does it mean for A to explain X better than B
does with such a definition?), but it seems to me that something
along those lines is plainly correct; if you don't want to use
the word "explain" then some other might have to do instead.
And the whole point of (e.g.) the fine-tuning argument is to
claim that "God made it so" is a better explanation for the
allegedly-fine-tuned physical constants than "that's just
how it happens to be". Which I'm not at all convinced by,
but as per the "Jesus is Lord" example above I think it's
pretty clear that an argument of the same general form could
work just fine, if the evidence came out the right way for it.
>> I think it's far from clear that the argument is correct, but
>> it seems absolutely barmy to me to dismiss it by saying that
>> "one is within one's epistemic rights" to do so.
>
> Well, there must somewhere come a point in which one can reasonably
> claim that further "Why?" questions, or "How do you know?" questions,
> become meaningless. The alternative is skepticism which produces
> infinite regressions and renders any justification impossible.
I repeat: I agree that for any view of how things are there
comes a point at which "why?" stops getting useful answers.
The question is where that point is, and what residual
unavoidable assumptions are left.
> I've just reread your point #1 in the long post. As you put so much
> importance in the definition of consciousness I think it would be best
> for me to try to directly answer the points your raise there in a
> separate message.
Please feel free. (I put a lot of emphasis on that point because
you were making a big deal about consciousness as evidence against
naturalism and for theism, or even for your particular brand of
theistic idealism. If instead you decide now to focus on morality
or beauty or something, then I might start demanding more clarity
about *those* notions, which are almost equally susceptible to
deliberate or accidental obfuscation.)
>> It amounts to saying: anyone gets to postulate whatever they like
>> as "the most basic level of reality", and then questions about
>> how plausible that postulation is are off limits -- and furthermore,
>> it seems, whatever's claimed to be "most basic" is then just assumed
>> to have been explained adequately. If you take that idea seriously,
>> then I can make up some loony theory about how reality is, at its
>> most fundamental level, made up of jokes or cream cakes or rabbits
>> or something. And then claim that my theory ipso facto tells us
>> all we need to know about jokes or cream cakes or rabbits.
>
> Well it seems to me that one can indeed postulate anything one likes
> about the most basic level of reality.
Well, of course one *can*. But if one wants other people to take one
seriously then one has to pay attention to the plausibility of those
postulates.
> I agree that prima facie
> plausibility does play a role in reason, but only a limited one.
If that's true (I'm not sure whether it is), it's only because
people don't tend to put forward theories that are prima facie
extremely implausible; therefore, in practice, other considerations
often dominate.
> (And
> incidentally by far the more implausible ontological postulates I have
> come across come from naturalists trying to interpret quantum
> mechanics.)
Plausibility is, unfortunately, notoriously not something people
all agree about :-).
> The important point though is that any hypothesis, whether
> ontological or not, has implications on which that hypothesis can be
> judged. If the hypothesis works well then it is justified no matter
> how implausible it may appear at first.
Because a sufficient quantity of working-well can generally
far outweigh the (bounded and usually not very large) difference
in plausibility at the outset.
This depends on there being a good supply of test cases. In
empirical science, for instance, that's often true. In questions
of philosophy or religion, it's often not, which is one reason
why arguments about such topics so often come down to a clash
of one person's intuitions against another's.
>>>> For the reasons already discussed, I am not going to attempt
>>>> a substantial discussion with you on this topic: I think I will
>>>> find it too frustrating if I try. But here is a brief summary
>>>> of my thinking on this topic; I shall say no more about it
>>>> to you unless you somehow convince me that discussion with you
>>>> has become less futile.
>>
>> (I'm doing as I said.)
>
> A real pity. Perhaps you'll reconsider in the future.
The ball's in your court.
> Ethics is hugely
> important, and the field of ethics is one in which both the conceptual
> and the experiential superiority of theism in comparison to naturalism
> become especially clear, I think.
Please don't imagine that my reluctance to discuss these
questions with you at present has anything to do with a lack
of interest or engagement in the issues themselves.
>>> As for definitions, I would like to propose the following: Naturalism
>>> is the belief that reality is at its most basic level mechanical, i.e.
>>> governed by algorithmic/mathematical laws.
>>
>> On the face of it, this excludes the possibility of randomness,
>> but there are views that I would certainly call naturalistic
>> that claim that there is irreducible randomness in the way the
>> world behaves.
>
> Randomness is a mathematical concept, so I don't see why a reality
> governed by algorithmic/mathematical laws excludes the possibility
> of randomness.
I'm not convinced that randomness is a purely mathematical
concept, and different people might have different definitions
of "algorithmic". Thanks for clarifying yours.
> Well, frankly, it would be useful if you explained what your
> ontological beliefs are. In your long post you don't really explain
> that, but rather concentrate on criticizing my views and arguments -
> which is quite fine. On the other hand I think there is no point in
> rejecting some theory because of XYZ reasons unless one has a better
> theory to substitute it with. Or perhaps you are an agnostic and see
> not sufficient reason to embrace any ontological worldview?
I adopt something-like-scientific-naturalism as a working
hypothesis. It seems to work rather well (but then, I find
myself without many of the extraordinary metaphysical intuitions
that you seem to think every 10-year-old has; perhaps I'm
mentally defective). I'll be neither astonished nor heartbroken
if it turns out that some other ontology works better. I shan't
be even slightly surprised if it turns out that one particular
version of scientific naturalism, presented by a non-naturalist
for the purpose of knocking it down, turns out to have technical
difficulties with (say) numbers or propositions. :-)
>> Yes, those words appear in "River out of Eden", and so far as
>> I can tell Dawkins really means them. But I don't think he means
>> by them what you are trying to claim he means. In particular,
>> this doesn't appear to me to be a statement of moral nihilism
>> (that there are no real moral values); rather, it is a statement
>> that the universe does not *behave* according to moral values.
>
> Well it seems to me that the clear implication of what he writes
> is that as the universe we observe has the same properties we would
> expect if there is at bottom no evil and no good one has therefore
> no reason to believe that evil and good do at bottom exist. Why else
> would have he written the above?
Perhaps to suggest that attempting to derive our beliefs about
what is right from a careful observation of what is actual and
some idea that "whatever is, is right" is silly and dangerous.
Perhaps to express strongly his disagreement with the idea that
we can deduce the existence of a good god from the order and
justice found in the natural world.
Perhaps he'd recently heard some lackwit claiming that someone's
misfortunes must be the result of karmic comeback, or divine
retribution, for something they did.
There seem to me to be any number of possible explanations that
have nothing to do with moral nihilism.
And Dawkins does not, on the whole, appear to be a moral nihilist;
it seems pretty clear that he finds some things Wrong and others
Right. (I don't know whether he's a moral *realist*, which is
not the same question.)
> After all he says that “we won’t find
> any rhyme or reason” in the universe. This has the same structure as
> the atheistic "God is an unnecessary hypothesis" argument: As the
> universe we observe has the same properties we would expect if there
> is at bottom no God one has therefore no reason to believe that God
> does at bottom exist.
Your argument here seems terribly weak. Dawkins makes a claim
that is somewhat parallel to part of one premise of an argument
sometimes made for atheism, therefore he must really be arguing
for nonexistence of the thing that corresponds to God in that
parallel? That's ridiculous.
>>> Anyway I am saying the above from experience. Here's is some indirect
>>> evidence: If you google "new commandment" in richarddawkins.net you'll
>>> get 9 hits, "theodicy" will get you 280 hits; "problem of evil" will
>>> get you 531 hits; but "virgin birth" will get you 1710 hits.
>>
>> Quite a lot of which appear to be about parthenogenesis
>> in lizards. I don't really see that this is much evidence
>> of anything. ("existence of god" -> 6690 hits; "intelligent
>> design" -> 9930 hits; <<evil suffering>> (no quotes) ->
>> 5570 hits, of which about half seem to be to do with the
>> problem of evil.)
>
> Well the frequency of "existence of god" in a site that discusses
> the existence or non-existence of God is to be expected. The large
> frequency of "intelligent design" speaks in favor of my argument,
> namely that atheists often focus on red herrings.
The fact that *you* regard that as a red herring doesn't mean
that it *is* a red herring. Lots of people, some of them quite
clever, think that "intelligent design" gives reason for believing
in God. Many of them would say things like "Every specific claim
of Christianity could be false, but intelligent design would
still show that there is a Designer".
> As for <<evil
> suffering>> with no quotes it, this just measures the frequency of
> these to common words and carries very little relevance.
That's why I looked at the first page of hits to see which
ones were actually to do with the problem of evil: as I said
(but you presumably didn't read), about half of them are.
> And I don't
> think that a lot of the references to "virgin birth" refer to
> parthenogenesis in lizards ("virgin birth" -lizard still produces 1650
> hits). Anyway, that's not a really promising path to follow further.
Don't blame me: I wasn't the one who brought up the idea of
counting Google hits on richarddawkins.net to assess what
atheists like to talk about!
> The level of discussion in that site is embarrassingly low, atheist
> posters mainly using their time to ridicule theism and to congratulate
> each other.
Quite possibly. I'm not sure what point you're making. (That you
deliberately chose to support your claim about how atheists behave
by looking at a subpopulation whose quality you consider to be
"embarrassingly low"?)
> Dawkins's book (The God Delusion) which inspired that
> crowd is quite mediocre too, and this even in the opinion of published
> reviews by well-known fellow atheists I might add.
This is becoming more and more irrelevant. (For what it's worth:
I thought TGD was an enjoyable read, I wasn't terribly impressed
by the standard of its argumentation, but Dawkins was writing
a mass-market book and the relevant points of comparison are
things like Josh McDowell or, at the outside, C S Lewis rather
than, say, Plantinga; by that standard, I think it's not so bad.)
> Well, atheism is not even a positive ontological position.
Nor is theism. Both leave a great many important questions
unanswered. I mean, clearly neither theism nor atheism gives
you more than about one bit of information, right?
Now, actually that's not really right, because a yes/no
answer to a question can give a lot more than one bit of
information. (A positive answer to "Will next week's
lottery numbers be 1,2,3,4,5,6?" gives the same information
as "Next week's lottery numbers will be 1,2,3,4,5,6"; that
is, something like 24 bits.) But still, neither theism nor
atheism as such tells us all that much.
> It does not
> tell what it is one believes about reality, and hence one can't
> compare it one to one with theism in order to see which one is more
> reasonable.
See above: the same complaint can be made against theism;
knowing merely that someone is some kind of theist tells you
very little about what she believes.
> For all it's worth I tend to agree that scientific naturalism is more
> reasonable than traditional Christianity, if by traditional
> Christianity you mean a worldview that entails that every word in the
> Bible is true, or that it is a great sin to use condoms, or that God
> will send a lot of His/Her creatures to everlasting torture perhaps
> for no other reason than their failure to form exactly the appropriate
> ontological beliefs. Scientific naturalism may have many problems but
> at least they are more subtle than that.
I didn't mean anything *quite* so specific by "traditional Christianity".
Richard Corfield
>>
>> But even if you can say that there must be a god (I'm not convinced yet
>> by those arguments) you've not gone as far as proving the very big jump to
>> "Chrisitianity provides the one correct definition of this god".
>
> True. The basic point though is to agree whether it's more reasonable
> to believe that reality is at bottom mechanical (as most atheists
> believe) or whether it's at bottom personal (as theists of all stripes
> believe). Advancement in knowledge is a hierarchical process: one
> first decides the general truths and then the more specific ones. So
> one first becomes convinced of theism and then of some specific form
> of theism such as Christianity, and then perhaps of some even more
> specific form of Christianity such as the theology of a particular
> denomination. In any case I doubt one can even understand Christianity
> before realizing that the fundamental principle that governs reality
> is personal and not mechanical.
But that is setting different targets for each argument. The barrier to
acceptance of the theistic argument is a lot lower there because you do
not require any filling in of details before accepting theism - yet when
you discuss materialism you are expecting a complete answer from the get
go so a huge barrier to acceptance.
I can see how "There must be _some_ sort of god, I'll work out what sort
later" can work, but you can also go with "There must be _some_ sort of
life that makes sense in a material world. I'll work out what later" (or
even "I can't answer that question now so I won't worry about it until I
really need to, but I can work out so much without it.")
>> Brahman seems to fulfill your requirement just as well. Brahman is
>> a very different kind of thing to the Christian god. (Unless you see
>> the Christian god along with hundreds of other deities and billions of
>> individual internal representations as specialisations of Brahman which
>> is therefore unknowable unless you've 'been there').
>
> As I believe that God is everywhere and that the light of
> understanding (of any understanding) is the light of God, I have not
> doubt that people everywhere and in all centuries have discovered
> pieces or aspects of spiritual truth. And it's quite possible that
> Eastern religious writers have written about truths which Western
> theistic writers haven't - or vice versa. Incidentally just a few days
> ago I started reading the Upanishads.
I've only read snippets but there's some good stuff in there. The
Bhagavad Gita is the one I've read in detail. (Is it a Upanishad or not?
I think it's generally counted as one even though it's part of the
Mahabarata)
> I like your expression that Brahman is unknowable until you've been
> there, because it comports well with the deep question of what truth
> actually is. On one level truth is a property that propositions can
> have; but on a deeper level truth is a property that a person can have
> - or more specifically a person's life can have.
It's a strong tradition in religions where there is some idea of
experience as important, whether through yoga/meditation leading you to
discover your true "Self" (Atman, identify with Brahman) or perhaps in a
similar way Buddhism finding Nibbana. The Rishis apparently had that
experience and each documented it in their articles. Buddha would have
come to know it and see it. It seems that religious experiences are
available to people of many religions, some say even no religion. People
tend to interpret it in terms of their culture's frame of reference.
Buddhism has the Anatta or No Soul doctrine, though there's still a unit
of reincarnation - hmmm. I've heard of an analogy there involving
candles, the flame of your life lighting the flame of a next. When you
combine that with the idea that our life touches and effects so many
others and is itself touched and shaped by so much you end up with more
an idea of many to many candle lighting rather than one to one which
reincarnation implies. The Skandas as processes coming together to make
"Me" would fit that many to many idea.
> Returning to
> Christianity, for me it is highly significant that Christ when
> speaking about the new commandment (which arguably is the center piece
> of all Christianity) didn't call disciples those who would believe as
> He did but those who would do as He did (See John 13:34-35)
The doing does seem important.
>> In fact reading your discussion of Spirit being the _underlying_
>> thing in our world seems a closer picture of (Para)Brahman than of the
>> Christian god who seems to normally be an entirely external creator.
>
> That's not quite true. One of the more memorable utterances of Christ
> in the Gospels is "The kingdom of God is within you". Tolstoy wrote an
> entire book under that title. The original quote is in Luke 17:20 ff:
> "And having been questioned by the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God
> does come, He answered them, and said, `The kingdom of God does not
> come with observation; nor shall they say, Lo, here; or lo, there; for
> lo, the kingdom of God is within you.' "
There are so many ways I could interpret that.
>> It may be a more agnostic viewpoint, or may be within normal atheism, to
>> say "We just are. This is what we have. We do our best with this". That
>> world view can be very powerful and work very well for those that hold
>> it. All the good things that we promote - social cohesion, helping others,
>> non-greed, selflessness, are all things that serve humanity as a whole
>> very well. Religion can help achieve this, but it can also go wrong.
>
> I am not sure I understand your point. Indeed ?we just are?. The
> question is ?What are we?? Are we complex agglomerations of material
> particles which somehow bring forth consciousness, or are we spiritual
> beings experiencing a physical environment as a part of our condition?
> Incidentally, as we all agree that whatever it is we are we are part
> of reality, an even more basic question is ?What just is?? And that is
> the ontological question that philosophers since the beginning of
> civilization have been thinking about.
I think the agnostic comes to the conclusion that it's insolvable so
doesn't matter so much. It leaves the question of what is the point -
"what should I do?". I see that as independant of what you believe the
underlying reality to be made up of.
On the other hand, belief in a god does seem to help some people. It
only goes wrong when that belief comes with dogma, which in the end is
very hard to actually know to be correct.
>>
>> The Dharmin does quite well here, but that's just another viewpoint.
>> Dharma could be just our observation of things in the world. It seems
>> to work better if such and such, yet that's us humans. People past
>> have observed patterns in life and found that certain behaviours lead
>> to something - enlightenment perhaps - which they see as very good and
>> explain in terms of their understanding of the world. Other creatures
>> have other ways and other goals.
>
> Right, that?s my view also as explained in a previous message in this
> thread: we find out what is ethically right experientially, by seeing
> which behaviors lead to something good inside ? as you say,
> enlightenment perhaps. Interestingly enough all great religious
> traditions have taught that life?s meaning or goal is about a self-
> transforming and self-transcending process realized by walking a
> particular religious path; a goal which in the West is called
> salvation and in the East is called enlightenment. And it seems to me
> that all great religious traditions both East and West describe for
> all practical purposes exactly the same path.
Very much so. There are some differences around areas like the need to
spread the path to others, and I wonder if these have been picked up in
interpretation. At a practical level there is so much in common.
Even between Christianity with its distinct separate soul and Buddhism
with its no-soul doctrine. There are a lot of surface differences and
some things seem to be approached from different directions but in the
end there does seem a lot in common too. I think the state of mind
you're trying to reach is similar.
Of course to come to that conclusion I have to rate things like "Belief
in Christ is the be-all and end-all" as very low importance. As I look
at religion I tend to mark all such things, Christ, Krishna,
Reincarnation, Heaven as low importance. That's quite a different
approach to many religious people I think.
>> We do find that if we get on and start helping others, doing all the
>> community things, maybe even practicing our religion, then it can help
>> us. Interesting.
>
> Well, several studies have shown that practicing religion correlates
> positively both with personal well-being and with charitable
> behavior.
I think the wellbeing came from being settled where you are.
Religious groups do promote charitable behaviour, whether it's the
churches' Hope program or a temple's Seva program.
>> The jump from "Scientific naturalism doesn't seem to explain consciousness
>> or morality very well" to all the things that come with Christian belief
>> is huge. There are many things that theism does not explain well.
>
> Give me an example of a thing that theism explains less well than
> naturalism.
The problem of evil is the standard question.
Wasps. They do very nasty things to their prey. I don't count being
paralised and kept alive as long as possible to keep me fresh while I'm
slowly eaten a pleasant prospect. Maybe a caterpillar sees it
differently. They certainly can feel and react to pain. I don't know
whether the paralysis knocks out feeling as well as movement. There was
that species that knocked out the will to escape in cockroaches I think,
but kept movement and presumably pain working.
>> Scientific Naturalism does not seem unsophisticated.
>
> What I think is unsophisticated, or if you prefer uncritical, is
> atheists? trust in it. Actually I think this trust is the result of a
> logical fallacy called the reification fallacy. The reification
> fallacy is to take something that is abstract and assume that it is
> real. Consider for example the statements ?Our genes try to multiply
> their numbers? or ?a particle tries to reach the state of lowest
> potential energy?. If one understands such statements as meaning that
> our genes or that a particle have intentions then one is committing
> the reification fallacy. Now what science plainly does is to construct
> mathematical models that describe physical phenomena. Scientific
> naturalism is the hypothesis that these models also describe the
> objective reality that produces the physical phenomena; as such this
> is a valid ontological hypothesis. But to believe that science implies
> scientific naturalism, or to believe that science?s success evidences
> scientific naturalism ? this is to commit the reification fallacy. And
> that?s an error that many smart people, including many fine
> scientists, are committing. In fact scientific models only describe
> patterns present in the physical phenomena we observe and really say
> nothing about the underlying reality that produces them, except of
> course that reality must be so as to produce them.
Science does produce models which try to predict the way the world
behaves. "Genes multiply" seems a useful model without personifying
genes. Models help us to determine what we can do in the world. The "God
Model" doesn't give any useful predictions that we can use to shape our
interaction in the world that other non-god models can also produce.
We can model benefits of certain religious practice, but those models
don't seem to depend on the god. Conjecturing that there is a god is
then just theory - an attempt to explain why the model works. The model
works regardless.
>
> Here is an analogy: Suppose you are watching a movie. You know that
> it?s not like the movie just happens; there must be something
> producing it, perhaps some projection mechanism behind you. Now
> suppose that after a while you notice some patterns in the movie.
> Perhaps there are no green things in the movie. Or perhaps things in
> the movie move in a particular way. All these things you discover
> about the movie will not tell you anything about what it is that
> produces it. For example the fact that there are no green things in
> the movie does not imply that there are no green things in whatever it
> is that produces the movie. Now fast forward to our condition in life:
> We watch physical phenomena around us: the earth, the sky, the way
> apples fall, and so on. We notice there are no angels in the physical
> environment we observe. Or we notice that all things have mass which
> resists accelerating them. But these observations do not of course
> imply that whatever it is that produces the physical environment we
> observe does not have angels in it, or that the things that are in it
> have mass that resists acceleration.
But adding angels to the model does not change that F=ma (at least at
normal kinds of speeds). Force = Mass * Acceleration is a useful thing.
We don't know how gravity or magnetism works but we can predict so much.
Being able to determine the force on an object, or knowing how much
thrust to apply to move it works wonders.
> More importantly though scientific
> naturalism is not viable as a model of reality so that the question of
> its comparative simplicity is rendered irrelevant. And it?s not viable
> because it fails (or at least no naturalist has yet succeeded to show
> how it succeeds) in accounting for such broadly accepted truths as the
> objectivity of at least some ethical propositions, our possession of
> libertarian free will, the fact that propositions possess content, and
> so on. Amazingly enough scientific naturalism even fails to account
> for the production of the physical phenomena themselves, hence all the
> talk about the deep mystery of quantum mechanics. But quantum
> mechanics is not at all mysterious from purely the scientific
> viewpoint. Quantum mechanics is a mathematical formula that describes
> with striking precision patterns of order present in a wide range of
> physical phenomena. The mystery resides only in scientific
> naturalists? intent to describe what physical reality could possibly
> produce the same, or in other words in the naturalistic
> ?interpretation? of quantum phenomena.
But why is a god any better than anything else "Yet to be discovered"?
Most of the people proprosing a god are proposing an external
independantly conscious being - a projection of us really.
> Finally one may ask this: If the above is true, why haven?t academic
> philosophers moved away from scientific naturalism? Well some propose
> to do exactly that and suggest the need to device non-naturalistic and
> non-theistic models of reality, but with little success as far as I
> can see. (Of course to suggest that theism is true is tantamount to
> risk being laughed out of the room in most philosophy departments ?
> but this may be changing.) Others are still trying to find ways to
> solve naturalism?s many conceptual problems. Some philosophers try to
> invalidate the evidence that produces these conceptual problems in the
> first place, arguing that ethics is not objective after all, that our
> sense of free will is an illusion, even that much of what we know
> about our own consciousness is fallacious and the result of ?folk
> psychology?. In any case things are definitely in movement.
Free will is a complex beast. I understand it as whether or not
something like my decision to go to bed after writing this is my will,
or is entirely predicable based on my current state and the state of
anything in my light cone going backwards (or bigger than light cone
given quantum). Is it possible knowing enough about the state of the
universe 20 years ago to determine whether or not I will decide to go
to bed after writing this or read some more? Is it "pre-determined"?
Again, I wonder whether that model really helps us. The amount of state
we need to know is huge. If I decide that it's pre-determined whether
or not I succeed it still doesn't allow me to give up trying. Cause and
effect still apply. I may as well act as if I have free will.
Are philosophers asking whether that initial state was set up consciously
by a god who pre-planned all the final outcomes? It's a challenge if
you believe in such a god to ask why and what this means in terms of
savedness - "So he meant me to go to hell? What's me anyway?". If you
drop god from the equation you don't have to contend with such questions.
It's probably as easy for me to see that side as making sense as it is
for you to see theism as making sense, and however much we may try to
see eachother's view it may be just as hard for each of us to do so.
The whole reference frame is different.
- Richard
Dianelos Georgoudis
wrote:
> DianelosGeorgoudis wrote:
> >> But it's still a big jump to the kinds of beliefs which a lot of
> >> Christians have - maybe you don't - that belief in specifically Christ
> >> is the most important thing. Christianity narrows it down to a single
> >> deity and a single story.
>
> > Right. It’s quite a jump, and before making that jump one must first
> > find one’s footing in theism.
>
> "Must" seems rather strong. Surely rather a lot of people are
> converted in the first instance to a particular religion, rather
> than first of all becoming a theist and then searching around
> to find a religion that fits.
Yes, well, I think it's not so much that a lot of people are converted
to a particular religion; rather they are born into it. But responding
to DavidH's original post I was specifically discussing the
intellectual path towards God that I think is open to an atheist or
agnostic. And it is in this context that I argue that one first
understands or discovers the general truths before understanding or
discovering the more specific ones. That's how it's done in most
intellectual endeavors, e.g. in physics, in mathematics, and so on. In
general one first notices the broad patterns and then the more
detailed ones.
> (I'm sure that both happen -- for instance, the second is AIUI
> what happened to C S Lewis and to at least one acquaintance
> of mine.)
>
> > What I think is unsophisticated, or if you prefer uncritical, is
> > atheists’ trust in it. Actually I think this trust is the result of
> > a logical fallacy called the reification fallacy. The reification
> > fallacy is to take something that is abstract and assume that it is
> > real.
>
> This seems to me to be the error into which you fall (or at least
> one of them) when you claim that materialists cannot coherently
> talk about morals or beauty or consciousness or whatever: materialists
> don't believe in non-material things; beauty is non-material; therefore
> materialists don't believe in beauty. Obviously this doesn't work
> if beauty isn't a "thing". (There are other problems with the
> argument.)
In my experience discussing with materialists it's not so much that
they don't believe in beauty, they just don't believe in the existence
of beauty in the way most people think of it, namely as an objective
property of a thing (a face, a piece of music, a theorem, a poem,
etc). Rather they believe that beauty is a particular kind of
electrochemical structure or process that takes place in the brain of
a person who is experiencing that thing. So unless there are persons
around the thing itself has no beauty. The same goes for all concepts
which most people understand refer to non-physical things, such as
numbers. I remember I once asked a materialist whether he believed
that the number 7 did not exist before the first person actually
thought of it, and he answered that yes. So the number 7 has a
particular age and is certainly no older than a few million years. By
the same measure the one centillionth digit of the decimal expansion
of pi does not exist as a particular value between 0 and 9 because
nobody knows this value. In the same vain beliefs are supposed to be
particular physical brain processes. Plantinga once gave a talk
against materialism arguing that brain processes are not the kind of
things that can have content. (See, or rather listen to
http://radioapologia.com/archives/Against_Materialism_with_Alvin_Plantinga.mp3
)
> I shall refrain from commenting further on this, for the usual
> reason. But:
>
> > I will leave aside the last point
> > and concentrate on the argument from simplicity: First of all,
> > simplicity and complexity are properties that can be quantified, and a
> > theist can device models of reality which coherently account for the
> > physical phenomena we observe and which are far simpler than
> > scientific naturalism’s model.
>
> You have made such claims before. I don't suppose you'd care to give some
> evidence that this is true, for some sense of simplicity and complexity
> that "can be quantified"?
We discussed this some time in the past; I refer to the Kolmogorov
complexity. Which comports well with my understanding of what an
explanation is, namely the discovery of patterns present in what is
being explained. Fully explaining something then reduces it to its
intrinsic complexity; when you reach that level no more explaining is
possible because no more patterns are present in it.
Gareth McCaughan
>>> Right. It’s quite a jump, and before making that jump one must first
>>> find one’s footing in theism.
...
> Yes, well, I think it's not so much that a lot of people are converted
> to a particular religion; rather they are born into it.
That happens too, but it's not the same phenomenon. (Or do you
mean: they are born into some religion, then they abandon it,
and then later on when they come to reconsider they assume that
the religion they started with is the only one to consider?)
> But responding
> to DavidH's original post I was specifically discussing the
> intellectual path towards God that I think is open to an atheist
> or agnostic. And it is in this context that I argue that one first
> understands or discovers the general truths before understanding or
> discovering the more specific ones. That's how it's done in most
> intellectual endeavors, e.g. in physics, in mathematics, and so on.
> In general one first notices the broad patterns and then the more
> detailed ones.
I think there's a lot to be said for not trying to evaluate any
specific theistic religion until you've addressed the general
question of whether there's a god at all. But: suppose that
some particular religion (Christianity, say) is correct, and
that there is good enough evidence to establish that. Then
it seems perfectly possible that someone might get hold of
enough evidence to establish "if theism is right, then
probably Christianity is too" before they have enough
evidence to establish that theism is right.
Concrete example: someone might come across a lot of cases
of alleged miracles allegedly wrought by means of Christians'
prayers. If the miracles were impressive enough, the evidence
for them solid enough, and the connection with the Christians'
prayers clear enough, then immediate conversion to Christianity
might be appropriate.
Something similar could happen with atheism: someone might
be led to atheism in the first instance by finding very good
arguments in favour of scientific naturalism.
> In my experience discussing with materialists it's not so much that
> they don't believe in beauty, they just don't believe in the existence
> of beauty in the way most people think of it, namely as an objective
> property of a thing (a face, a piece of music, a theorem, a poem,
> etc).
That might be true. (I think realism about beauty is in principle
a separate question from materialism, but I expect most materialists
aren't aesthetic realists -- if that's the right term -- and most
non-materialists are.)
> Rather they believe that beauty is a particular kind of
> electrochemical structure or process that takes place in the brain of
> a person who is experiencing that thing. So unless there are persons
> around the thing itself has no beauty. The same goes for all concepts
> which most people understand refer to non-physical things, such as
> numbers. I remember I once asked a materialist whether he believed
> that the number 7 did not exist before the first person actually
> thought of it, and he answered that yes. So the number 7 has a
> particular age and is certainly no older than a few million years. By
> the same measure the one centillionth digit of the decimal expansion
> of pi does not exist as a particular value between 0 and 9 because
> nobody knows this value.
I think you're conflating two issues here. Someone who believes
that numbers are not *things* at all, or that they are things
and the things they are are classes of events in people's brains,
will indeed believe that e.g. the number 7 didn't exist before
there was someone to think about it. But they might none the less
believe that the property of being, or not being, the centillionth
digit of pi is one that 7 would *inevitably* have had. In other
words, declining to reify numbers or identifying them with
physical phenomena doesn't entail any sort of subjectivism
about what the properties of those numbers are.
(For my part, I don't claim to know what the best way is of
handling the metaphysics of numbers and such things. I suspect
that questions like "does the number 7 *really* exist?" don't
have definite answers except by convention, but I could be wrong
and even if I'm right it's not obvious to me what the best
conventions are. But I'm sure that for practical purposes it's
most effective to treat numbers and other abstracta somewhat like
Things, because that way we get to use all the machinery our
brains have for keeping track of Things.)
> In the same vein beliefs are supposed to be
> particular physical brain processes. Plantinga once gave a talk
> against materialism arguing that brain processes are not the kind of
> things that can have content. (See, or rather listen to
> http://radioapologia.com/archives/Against_Materialism_with_Alvin_Plantinga.mp3
> )
I may do that, but haven't time right now. I've seen arguments of
(what I guess to be) a similar character before, and been very
unconvinced.
>>> I will leave aside the last point
>>> and concentrate on the argument from simplicity: First of all,
>>> simplicity and complexity are properties that can be quantified, and a
>>> theist can device models of reality which coherently account for the
>>> physical phenomena we observe and which are far simpler than
>>> scientific naturalism’s model.
>>
>> You have made such claims before. I don't suppose you'd care to give some
>> evidence that this is true, for some sense of simplicity and complexity
>> that "can be quantified"?
>
> We discussed this some time in the past; I refer to the Kolmogorov
> complexity.
The Kolmogorov complexity of a thing is the minimum length of
a computer program that produces it. If your fundamental theory
of the universe has things like "minds" or "consciousness" as
basic entities -- things whose definitions we don't know how
to express in algorithmic terms, and which AIUI you don't think
*can* possibly be expressed in algorithmic terms, it appears
to follow that the Kolmogorov complexity of your theory is
infinite.
So on what grounds do you claim that your understanding of
things is simpler, in terms of Kolmogorov complexity, than
that of scientific naturalism?
michaeld
>
> Michael D. wrote:
>
> [me:]
> >> But I agree that if someone has a way of demonstrating
> >> (without assuming the existence of God, of course) that
> >> there are objective ethical truths, but the demonstration
> >> doesn't give us any way to see how there *could be*
> >> objective ethical truths, then that would invalidate
> >> the argument in my paragraph quoted above. Anyone want
> >> to offer such a demonstration?
>
> [Michael:]
> > The usual argument - that people's moral intuitions overlap to a large
> > extent even if they come from independent cultures - seems to be of this
> > form. Similar to the argument for the objectivity of physical reality that
> > uses the fact that different people's observations of it have a high level
> > of consistency. Likewise this doesn't give any clue about the "origin" of
> > physical reality. (Of course I think the latter argument is much stronger
> > than the former for more than one reason. But in principle I think the
> > arguments are analogous.)
>
> The "usual argument" seems to me to be obviously extremely weak;
> the idea that it demonstrates that moral values have objective
> reality seems to me not worth taking seriously.
I would go along with weak but not "obviously extremely". In any case it's
the strongest argument I know of for moral realism, so I think it's
relevant to your original point.
> (At least, if "objective reality" is taken to mean something
> strong enough to have any hope of making an argument for God
> or against naturalism work. In particular, something more
> than intersubjectivity.)
>
> >> What I mean is that the intuition people really have (I think)
> >> isn't "objective ethics exist", but "such-and-such particular
> >> objective ethics exist". They say things like "I am as sure that
> >> it's Objectively Wrong to torture small children to death just
> >> for fun as I am of anything". And the idea, I think, is generally
> >> that this feels like an insight into how things absolutely,
> >> non-negotiably must be; not merely into how they contingently
> >> happen to be (e.g. because of the way human brains are wired
> >> or how our societies are structured).
> >
> > I think the idea is that it gives insight to how things *are*
> > (independently of society, the human brain, etc.) rather than
> > necessarily how things *must* be.
>
> But it seems to me (and, again, I'm open to persuasion otherwise)
> that what makes these insights seem like they're into something
> "independent of society, the human brain, etc." is precisely that
> they feel like insights into how things *must* be.
As far as I understand it, people who hold this position consider their
conscience to be a sort of sixth sense. They believe (rightly or wrongly)
it gives them information about objective reality, independent of the
human brain etc., for exactly the same reasons they believe the other five
senses do. I don't see where inevitability comes into it.
michaeld
[...]
> > 2. The argument is at any rate no stronger than its first
> > premise. I do not know whether moral nonrealism is in fact
> > correct, but I think it's quite clear that it isn't crazy;
> > so even if everything else in the argument were watertight,
> > it wouldn't be all that powerful.
>
> I think it is crazy. For example I think it is crazy to suspect that
> to torture a sentient being for fun is wrong only because of personal
> opinion or because of social convention or because of the way our
> brains have evolved.
Why?
michaeld
>
> On 2008-08-03, michaeld <mich...@cantab.net> wrote:
> >
> > My favourite example of this:
> >
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYAzoPvI_sM&feature=related
>
> Does he see a hole in the head as positive or negative?
>
> Ah - negative. Hmmmm.
>
> Could do with it in text form. He reads slowly.
>
> You must react to "Abonimable Frock Religion" though ;-) He doesn't like
> catholics. Other than that he's said only one bit of info. I've seen
> such beliefs discussed here.
His usual name for the RCC is "the cult of the dead woman", and yes he
certainly does have a particular dislike of it. He's even conceded from
time to time that there may actually be one or two real Christians in the
"Anglican religion" (aka "the b****** child of the cult of the dead
woman"), but has said plainly on several occasions that it's impossible to
be saved and a member of the RCC. Even we members of the "atheistic
cynical-sinner-scientist religion" get away with things relatively lightly
overall, though naturally we too will shortly be burning alive in the lake
of fire along with the "dead-woman-cultists", the "dire and deadly
evangelicals", the "Satanic Koranics", the feminists and in fact the
entire population of the UK apart from the <=5000 other "Type I
Christians" who live here. Luckily though he appears to be an
annihilationist... phew!
Dianelos Georgoudis
wrote:
[snip all]
Gareth, Richard and Michael,
I am away from home for a week or so (holidays on a Greek island, he
he) and I don't know how much time and access I will have to respond
to your posts in this thread. But please don't go away, this is a very
interesting discussion.
Richard Corfield
>
> Concrete example: someone might come across a lot of cases
> of alleged miracles allegedly wrought by means of Christians'
> prayers. If the miracles were impressive enough, the evidence
> for them solid enough, and the connection with the Christians'
> prayers clear enough, then immediate conversion to Christianity
> might be appropriate.
I big issue I have with these is that I've heard of these things from
people of a number of different faiths. This means that even if such
things happened the other things that Christianity deduces are still
hard to make.
I can remain open minded on miracles, especially if I remember that both
Hindus (well some Hindus) and Buddhists are encouraged _not_ to seek them
for reasons that make sense to me. Even if one hit me in the face, unless
something made it really obvious and I've not heard of an example where
it is, I'd not know if it was the Holy Spirit or a Sidhi for example.
I was amongst some people the other night with conversation going in areas
"Oh, so and so, she also speaks in tongues". I felt out of my depth.
Hinduism teaches that this kind of thing would come to someone who's
'getting there', which would imply someone also posessing more the
qualities of goodness. Fruits of the Spirit if you're a Christian.
I know people who I think are very good people.
It would imply that someone going round healing people would not also
be someone going round talking about hell and damnation for example. I'm
not sure that correlation is backed up in life, though I've not met any
of the evangelical healers so don't know.
"Don't be sidetracked by the Sidhis", or perhaps "Keep away from any
wierd stuff" also applies. Life is interesting enough without it.
(The actual teaching in all 3 religions seems to be use what gifts you
have for good without greed and remember that the gift itself is not
what _really_ matters. Don't be sidetracked by the gift. I wonder if you
can generalise that to less mysterious gifts too. If you're a wonderful
musician then yes use that and do wonders with it, but don't become a
stuck up wonderful musician.)
- Richard
Gareth McCaughan
[about whether there are non-question-begging grounds for
being a moral realist that don't undermine the claim that
naturalistic worldviews can't support moral realism:]
>>> The usual argument - that people's moral intuitions overlap to a large
>>> extent even if they come from independent cultures - seems to be of this
>>> form. Similar to the argument for the objectivity of physical reality that
>>> uses the fact that different people's observations of it have a high level
>>> of consistency. Likewise this doesn't give any clue about the "origin" of
>>> physical reality. (Of course I think the latter argument is much stronger
>>> than the former for more than one reason. But in principle I think the
>>> arguments are analogous.)
>>
>> The "usual argument" seems to me to be obviously extremely weak;
>> the idea that it demonstrates that moral values have objective
>> reality seems to me not worth taking seriously.
>
> I would go along with weak but not "obviously extremely". In any case
> it's the strongest argument I know of for moral realism, so I think
> it's relevant to your original point.
Yes, probably. So let's see what the strongest version of my
original claim is that I'm prepared to stand by:
The argument we're discussing has the following form:
1 Some things are objectively right or wrong.
2 If naturalism / atheism / whatever is correct,
then nothing is objectively right or wrong.
3 Therefore naturalism / atheism / whatever is
not correct.
I've been claiming that any grounds for believing #1 are
also grounds for rejecting #2, on the basis that when you
unpack #2 what you get is something like this:
2a I don't see any reason why things should be objectively
right and wrong if there's no God / everything ultimately
comes down to the behaviour of quantum fields.
and I think I still think that, so far as I can tell,
any good reason for accepting #1 that doesn't beg the
question (by assuming theism / non-naturalism) is
ipso facto a reason for rejecting #2a.
But you've pointed out that someone could alternatively
say
2b If there is no God / everything ultimately comes
down to the behaviour of quantum fields, then I don't
see what basis there can be in such a world for
anything to be objectively right or wrong: how can
one set of wavefunctions be morally preferable to
another?
and might have a purely empirical reason for believing
in moral realism, such as the fact that people tend to
agree about what's right and what's wrong. So, if such
a person were an atheist / naturalist, they could find
themselves in the position of being convinced that
moral right and wrong are objectively real, while having
no coherent account of *how* they could be so.
I sort of agree, but (looking at it from a different
angle) it seems to me that belief in #2b undermines any
such purely empirical argument for #1. That is: if you
are firmly convinced that objective right and wrong are
impossible, or nonsensical, in a godless / purely material
world, then surely the right response to seeing moral
agreement between people is to look for other ways it
could happen -- such as, e.g., all having similar brains
as a result of a shared evolutionary history.
Another way of putting this: the inference in the empirical
argument from "people agree about morals" to "therefore
morals are objectively real" seems terribly weak, unless
there's some further metaphysical assumption lurking in
the background, so that seems like the obvious thing to
break if you find that accepting it leads you to a
contradiction.
I think Dianelos has a slightly different version again
of #2, something like
2c If there is no God / everything ultimately comes
down to the behaviour of quantum fields, then I don't
see how one can give any objective *meaning* to
ethical statements, never mind actually believing
them to be true. The laws of physics don't have
anything about goodness in them.
I think that if someone believes *that* and takes atheism
(resp. naturalism) as a serious possibility, then they can't
possibly have much confidence in #1 -- because they aren't
even sure that #1 is a meaningful statement unless they're
actually tacitly assuming that atheism / naturalism is wrong.
So while I agree that #1 and #2 don't outright contradict
each other, I think there's enough tension between the two
that anyone making both claims ought to go into more detail
about their grounds for believing both of them, so that
others can see that there isn't a contradiction or a circular
argument lurking in those details.
>>> I think the idea is that it gives insight to how things *are*
>>> (independently of society, the human brain, etc.) rather than
>>> necessarily how things *must* be.
>>
>> But it seems to me (and, again, I'm open to persuasion otherwise)
>> that what makes these insights seem like they're into something
>> "independent of society, the human brain, etc." is precisely that
>> they feel like insights into how things *must* be.
>
> As far as I understand it, people who hold this position consider their
> conscience to be a sort of sixth sense. They believe (rightly or wrongly)
> it gives them information about objective reality, independent of the
> human brain etc., for exactly the same reasons they believe the other five
> senses do. I don't see where inevitability comes into it.
I think we're slightly at cross purposes, and I think it's mostly
my fault. Let me try to fix this.
I'll take myself as an example, because I do have the sort of
intuitions we're talking about and find myself inclined to take
them as evidence for moral realism. Of course other people
may be very different.
My apparently-knowing that torturing babies for fun is wrong
feels to me much more like my apparently-knowing that there are
infinitely many integers than like my apparently-knowing that
there's a desk in front of me on which my arms are resting.
It doesn't feel much like a *perception*. It doesn't feel
like something contingent, or something that could be different
without a radical upheaval in the universe.
Whereas according to a divine-command notion of ethics, it seems
that it could become right to torture babies without any such
upheaval: God could just change his mind. (Or have an unchanging
intention that on April 16, 2009, it will become right to torture
babies. So even if, as some theists believe, God cannot change
his mind, it could abruptly become right to torture babies without
the universe being grossly rearranged.) The same sort of thing
applies if it's God's preferences that determine what's right;
God might turn out to have a preference for untortured babies
until 2009-04-16 and tortured babies thereafter.
So the intuitions that incline me toward moral realism seem just as
opposed to divine command ethics as to moral nonrealism. And, so
far as I can tell -- again, I could be badly wrong -- the features
of those intuitions that make this so are generally shared by others
who have intuitions that make moral nonrealism feel unacceptable.
Of course divine-command theories aren't the only way of trying to
make God the foundation of morals. For instance, you can say that
right and wrong are somehow consequences of God's nature (which you
might claim is necessarily unchanging, or something) rather than
of his choices or decrees or preferences. It seems to me that an
advocate of this sort of view needs to explain enough about that
"somehow" to show why "it's a consequence of God's nature" is
better than "it's a consequence of how the world is". On the face
of it, it's far from clear how you can get from "God is like this"
to "we should do that, and not do the other" without some separate
moral principles to justify that derivation -- and if you have
those, then in what sense is God really providing a *foundation*
for morals?
Gareth McCaughan
> On 2008-08-09, Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>> Concrete example: someone might come across a lot of cases
>> of alleged miracles allegedly wrought by means of Christians'
>> prayers. If the miracles were impressive enough, the evidence
>> for them solid enough, and the connection with the Christians'
>> prayers clear enough, then immediate conversion to Christianity
>> might be appropriate.
>
> I big issue I have with these is that I've heard of these things from
> people of a number of different faiths. This means that even if such
> things happened the other things that Christianity deduces are still
> hard to make.
Yes. Therefore, "impressive enough, solid enough, clear enough"
probably has to mean considerably more impressive, solid and clear
than is actually observed in the real world.
> (The actual teaching in all 3 religions seems to be use what gifts you
> have for good without greed and remember that the gift itself is not
> what _really_ matters. Don't be sidetracked by the gift. I wonder if you
> can generalise that to less mysterious gifts too. If you're a wonderful
> musician then yes use that and do wonders with it, but don't become a
> stuck up wonderful musician.)
I think that's good advice regardless of how much truth there is
in any religion.
Richard Corfield
>>
>> I big issue I have with these is that I've heard of these things from
>> people of a number of different faiths. This means that even if such
>> things happened the other things that Christianity deduces are still
>> hard to make.
>
> Yes. Therefore, "impressive enough, solid enough, clear enough"
> probably has to mean considerably more impressive, solid and clear
> than is actually observed in the real world.
Those that have their experiences in the church, perhaps on the Alpha
weekend or whatever, are led to perform that reverse deduction - I
feel this therefore that. They are not even aware of the possibility of
other explanations for what they feel and don't explore them. So many
people base at least their initial faith on these things. Maybe in
some it becomes the gentle loving kind, maybe in some the less gentle
damning kind.
I suppose my big challenge with the church is where I see that damning
kind or other belief structures that effectively degrade other paths
based on what I see as insufficient evidence to conclude that it is true.
There have been voices in the church "We must listen to what others
say as they have value too", but this seems an ignored minority. The
separation that religion causes in the world seems such a shame.
When you're exposed to evangelical Christianity it becomes hard to
separate that negative aspect from the rest of the beliefs or not see it
as endemic in the beliefs. This even with people like Eric here and others
I've met in the Christian world who don't seem to have this problem.
It also seems very different to the loving path it could be possible to
see Jesus as having taught. A small misunderstanding from "You must try
to be like this" to "You must insist on this dogma in everyone you meet".
It's possible to see how it got in to a religious mindset. That difference
in the shape of Christianity has such a huge effect on life.
I say "could be possible" because maybe that's wishful thinking. As
Richard Dawkins loves to point out Jesus made mistakes. There are things
in the bible that are not nice which seem to be ignored now. Also looking
back even not very many years the shape of Christian britain was not so
pleasant. Christianity is changing.
>> (The actual teaching in all 3 religions seems to be use what gifts you
>> have for good without greed and remember that the gift itself is not
>> what _really_ matters. Don't be sidetracked by the gift. I wonder if you
>> can generalise that to less mysterious gifts too. If you're a wonderful
>> musician then yes use that and do wonders with it, but don't become a
>> stuck up wonderful musician.)
>
> I think that's good advice regardless of how much truth there is
> in any religion.
I wonder at times how much I am reducing whatever religion I encounter to
things I can extract that make sense while ignoring the actual believing
bits. I've come close with Brahman/Vishnu/Moksha, and maybe I could,
but even then I tend towards an agnostic approach being able to reduce
Brahman to just the interconneted beauty of the world we live in and
concentrate on things like the above. Moksha is a way of being you can
head to without need for belief in anything mystical about it. It makes
understanding the concept of devotional religion interesting as obviously
it can and does work for people, but is not the only way.
There's lots of good advice to be found. Some of it seems really obvious,
some of it raises questions, but so many don't heed it. If we could
have the good advice and the community aspects without the religious
separation that would be good. If those religous groups out there doing
things would join forces and not insist on converting each other think
how much could be done!
I think there's more to it though. It would be lovely for people to just
get together and do these things, and in places they do and the result
seems good. There's the question of individual freedom versus community
cohesion, with the religions pushing for community cohesion. I'd love
to see community cohesion without the cost of dogmatic belief.
Apparently the volunteer rate in the UK is quite high though.
- Richard
Richard Corfield
> argument from "people agree about morals" to "therefore
> morals are objectively real" seems terribly weak, unless
> there's some further metaphysical assumption lurking in
> the background, so that seems like the obvious thing to
> break if you find that accepting it leads you to a
> contradiction.
It is possible to imagine, or even discover in the world, different
societies who have very different moral ideas. I think this brings into
question the existence of objective right and wrong.
It's easy to ask instead what we're trying to maximise. Then it's
possible to see that different societies, if they develop independently,
will try to maximise these things in the same way.
Maybe the objective reality is what you're maximising - a functional and
successful society perhaps. There are multiple ways of doing it, but also
I expect some common things that are likely to be hit on by any society.
Whether these common things are objectively real morals or not? Or are
they just a factor of the kinds of animals we are?
Society and moral values have changed over time. Different societies
even today still find their own local maxima in this field of optimising
various parameters, and different societies can look at each other and
say "That's abhorrent". Maybe it is. Even our society changes over time
as we hunt around for our local maximum pulled by lots of different
forces each trying to maximise different things.
If we look beyond humans to animals in a different position we see very
different things. Those wasps again...
- Richard
Michael J Davis
<mich...@cantab.net> writes
>Gareth McCaughan wrote:
>> >>> [2] Don't mistake me for a religious person - I'm a Christian!
>> >>
>> >> *cringe*
>> > ;-) Indeed. Gareth - I really do wonder about your soh
>> > sometimes. (Yes, I know you can reciprocate!)
>>
>> I've heard that claim made, with a perfectly straight face
>> and a good deal of smugness, so many times that it doesn't
>> really seem very amusing. Sorry if that's a defect on my part.In the context of my discussion, my remark was intended to be a
'throw-away' comment.
>(In case it's not clear what we sort of theology we're dealing with here,
>see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2ruQjSy2ZU&feature=related - in
>particular the little bombshell he drops on 2:07. Or nearly any of his
>other 300 or so videos.)
For those who are committed Christians - the guy makes a valid point
that 'religion' is often a 'way of earning God's favour' - and to that
end is missing the point.
However, the second video is plain *wrong*, as the fact is that God
loves everyone[1], but there are some things that may affect us badly,
especially in our relationship with Him. Consequently, we should turn
away from them.
Just as I sometimes say to my kids, "I love you, but I hate what you
do", so God says the same to us. *Then* "religion" (or Christian
religion, at any rate) is a matter of responding in love to one's
Father.
Mike
[1] see John 3:16, or 1 John 4:10-16
[The reply-to address is valid for 30 days from this posting]
--
Michael J Davis
http://www.trustsof.demon.co.uk
<><
For this is what the Lord has said to me,
"Go and post a Watchman and let
him report what he sees." Isa 21:6
<><
Michael J Davis
<Gareth.M...@pobox.com> writes
me - in response to GMcC's 'cringe':-
>> ;-) Indeed. Gareth - I really do wonder about your soh
>> sometimes. (Yes, I know you can reciprocate!)
>
>I've heard that claim made, with a perfectly straight face
>and a good deal of smugness, so many times that it doesn't
>really seem very amusing. Sorry if that's a defect on my part.
Sorry! I don't think it's a defect - an intelligent mind can often find
something interesting in another's inanities!
;-)
Mike
Simon Woods
>> By "evidence" I understand any datum one feels confident enough to
>> use as a premise in an argument.
Gareth McCaughan wrote:
> X is evidence for Y when P(Y|X) > P(Y). (Of course that could use
> some refinement.)
Why is this definition preferable to (better than?) Dianelos's?
Richard Corfield
> original claim is that I'm prepared to stand by:
>
> The argument we're discussing has the following form:
> 1 Some things are objectively right or wrong.
> 2 If naturalism / atheism / whatever is correct,
> then nothing is objectively right or wrong.
> 3 Therefore naturalism / atheism / whatever is
> not correct.
An example of differing morals is shown by this picture of a girl in a
burqa
The thing even covers her eyes.
The argument for these is to make women less attractive and promote
chastity, though we see that the normal chemistry works in these societies
as well. Still, it is presumably normal there even though it is seen
as very odd and maybe negative here - especially on a child.
Does it stigmatise attractiveness and attraction? The nature of the
world she lives in is so different it's hard to be to know.
- Richard
Gareth McCaughan
I like it better because
- it seems to accord better with how the word "evidence" is
generally used
- it means that knowing that X is evidence for Y directly tells you
something about X and Y, and not merely about some person's
state of mind (so "X is evidence for Y" is a useful thing to
know)
- it means that one can get some information about whether
X is evidence for Y by looking at X and Y, without having
to go spelunking in anyone's mind (so "X is evidence for Y"
is a *possible* thing to know)
- it means that one can have useful discussions about whether
something is evidence for something else, whereas if evidence
is defined by how one feels then there's no point in arguing
when someone makes a statement about evidence
- it makes evidence somewhat quantifiable, which is useful
- Dianelos's definition, on the face of it, amounts to
"evidence is whatever anyone says it is", which seems
like a terrible way to define *anything*
I don't want to overstate these advantages. Probability is a
pretty tricky notion, for instance, and many people would argue
that (at least outside a few artificial and restricted domains)
probabilities should really be understood as describing someone's
state of belief. If so, that would bring back the subjective
element I don't like in Dianelos's definition. (But I think it
does so in a much less objectionable way, for reasons I can
go into if you want.)
Gareth McCaughan
> On 2008-08-10, Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>> Yes, probably. So let's see what the strongest version of my
>> original claim is that I'm prepared to stand by:
>>
>> The argument we're discussing has the following form:
>> 1 Some things are objectively right or wrong.
>> 2 If naturalism / atheism / whatever is correct,
>> then nothing is objectively right or wrong.
>> 3 Therefore naturalism / atheism / whatever is
>> not correct.
I'm afraid I must take exception to your snipping here;
it seems a bit too likely to give readers the impression
that the argument above is "the strongest version of my
original claim [] that I'm prepared to stand by", which
is almost exactly the reverse of the truth :-).
> An example of differing morals is shown by this picture of a girl in a
> burqa
...
> The argument for these is to make women less attractive and promote
> chastity,
...
> Does it stigmatise attractiveness and attraction? The nature of the
> world she lives in is so different it's hard to be to know.
The thing I find most disagreeable about the whole burqa thing
(and this is in no way an original observation) is that it
amounts to saying that *women* have to have their clothing
and behaviour drastically restricted on account of *men's*
lust. That doesn't seem reasonable even if you take the
view that lust is bad, or that its consequences are so awful
that extreme steps must be taken to prevent them.
Gordon Hudson
<Richard.Corfi...@REVERSE.uk.me.littondale> wrote:
A man with a glass eye can now see out of it and his amputated lehs
are apparently regrowing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHAf3W3iPPY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dbwXm-2Nbo
I fully expect to see him on the TV having a live eye test to prove
it.
Richard Corfield
>
> The thing I find most disagreeable about the whole burqa thing
> (and this is in no way an original observation) is that it
> amounts to saying that *women* have to have their clothing
> and behaviour drastically restricted on account of *men's*
> lust. That doesn't seem reasonable even if you take the
> view that lust is bad, or that its consequences are so awful
> that extreme steps must be taken to prevent them.
Men are also restricted, but not as much, and lust still happens. It's
only natural. Watch young Muslims together or a married couple together
and you see the same kinds of relationships and interactions.
I think a sadness in the picture is be that the girl is denied a big
part of her identity - her face. It is not possible to easily identify
her without talking to her - although some of her features show through.
Yes there is so much more to her identity if you get to know her, but
this uniformity takes a lot away.
She's too young to worry about lust.
- Richard
Frederick Williams
>
> On 2008-08-10, Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote:
> >
> > Yes, probably. So let's see what the strongest version of my
> > original claim is that I'm prepared to stand by:
> >
> > The argument we're discussing has the following form:
> > 1 Some things are objectively right or wrong.
> > 2 If naturalism / atheism / whatever is correct,
> > then nothing is objectively right or wrong.
> > 3 Therefore naturalism / atheism / whatever is
> > not correct.
>
> An example of differing morals is shown by this picture of a girl in a
> burqa
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/picturesoftheday/2545407/Pictures-of-the-day-12-August-2008.html?image=23
>
> The thing even covers her eyes.
If she doesn't wear a burqa and gets raped can she claim the full
£13,000 criminal injuries compensation? My advice would be: if you're
going to take your burqa off be sure to get drunk as well just to make
sure.
--
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
Gareth McCaughan
> On 2008-08-13, Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>> The thing I find most disagreeable about the whole burqa thing
>> (and this is in no way an original observation) is that it
>> amounts to saying that *women* have to have their clothing
>> and behaviour drastically restricted on account of *men's*
>> lust. That doesn't seem reasonable even if you take the
>> view that lust is bad, or that its consequences are so awful
>> that extreme steps must be taken to prevent them.
>
> Men are also restricted, but not as much, and lust still happens. It's
> only natural. Watch young Muslims together or a married couple together
> and you see the same kinds of relationships and interactions.
For sure. But, still, the reason given (AIUI) for all this stuff
is that it's supposed to prevent improper thoughts. The fact that
it doesn't actually work is amusing or sad, depending on your
perspective; the fact that it involves restricting women (and
girls) on account of men's alleged randiness is downright nasty.
1st Century Apostolic Traditionalist UK.RC
news:87od3wx...@g.mccaughan.org.uk...
"Temptations to sin are bound to happen, but how terrible it will be for
that person who causes someone to sin! "
Matt 18:7 (ISV)
"Women, for their part, should display their beauty by dressing modestly and
decently."
1 Tim 2:9 (ISV)
Jeff..
"16 Take heed unto thyself, and the doctrines; continue in them: for in
doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee."
1 Tim 4:16 (KJV)
loiner2003
I have heard that in some cultures it is thought that women are
incurably randy, and therefore have to be restrained by segregation,
special clothing and other measures, such as female circumcision. Of
course, it is usually men who make this judgement - though it is sad and
amazing how many women collude with all this.
When I was, briefly, on the Kenyan island of Lamu, which is almost
entirely Muslim, though reasonably liberal, traditional dress was common
and many women wore coverall clothes, but the veil was loose and was
often dropped when in the company of inferiors (such as white folk!) I
was told that the coverings and veil were in fact used by some women as
a means of being anonymous while going to meet their lovers!
Things are not always as simple as they seem!
--
Revd. Eric Potts
"Go in peace, in the power of the Spirit
to live and work to God's praise and glory."
Richard Corfield
There are some things in the Quran that are very nasty. I hope most
Muslims manage to resolve these in the same way that moderate people of
other religions manage to for their religious book's nastier bits.
So the headscarf which is quite common is a convention, more like "Men
don't wear dresses" here. (No I don't fancy one - too draughty between
the legs! Though the ability to bear knees in the office could be a
nicety on the rare hot day. My company has allowed shorts once.)
You can also get stuck up on the idea of improper thoughts. There's a
balance. I wonder if too many taboos cause more harm. On a side note one
idea to stop young kids playing with swear words is to ignore them. I
don't know if that would result in young kids trying to find another
more harmful way of pushing the boundary, but any parent that did that
could bring up kids who accidentally broke others' taboos. Maybe you'd
have to explain that although we don't mind others may.
Some muslim women claim that their religious restrictions work for them,
so it's a complex argument. You can see the argument, but it has to be
a give and take thing with balance and respect on each side. This seems
something that can easily be lost or abused.
Is a society with distinct gender roles stronger? Our society is saying
no. I think it's not so clear. Obviously couples do get on well with
reversed or mixed or no roles and a lot of the traditional stuff in our
societies is excessively restrictive, but there are also differences.
- Richard
Dianelos Georgoudis
> >>> By "evidence" I understand any datum one feels confident enough to use
> >>> as a premise in an argument.
>
>
> > :-) So, what do you mean by "evidence"?
>
> X is evidence for Y when P(Y|X) > P(Y). (Of course that could use
> some refinement.)
Well, the problem I see with this definition is that one can’t define
the concept of probability without making use of the concept of
evidence somewhere down the line, so there is a hidden circularity in
there. It seems to me that a good definition should only use terms
that are simpler (more likely not to be misunderstood) than the term
it purports to define.[1] Ideally one should order definitions like a
directed acyclic graph; the nodes with no successor would represent
those concepts where misunderstanding is minimally likely. The
concepts that do not require defining in this sense are the ones
referring to conscious experience, because we can safely assume that
we all share fundamentally the same human condition.
There may also be a problem with your definition. Consider this
counterexample: X="concept C refers to a natural number" and
Y="concept C refers to a prime". P(Y|X) > P(Y), correct? But I don't
think one can reasonably say that X is evidence for Y.
Here's another counterexample: X="we possess libertarian free will"
and Y="God exists". An atheist may well agree that P(Y|X) > P(Y) but
disagree with the claim that X is evidence in the first place, never
mind that X is evidence for Y.
Finally I think the definition of "evidence" should be independent of
how that evidence is used in an argument. After all we may well
recognize that X is evidence without knowing what X is evidence for.
Indeed the fact that we have used evidence in a mistaken manner does
not affect the fact that it was evidence we used. For example people
used to think that the fact that we observe the sun rising in the east
and setting in the west is evidence that the Earth is at the center of
the universe. The implication is wrong but the evidence is valid.
I think the concept of evidence E entails a) that E us true b) that E
is used as a premise to argue about the truth of other propositions.
Perhaps a simpler definition is this: Evidence is any piece of
information that one judges to be evident enough to be assumed as true
without further justification.
[1] A good definition in that sense would be St. Anselm's definition
of God "God is that than no greatest can be conceived", because it
defines a concept that is easy to misunderstand (God) using simpler
concepts, such as "greatest" and "conceive".
> >>> In general naturalists
> >>> tend to reject any evidence that is not physical, which kind of begs
> >>> the question I think.
>
> >> In our other discussions you have said, contrariwise, that naturalists
> >> *must* reject anything that is not physical, which you regard as
> >> absurd on its face, therefore naturalism is wrong, QED.
>
> > I think there is a misunderstanding here. Naturalists do tend to
> > reject any evidence that is not physical/objective because their
> > ontology is based on the premise that at bottom all is physical or
> > explained on physical principles, and hence all evidence that is not
> > imaginary must be of this sort too. I don’t personally believe that
> > they must do so; in fact I agree with Chalmers that whether objective
> > or subjective data is data.
>
> The following quotations are from uk.r.c articles of yours.
> I've capitalized some bits.
>
> | There are many examples, but I think the
> | clearest one is the proposition "All people have the capacity of
> | conscious experience". To virtually any conscious person this
> | proposition has an obvious meaning and a clear truth value (namely
> | "true"). FROM THE MATERIALISTIC POINT OF VIEW THIS PROPOSITION IS
> | SIMPLY MEANINGLESS.
[snip other similar examples]
Indeed – once somebody is committed to materialism then concepts such
as consciousness become meaningless.[2] That's the point I was making
before: To be consistent a materialist must reject any non-physical
evidence; on the other hand when debating about ontology a materialist
may not claim that only physical evidence is admissible because to do
so is to beg the question.
Incidentally, even though most naturalists are probably materialists
also, naturalism does not imply materialism, and naturalism is clearly
the strongest and indeed the more flexible ontological position. So I
think it's unfair to compare theism with materialism. If I were an
atheist I would say: Look there may be various types of existence:
physical existence, conceptual existence, esthetic existence, and so
on. But all these types of existence follow mechanical laws. Or, to
put it in another way, knowledge about all the types of existence
there is can be described on mechanical principles and do not
ultimately require some personal agency such as God's.
[2] At the very least no materialist philosopher has found a way to
describe consciousness (and the various concepts related to it) within
materialism. Compare this to how easy and natural it is to describe
matter (and the various concepts related to it) within idealistic
theism.
> I have no idea how I can interpret those statements, other than
> as saying that adherents of materialism can't meaningfully talk
> about (let alone coherently believe or disbelieve) propositions
> like "I am conscious" or "Bach's music is beautiful" or "Eating
> people is wrong".
That's what I meant. After all an ontological position is a position
about absolutely everything there is, and as far as I know there is no
way to semantically describe any of these propositions in
materialistic terms. And these are propositions that are considered to
be meaningful propositions by almost all people. In the current state
of affairs I think there are two options open for a materialist: to
recognize that this is a real problem but trust that materialist
philosophers will solve it the future, or else to argue that these
propositions are not really meaningful and only reflect "folk
psychology".
> >> It seems that naturalists cannot win. At least, not in a discussion
> >> with someone whose definition of "evidence" is "anything someone
> >> feels confident about".
>
> > I think everyone’s use of evidence entails to some measure one’s
> > feeling confident about it.
>
> Only in the same way as everyone's use of "truth" does likewise.
> That is: obviously, when I say "X is evidence for Y", what *you*
> are entitled to infer from my saying that (at least if you assume
> I'm sincere) is merely that I take a certain view of the relationship
> between X and Y. But that doesn't mean that what I *mean* by that
> statement is something about my own mental state.
>
> The fact that planets appear to move in elliptical orbits is
> evidence that gravity obeys an inverse-square law. The fact
> that the world contains as much suffering and evil as it does,
> distributed as they are, is evidence that Christianity is wrong.
Actually you must build some arguments in order to justify either
claim, and these arguments may contain errors or else be weak. (Indeed
your first claim above is wrong, isn’t it, now that we know about
general relativity.) Rather than focusing on the concept of evidence I
think it would be better to focus on the concept of justification: why
one believes X rather than Y. Disagreements about what is evidence run
deep: many atheists are convinced that there is absolutely no
evidence for God; some theists are convinced that there is no evidence
that does not evidence God. The fact that most atheists will not
accept non-physical evidence, indeed appear to conflate the concept of
“evidence” with the concept of “physical evidence” [3] does complicate
matters, but I think it's clear that for an atheist to reject any
evidence that is not physical is to beg the question.
[3] Similarly it seems to me that many atheists conflate the concept
of “existence” with the concept of “physical existence”.
> The fact that some people claim to have been miraculously healed
> at Lourdes is evidence that Christianity is right. All those
> statements about evidence would remain true even if somehow
> my brain were coaxed into a state in which none of them seemed
> true to me. The fact that I can (sincerely, though of course
> you'll have to take my word for that) affirm the foregoing
> sentence demonstrates that what I mean by "X is evidence for Y"
> is not some proposition about my own thoughts or feelings.
Yes, but surely when you say "X is evidence for Y" I am justified to
infer that you feel very confident about X being true. That you feel
very confident about X being true is an important part of why you call
X "evidence" in the first place.
> >> I think your framing of the issue in terms of "epistemic rights"
> >> is ill-conceived. It is better to ask: what views fit how well
> >> with the evidence? than: what views am I "entitled" to hold?. And
> >> the claim made by advocates of fine-tuning arguments is that the
> >> available evidence is much more probable on a theistic hypothesis
> >> than on an atheistic one, and that the evidence therefore favours
> >> theism over atheism.
>
> > I don't mind the way you put it, but then I don't see why a
> > naturalistic worldview somehow fails to fit with the evidence that
> > physical laws and constants are as they are.
>
> I didn't say that the fine-tuning argument is any good, only
> that the best way to respond to it is unlikely to be "I'm
> entitled to believe whatever I want to about the laws of
> physics". Let me give an extreme example: suppose we found
> a way of measuring the fine structure constant very accurately,
> and discovered that if you write it in binary then bits
> 32 onwards spell out "Jesus is Lord" in ASCII. I think
> that would count as something that atheistic scientific
> naturalists would do well to have an explanation for.
> (Fraud on the part of whoever did the experiment would
> have to be high on the list of candidate explanations,
> of course.)
Good example. (Have you read Sagan's "Contact"? there a message is
found within the expansion of pi in base 11). I agree that should such
a state of affairs obtain it would difficult for a naturalist to claim
that this only represents of brute fact about reality.
> > From the naturalistic
> > point of view these represent brute facts about reality. It seems to
> > me that to ask a naturalist why a physical constant has a particular
> > value is like asking a mathematician why the smallest natural number
> > has the value of 1.
>
> I think *that* has to be wrong, if only because the question
> of whether there are relationships between any given set of
> (what we currently think of as) the fundamental constants,
> or whether any of them have values that are derivable from
> scratch given a good enough account of the form of the laws
> of nature, is an empirical one to which we don't know the answer.
I understand naturalist thinkers have tried many ways out of the
perceived problem of the fine-tuning of the fundamental physical
constants, such as the possible existence of some kind of ur-
explanation that binds all constants together, and various kinds of
models of reality in which universes are continuously brought forth
having different sets of constants, and so on, but without really
succeeding to remove the problem - even though the suggested solutions
themselves are wildly speculative.
> > I think the error in this theistic argument
> > resides in the general tendency to believe that to explain something
> > is more than to just find patterns present in it.
>
> I think the "general tendency" is right on this point and you're
> wrong. In so far as anyone can be said to be "right" or "wrong"
> about a point of definition, that is;
Well I suppose one can reasonably say that a definition is wrong when
its acceptance would contradict the way that a concept is normally
used. For example the definition of atheism as the lack of belief in
God implies that all newborn babies are atheists, or that a brain-dead
Pope is an atheist - and these statements contradict the way the
concept is normally used. A simple definition which fits well with
the way a concept is normally used can reasonably be said to be right.
> I suppose what I mean is
> that (1) "explain" as generally used means something more than
> "spot patterns in", (2) this stronger usage is, or at least can
> be tweaked so as to be, both coherent and useful, and (3) it is
> in fact more useful than the pure-pattern-spotting meaning that
> you apparently prefer.
My point is this: All cases of explaining I know about can be
described as the discovery of a pattern in what is being explained.
Also, it seems to me, the implications of explanations are the same as
the implications of discovering patterns (e.g. predictive power). But
I do agree that when one explains something one feels like having
achieved something more than merely having discovered a pattern in it;
perhaps one feels like having discovered some truth about its
intrinsic nature. But that may be an unjustified feeling, because when
pressed I don’t think one will be able to describe some extra
knowledge in addition to the discovery of a pattern. If you can find a
counterexample to what I write above I'd be interested to know about
it.
> And, actually, it isn't just a point of definition, because
> the question here is one about what counts as evidence for what,
> and *that* isn't a merely definitional matter. It seems to me
> that when A explains X better than B does, that's evidence for A
> (at least if X is known to be true). I don't know whether that
> can even be *stated* with a pattern-spotting definition of
> "explain" (what does it mean for A to explain X better than B
> does with such a definition?), but it seems to me that something
> along those lines is plainly correct; if you don't want to use
> the word "explain" then some other might have to do instead.
Actually I think you present a good example here. As a case in point
let’s use X="gravitational phenomena", A="general relativity" and
B="Newton’s mechanics". The claim that A explains X better than B
means that A describes more accurate patterns in X than B. For a
scientific naturalist, who is committed to the belief that scientific
models describe objective reality, this evidences that A's respective
model of reality is more probably true than B's.
Incidentally the simplest way to describe why I think that theism is
more probably true than naturalism is that I find that the former can
explain the human condition better than the latter - and this for
fundamental reasons that are independent of the current state of
science (see for example the field of ethics).
> And the whole point of (e.g.) the fine-tuning argument is to
> claim that "God made it so" is a better explanation for the
> allegedly-fine-tuned physical constants than "that's just
> how it happens to be". Which I'm not at all convinced by,
> but as per the "Jesus is Lord" example above I think it's
> pretty clear that an argument of the same general form could
> work just fine, if the evidence came out the right way for it.
Yes, I think you have a point here.
[snip]
> >> It amounts to saying: anyone gets to postulate whatever they like
> >> as "the most basic level of reality", and then questions about
> >> how plausible that postulation is are off limits -- and furthermore,
> >> it seems, whatever's claimed to be "most basic" is then just assumed
> >> to have been explained adequately. If you take that idea seriously,
> >> then I can make up some loony theory about how reality is, at its
> >> most fundamental level, made up of jokes or cream cakes or rabbits
> >> or something. And then claim that my theory ipso facto tells us
> >> all we need to know about jokes or cream cakes or rabbits.
>
> > Well it seems to me that one can indeed postulate anything one likes
> > about the most basic level of reality.
>
> Well, of course one *can*. But if one wants other people to take one
> seriously then one has to pay attention to the plausibility of those
> postulates.
>
> > I agree that prima facie
> > plausibility does play a role in reason, but only a limited one.
>
> If that's true (I'm not sure whether it is), it's only because
> people don't tend to put forward theories that are prima facie
> extremely implausible; therefore, in practice, other considerations
> often dominate.
One way or the other what's hugely more relevant is how well the
implications of these postulates work. Also, that reality is similar
to how we are (namely personal) has a prima facie plausibility that is
higher than any other model which postulates that reality is
fundamentally very different from us. Not to mention the gargantuan
prima facie implausibility of the various naturalistic models of
quantum mechanics.
> > (And
> > incidentally by far the more implausible ontological postulates I have
> > come across come from naturalists trying to interpret quantum
> > mechanics.)
>
> Plausibility is, unfortunately, notoriously not something people
> all agree about :-)
One more reason not to use this concept to attack the postulates of
the worldviews one is comparing. Perhaps we should then ignore the
prima facie plausibility of the postulates and proceed to check how
well the ontological theory based on them works.
> > The important point though is that any hypothesis, whether
> > ontological or not, has implications on which that hypothesis can be
> > judged. If the hypothesis works well then it is justified no matter
> > how implausible it may appear at first.
>
> Because a sufficient quantity of working-well can generally
> far outweigh the (bounded and usually not very large) difference
> in plausibility at the outset.
>
> This depends on there being a good supply of test cases. In
> empirical science, for instance, that's often true. In questions
> of philosophy or religion, it's often not, which is one reason
> why arguments about such topics so often come down to a clash
> of one person's intuitions against another's.
Well, reality as we subjectively experience it (which is the greatest
and most relevant part of the human condition) is impossible to
measure scientifically but this does not mean that that reality is
therefore not quite real or not quite important. As for test cases,
these exist in this realm: According to all great religious traditions
there are spiritual exercises, or more generally ways of life, which
transform to a lesser or greater degree the subjective part of the
human condition. The empirical sciences fit as well with theism as
with naturalism (actually they fit better), but theism also explains
and thus gives us control over the qualitative part of our existence.
Now one may argue that these test cases for theism are rather vague
and subjective, but in any case, in comparison, scientific naturalism
does not enjoy of any test cases whatsoever. At this juncture an
atheist may suggest that in the future brain science might explain why
these spiritual exercises are so beneficial, which is indeed probable
but also beside the point.
[snip]
> > Ethics is hugely
> > important, and the field of ethics is one in which both the conceptual
> > and the experiential superiority of theism in comparison to naturalism
> > become especially clear, I think.
>
> Please don't imagine that my reluctance to discuss these
> questions with you at present has anything to do with a lack
> of interest or engagement in the issues themselves.
Swell. We have time to discuss these issues in the future then.
> >>> As for definitions, I would like to propose the following: Naturalism
> >>> is the belief that reality is at its most basic level mechanical, i.e.
> >>> governed by algorithmic/mathematical laws.
>
> >> On the face of it, this excludes the possibility of randomness,
> >> but there are views that I would certainly call naturalistic
> >> that claim that there is irreducible randomness in the way the
> >> world behaves.
>
> > Randomness is a mathematical concept, so I don't see why a reality
> > governed by algorithmic/mathematical laws excludes the possibility
> > of randomness.
>
> I'm not convinced that randomness is a purely mathematical
> concept, and different people might have different definitions
> of "algorithmic". Thanks for clarifying yours.
Well, as you know, there are even computer algorithms that make use
(indeed depend on the use) of randomness. Often such algorithms are
implemented using only pseudo random number generators, but this is
irrelevant. There is clearly no contradiction between the concepts of
randomness and of algorithm.
> > Well, frankly, it would be useful if you explained what your
> > ontological beliefs are. In your long post you don't really explain
> > that, but rather concentrate on criticizing my views and arguments -
> > which is quite fine. On the other hand I think there is no point in
> > rejecting some theory because of XYZ reasons unless one has a better
> > theory to substitute it with. Or perhaps you are an agnostic and see
> > not sufficient reason to embrace any ontological worldview?
>
> I adopt something-like-scientific-naturalism as a working
> hypothesis. It seems to work rather well (but then, I find
> myself without many of the extraordinary metaphysical intuitions
> that you seem to think every 10-year-old has; perhaps I'm
> mentally defective).
I never said or implied that a 10-year-old has extraordinary
metaphysical intuitions; I only claimed that a normal 10-year-old uses
the concept of "consciousness" in a coherent and intelligent matter
which evidences that a normal 10-year-old understands the meaning of
that concept.
> I'll be neither astonished nor heartbroken
> if it turns out that some other ontology works better. I shan't
> be even slightly surprised if it turns out that one particular
> version of scientific naturalism, presented by a non-naturalist
> for the purpose of knocking it down, turns out to have technical
> difficulties with (say) numbers or propositions. :-)
That's always a danger; that’s why I think discussing with naturalists
or in general reading philosophical books written by naturalists is so
useful.
> >> Yes, those words appear in "River out of Eden", and so far as
> >> I can tell Dawkins really means them. But I don't think he means
> >> by them what you are trying to claim he means. In particular,
> >> this doesn't appear to me to be a statement of moral nihilism
> >> (that there are no real moral values); rather, it is a statement
> >> that the universe does not *behave* according to moral values.
>
> > Well it seems to me that the clear implication of what he writes
> > is that as the universe we observe has the same properties we would
> > expect if there is at bottom no evil and no good one has therefore
> > no reason to believe that evil and good do at bottom exist. Why else
> > would have he written the above?
>
> Perhaps to suggest that attempting to derive our beliefs about
> what is right from a careful observation of what is actual and
> some idea that "whatever is, is right" is silly and dangerous.
Well, at least for a methodological naturalist, there is no way to
derive any knowledge except by objective observation. An ontological
naturalist who is not also a methodological naturalist is not so
limited, but still must find a way to account for the existence of
objective moral values in a naturalistic reality. To my knowledge
naturalistic philosophers who have tried have failed to do so.
> Perhaps to express strongly his disagreement with the idea that
> we can deduce the existence of a good god from the order and
> justice found in the natural world.
Reading that quote I get the clear impression that Dawkins does not
see any such kind of order and justice in the natural world.
> Perhaps he'd recently heard some lackwit claiming that someone's
> misfortunes must be the result of karmic comeback, or divine
> retribution, for something they did.
Well, we can continue to speculate here, but I still think that
Dawkins in that quote was leaving no space for the existence of
objective ethics.
> There seem to me to be any number of possible explanations that
> have nothing to do with moral nihilism.
>
> And Dawkins does not, on the whole, appear to be a moral nihilist;
> it seems pretty clear that he finds some things Wrong and others
> Right. (I don't know whether he's a moral *realist*, which is
> not the same question.)
I think it is. A moral nihilist is somebody who believes that nothing
is objectively wrong; on the other hand a moral nihilist cannot deny
that moral values exist, as people obviously do hold them, but will
consider them all inventions.
> > After all he says that “we won’t find
> > any rhyme or reason” in the universe. This has the same structure as
> > the atheistic "God is an unnecessary hypothesis" argument: As the
> > universe we observe has the same properties we would expect if there
> > is at bottom no God one has therefore no reason to believe that God
> > does at bottom exist.
>
> Your argument here seems terribly weak. Dawkins makes a claim
> that is somewhat parallel to part of one premise of an argument
> sometimes made for atheism, therefore he must really be arguing
> for nonexistence of the thing that corresponds to God in that
> parallel? That's ridiculous.
Well, Dawkins has made use of the flying teapot argument, so it's not
just an argument sometimes made for atheism, but an argument that
Dawkins himself makes. And Dawkins has certainly the kind of intellect
one would expect to display some coherence in its thinking.
> >>> Anyway I am saying the above from experience. Here's is some indirect
> >>> evidence: If you google "new commandment" in richarddawkins.net you'll
> >>> get 9 hits, "theodicy" will get you 280 hits; "problem of evil" will
> >>> get you 531 hits; but "virgin birth" will get you 1710 hits.
>
> >> Quite a lot of which appear to be about parthenogenesis
> >> in lizards. I don't really see that this is much evidence
> >> of anything. ("existence of god" -> 6690 hits; "intelligent
> >> design" -> 9930 hits; <<evil suffering>> (no quotes) ->
> >> 5570 hits, of which about half seem to be to do with the
> >> problem of evil.)
>
> > Well the frequency of "existence of god" in a site that discusses
> > the existence or non-existence of God is to be expected. The large
> > frequency of "intelligent design" speaks in favor of my argument,
> > namely that atheists often focus on red herrings.
>
> The fact that *you* regard that as a red herring doesn't mean
> that it *is* a red herring.
Well, of course when one speaks one is expressing one's own thoughts.
Of course one can always be wrong. So I don't really understand the
point you are making here.
> Lots of people, some of them quite
> clever, think that "intelligent design" gives reason for believing
> in God. Many of them would say things like "Every specific claim
> of Christianity could be false, but intelligent design would
> still show that there is a Designer".
I said that in my experience atheists often focus on red herrings.
Clearly most atheists believe (as I do) that intelligent design (i.e.
the thesis that the best scientific explanation for the origin of the
species is not evolution but design by some exterior intelligence) is
nonsense. Further, intelligent design is not entailed in theism, nor
in Christianity, so for an atheist to point out the foolishness of
intelligent design is a red herring. I don’t see how the probable fact
that some intelligent people think as you describe changes anything in
that. Not to use red herrings means to focus on the best expression of
the other side’s ontology and not focusing to the other side's
shortcomings even when such is entertained by some "quite clever"
people.
> > As for <<evil
> > suffering>> with no quotes it, this just measures the frequency of
> > these to common words and carries very little relevance.
>
> That's why I looked at the first page of hits to see which
> ones were actually to do with the problem of evil: as I said
> (but you presumably didn't read), about half of them are.
Yeah, I didn't notice that bit.
> > And I don't
> > think that a lot of the references to "virgin birth" refer to
> > parthenogenesis in lizards ("virgin birth" -lizard still produces 1650
> > hits). Anyway, that's not a really promising path to follow further.
>
> Don't blame me: I wasn't the one who brought up the idea of
> counting Google hits on richarddawkins.net to assess what
> atheists like to talk about!
We have more important things to discuss; if you want to convince
yourself of how often atheists resort to red herrings please read some
of the discussions in Dawkins's site.
> > The level of discussion in that site is embarrassingly low, atheist
> > posters mainly using their time to ridicule theism and to congratulate
> > each other.
>
> Quite possibly. I'm not sure what point you're making. (That you
> deliberately chose to support your claim about how atheists behave
> by looking at a subpopulation whose quality you consider to be
> "embarrassingly low"?)
Well, this whole discussion started with my arguing that I don’t need
to defend Christianity when defending theism against naturalism. One
of the reasons I gave is that in my experience defending Christianity
often sidetracks the discussion on irrelevant not to mention probably
false Christian beliefs. I stand by that assessment. As for Dawkins's
site as well as the success of God Delusion I think it evidences how
little critical thought there is around including in atheistic
circles.
> > Dawkins's book (The God Delusion) which inspired that
> > crowd is quite mediocre too, and this even in the opinion of published
> > reviews by well-known fellow atheists I might add.
>
> This is becoming more and more irrelevant. (For what it's worth:
> I thought TGD was an enjoyable read, I wasn't terribly impressed
> by the standard of its argumentation, but Dawkins was writing
> a mass-market book and the relevant points of comparison are
> things like Josh McDowell or, at the outside, C S Lewis rather
> than, say, Plantinga; by that standard, I think it's not so bad.)
Dawkins's scientific books are written for the mass-market too but are
nevertheless excellently well reasoned. The God Delusion has an entire
chapter titled "Why God almost certainly does not exist" which Dawkins
himself call the center piece of his book, and in which the much
ballyhooed ultimate Boeing 747 gambit is presented. Well, that
argument is really terrible, far bellow mediocre. I think, given
Dawkins's intellect, that there is no excuse for that. It seems that
Dawkins is under the impression that theism is not only false but also
trivially false (he compares belief in God to belief in the fairies),
so he fancies himself able to present a killer argument which atheist
philosophers were unable to spot. In any case, for me to focus on
Dawkins, or his book, or the general level of discussion in his site,
would be a red herring too. So I will gladly drop these issues. What
really interests me is to find out the strongest atheistic theory
about reality.
> > Well, atheism is not even a positive ontological position.
>
> Nor is theism.
Surely theism is. Theism says what is out there. Indeed the common
ground of all theism (what I call plain vanilla theism) makes a very
concrete and radical thesis: that reality is based on the existence of
one personal being who is perfect in all respects.
> Both leave a great many important questions
> unanswered. I mean, clearly neither theism nor atheism gives
> you more than about one bit of information, right?
No, not right, even plain vanilla theism gives you a huge amount of
information as the implications of its thesis are very far-reaching.
In comparison atheism’s only states that there is no God without
suggesting what there is. That's why I compare theism with scientific
naturalism rather with atheism. Scientific naturalism does present a
positive thesis about reality which also has far-reaching
implications.
> Now, actually that's not really right, because a yes/no
> answer to a question can give a lot more than one bit of
> information. (A positive answer to "Will next week's
> lottery numbers be 1,2,3,4,5,6?" gives the same information
> as "Next week's lottery numbers will be 1,2,3,4,5,6"; that
> is, something like 24 bits.) But still, neither theism nor
> atheism as such tells us all that much.
>
> > It does not
> > tell what it is one believes about reality, and hence one can't
> > compare it one to one with theism in order to see which one is more
> > reasonable.
>
> See above: the same complaint can be made against theism;
> knowing merely that someone is some kind of theist tells you
> very little about what she believes.
In almost all cases it tells you quite a bit: that one God exists,
that God is a person who is perfect in all respects, that God has
created the environment in which we find ourselves, that our life has
a deeper meaning namely salvation, that there are objective ethical
values, that we possess libertarian freedom, that life is eternal,
that the choices we make carry relevance for the afterlife, and so on.
Indeed virtually all theists will agree with the above propositions.
Theists disagree about a lot, but not about the fundamentals. The same
goes for scientific naturalists; virtually all of them will agree with
the proposition "The whole of reality is based on the existence of an
impersonal world as described by science." I think the basic
differences are quite clear between the two worldviews are quite
clear; what remains is to see which works better.
(I am still on vacation by the way, so it may take a while for me to
respond.)
Richard Corfield
> In article <slrnga7l3d.haa....@EPIA.littondale.dyndns.org>,
> Richard Corfield <Richard....@REVERSE.uk.me.littondale> wrote:
>> So the headscarf which is quite common is a convention, more like "Men
>> don't wear dresses" here. (No I don't fancy one - too draughty between
>> the legs!
>
>
Not tried. Any good? (Is it a skirt or a dress?)
- Richard
Gareth McCaughan
[me:]
>> X is evidence for Y when P(Y|X) > P(Y). (Of course that could use
>> some refinement.)
[Dianelos:]
> Well, the problem I see with this definition is that one can’t define
> the concept of probability without making use of the concept of
> evidence somewhere down the line, so there is a hidden circularity in
> there.
I don't see any more reason to think that than to think that
one can't define the concept of "feeling confident to use something
as a premise in an argument" without making use of the concept
of evidence. (I don't see much reason to believe either of them;
it probably depends on what you're prepared to consider to be
a workable definition.)
> It seems to me that a good definition should only use terms
> that are simpler (more likely not to be misunderstood) than the term
> it purports to define.
I almost agree, but it seems to me that "simpler" and "more likely
not to be misunderstood" are quite different notions and that
different reasons for wanting a definition might lead to different
preferences between the two. (Or to some other notion of
prior-ness to take their place.)
It doesn't seem to me that "feel" and "confident" are simpler
notions than "probability". I'm not sure about "premise" and
"argument"; they might be, but it probably depends on how
narrowly one construes "argument".
> [1] A good definition in that sense would be St. Anselm's definition
> of God "God is that than no greatest can be conceived", because it
> defines a concept that is easy to misunderstand (God) using simpler
> concepts, such as "greatest" and "conceive".
Perhaps it's a good definition in *that* sense (at least once we
add the word "which" and correct "greatest" to "greater" :-) ) but
it's a terrible definition in other respects: that vital word
"greater" is left entirely undefined, and indeed Anselm's infamous
ontological argument depends on using it in silly ways. I think
"conceived" is quite problematic, too: for instance, since this
alleged definition doesn't say anything about who's doing the
conceiving we're left to guess whether it means "conceived by
ordinary human beings", "conceived by any human being, no matter
how extraordinarily clever and imaginative", "conceived by any
actually existing being", or "conceived by any possible being,
including God-whatever-that-may-mean". (It should be clear that
that last meaning leads to all kinds of trouble.)
> There may also be a problem with your definition. Consider this
> counterexample: X="concept C refers to a natural number" and
> Y="concept C refers to a prime". P(Y|X) > P(Y), correct? But I don't
> think one can reasonably say that X is evidence for Y.
I would be happy to say that it is. (At least, given a concrete
situation in which, say, you know that someone is thinking of
something but you initially don't know anything about what it is.)
I'd also say that it's very weak evidence, barring special
circumstances that make primes much more likely than other
natural numbers.
> Here's another counterexample: X="we possess libertarian free will"
> and Y="God exists". An atheist may well agree that P(Y|X) > P(Y) but
> disagree with the claim that X is evidence in the first place, never
> mind that X is evidence for Y.
I'd have thought that most atheists would do one of the following:
1. Agree that P(God|LFW) > P(God) and that LFW is likely, but
not think that this raises P(God) enough to make atheism wrong.
2. Agree that P(God|LFW), but think P(LFW) is small.
3. Deny that LFW is a coherent concept, and therefore not think
that P(God|LFW) is well enough defined to ask whether it's
bigger or smaller than P(LFW).
4. Deny that P(God|LFW) > P(God).
And I don't see any reason why those in categories 1 and 2 shouldn't
say that LFW is, or would be if it were real, evidence for God's
existence.
(If your point is just that one doesn't say "X is evidence for Y"
when one doesn't believe in X, then I suppose I agree; so the
kinda-definition I gave would be of "X is, or would be, evidence
for Y", and "X is evidence for Y" becomes something like
"P(Y|X) > P(Y), and P(X) is close to 1".)
> Finally I think the definition of "evidence" should be independent of
> how that evidence is used in an argument.
...
> I think the concept of evidence E entails a) that E us true b) that E
> is used as a premise to argue about the truth of other propositions.
Noted. I think that's an odd combination, for what it's worth.
Anyway: the first of those opinions offers no grounds for choosing
between your definition and mine; the second certainly offers grounds
for preferring yours, but I don't know why you believe it.
> Perhaps a simpler definition is this: Evidence is any piece of
> information that one judges to be evident enough to be assumed as true
> without further justification.
Perhaps it's simpler. It's certainly wrong. Example: One piece of
evidence for the evolutionary account of life on earth is the fact
that when trying to work out when two lineages diverged you tend
to get very similar results (1) by examining fossils and (2) by
looking at "silent" changes in DNA to see how much change there's
been. But this isn't "evident enough to be assumed as true without
further justification", nor anything like it: it's the result of
doing a whole lot of science of multiple different kinds.
Perhaps we're not in any sense trying to define the same term;
perhaps you mean by "evidence" something more like what I'd express
by "axiom". But that seems to me a very strange use of the word
"evidence".
>>>> In our other discussions you have said, contrariwise, that naturalists
>>>> *must* reject anything that is not physical, which you regard as
>>>> absurd on its face, therefore naturalism is wrong, QED.
>>
>>> I think there is a misunderstanding here. Naturalists do tend to
>>> reject any evidence that is not physical/objective because their
>>> ontology is based on the premise that at bottom all is physical or
>>> explained on physical principles, and hence all evidence that is not
>>> imaginary must be of this sort too. I don’t personally believe that
>>> they must do so; in fact I agree with Chalmers that whether objective
>>> or subjective data is data.
...
> Indeed – once somebody is committed to materialism then concepts such
> as consciousness become meaningless.[2] That's the point I was making
> before: To be consistent a materialist must reject any non-physical
> evidence;
Either you are contradicting yourself or I am misunderstanding you.
You appear to be saying that (1) it isn't true that materialists
must reject anything that is not physical and (2a) anyone committed
to materialism must regard "concepts such as consciousness" as
meaningless and (2b) consistent materialists must "reject any
non-physical evidence".
But here, once again, we're getting into the territory of our
previous discussion which you have chosen to abandon, and for
the reasons already stated multiple times I'm not going to take
this any further.
> [2] At the very least no materialist philosopher has found a way to
> describe consciousness (and the various concepts related to it) within
> materialism. Compare this to how easy and natural it is to describe
> matter (and the various concepts related to it) within idealistic
> theism.
Already thoroughly answered back in 2006.
>> I have no idea how I can interpret those statements, other than
>> as saying that adherents of materialism can't meaningfully talk
>> about (let alone coherently believe or disbelieve) propositions
>> like "I am conscious" or "Bach's music is beautiful" or "Eating
>> people is wrong".
>
> That's what I meant.
Once again, either you are contradicting yourself or I am
misunderstanding you.
>> The fact that planets appear to move in elliptical orbits is
>> evidence that gravity obeys an inverse-square law. The fact
>> that the world contains as much suffering and evil as it does,
>> distributed as they are, is evidence that Christianity is wrong.
>
> Actually you must build some arguments in order to justify either
> claim, and these arguments may contain errors or else be weak.
Well, of course. So what? (It doesn't appear to me that the
rest of your paragraph answers that question.)
>> The fact that some people claim to have been miraculously healed
>> at Lourdes is evidence that Christianity is right. All those
>> statements about evidence would remain true even if somehow
>> my brain were coaxed into a state in which none of them seemed
>> true to me. The fact that I can (sincerely, though of course
>> you'll have to take my word for that) affirm the foregoing
>> sentence demonstrates that what I mean by "X is evidence for Y"
>> is not some proposition about my own thoughts or feelings.
>
> Yes, but surely when you say "X is evidence for Y" I am justified to
> infer that you feel very confident about X being true. That you feel
> very confident about X being true is an important part of why you call
> X "evidence" in the first place.
(I think it's best to consider "X is evidence for Y" as the combination
of two propositions: "X is true" and "X, if true, is evidence for Y".
I've generally been referring to the latter in our discussions above,
because I think that's where the interesting questions lie. My apologies
for any resulting confusion.)
Anyway: my confidence is an important *cause* of my calling X evidence;
it isn't (usually, at least) an important *reason* for me to call X
evidence.
I think this point would be clarified by the separation I mentioned
above; we're really talking here about the "X is true" part. And
I say that when I say "X is true", my own feelings about X form no
part of my *meaning* even though they contribute to *causing* my
statement. The statement "snow is white" is a statement about snow
and light and vision and so forth, not a statement about what's
inside my head. (Unless my head happens to be full of snow, which
to the best of my knowledge it isn't.)
>> I didn't say that the fine-tuning argument is any good, only
>> that the best way to respond to it is unlikely to be "I'm
>> entitled to believe whatever I want to about the laws of
>> physics". Let me give an extreme example: suppose we found
>> a way of measuring the fine structure constant very accurately,
>> and discovered that if you write it in binary then bits
>> 32 onwards spell out "Jesus is Lord" in ASCII. I think
>> that would count as something that atheistic scientific
>> naturalists would do well to have an explanation for.
>> (Fraud on the part of whoever did the experiment would
>> have to be high on the list of candidate explanations,
>> of course.)
>
> Good example. (Have you read Sagan's "Contact"? there a message is
> found within the expansion of pi in base 11).
Yes, and I found that really stupid. (I think the only way
gods or aliens or whatever could put a long message early
in the digits of pi would be to mess with my brains so that
we see something that isn't really there.)
> I understand naturalist thinkers have tried many ways out of the
> perceived problem of the fine-tuning of the fundamental physical
> constants, such as the possible existence of some kind of ur-
> explanation that binds all constants together, and various kinds of
> models of reality in which universes are continuously brought forth
> having different sets of constants, and so on, but without really
> succeeding to remove the problem - even though the suggested solutions
> themselves are wildly speculative.
It's far from clear to me whether there really is a problem.
Much of the alleged fine-tuning seems to me to be greatly
exaggerated.
If there is a problem, it's certainly a smaller problem than
the Jesus-is-Lord one I proposed above would be :-).
>> In so far as anyone can be said to be "right" or "wrong"
>> about a point of definition, that is;
>
> Well I suppose one can reasonably say that a definition is wrong when
> its acceptance would contradict the way that a concept is normally
> used.
Yes (with the proviso that sometimes you might make a technical
definition and say "this isn't quite what everyone's meant by this
before, but it's the nearest thing that makes sense to what they
meant").
> For example the definition of atheism as the lack of belief in
> God implies that all newborn babies are atheists, or that a brain-dead
> Pope is an atheist - and these statements contradict the way the
> concept is normally used.
That isn't my preferred definition of atheism, but I think someone
who prefers that definition can fairly reasonably say either
(1) "the term 'atheist' can only properly be applied to thinking
beings; newborn babies and brain-dead popes don't count, any more
than rocks do; so those counterexamples are no use" or (2) "the
term 'atheist' has generally only been applied to thinking beings,
and I'm really primarily interested in how it applies to them;
I think my definition works better for them than its rivals because
blah blah blah, and if it gives counterintuitive results for strange
corner cases then I'm happy to say that our intuition is wrong for
those strange corner cases, as intuition often is for corner cases".
(I prefer other definitions of atheism because I think that one
*doesn't* match general usage in the ordinary cases; it's not only
in strange corner cases that it gives counterintuitive results.)
> A simple definition which fits well with
> the way a concept is normally used can reasonably be said to be right.
Depends on how well, and whether there's a simpler better-fitting
definition.
>> I suppose what I mean is
>> that (1) "explain" as generally used means something more than
>> "spot patterns in", (2) this stronger usage is, or at least can
>> be tweaked so as to be, both coherent and useful, and (3) it is
>> in fact more useful than the pure-pattern-spotting meaning that
>> you apparently prefer.
>
> My point is this: All cases of explaining I know about can be
> described as the discovery of a pattern in what is being explained.
So you're making an inference from "X can be described as Y"
to "X *is* Y, and nothing more than Y"? You've explicitly
condemned such inferences elsewhere in this thread.
Anyway. Let's take a concrete example: the explanation of
gravity in terms of spacetime curvature. It seems to me that
any formulation of this explanation that does it justice is
going to involve more than just describing patterns in
our observations of things moving under the influence of
gravity. For instance, it leads immediately to conclusions
that go way beyond such observations: for instance, if you
take your digital watch up a mountain then it will run
faster there.
(See http://www.leapsecond.com/great2005/ .)
It seems to me that for your account of "explanation" to be
right, you'll need to use so broad a notion of "discovering
a pattern" that just about any act of cognition comes under
that heading; in which case, your definition fails to define.
>> And, actually, it isn't just a point of definition, because
>> the question here is one about what counts as evidence for what,
>> and *that* isn't a merely definitional matter. It seems to me
>> that when A explains X better than B does, that's evidence for A
>> (at least if X is known to be true). I don't know whether that
>> can even be *stated* with a pattern-spotting definition of
>> "explain" (what does it mean for A to explain X better than B
>> does with such a definition?), but it seems to me that something
>> along those lines is plainly correct; if you don't want to use
>> the word "explain" then some other might have to do instead.
>
> Actually I think you present a good example here. As a case in point
> let’s use X="gravitational phenomena", A="general relativity" and
> B="Newton’s mechanics". The claim that A explains X better than B
> means that A describes more accurate patterns in X than B.
That works fine when X is a broad set of phenomena. But I had
in mind the case where X is a single proposition. "How come
the sky is blue?" "Rayleigh scattering goes like the (-4)th
power of wavelength." That's an explanation, or rather a
very brief sketch of one. The fact that it works is evidence
for the theory that gives rise to it, even without there
being a whole lot of other phenomena for it to "describe
patterns" in.
(Of course, the fact that the same theory applies
to a wider range of phenomena is even better evidence,
which e.g. enables us to distinguish "Rayleigh scattering"
from "lots of little pixies wearing blue coats" and
prefer the former. None the less, a theory can explain
single propositions as well as whole sets of them, and
I don't see how your account deals with this.)
> For a
> scientific naturalist, who is committed to the belief that scientific
> models describe objective reality, this evidences that A's respective
> model of reality is more probably true than B's.
And the fact that this sort of reasoning is so effective is
one reason for liking scientific naturalism. (In so far as
such inferences are really specific to scientific naturalism,
which frankly isn't very far; but you do insist on writing
as if they are.)
> One way or the other what's hugely more relevant is how well the
> implications of these postulates work. Also, that reality is similar
> to how we are (namely personal) has a prima facie plausibility that is
> higher than any other model which postulates that reality is
> fundamentally very different from us.
Clearly reality has two arms, two legs, and one head.
> Not to mention the gargantuan
> prima facie implausibility of the various naturalistic models of
> quantum mechanics.
Given the gargantual prima facie implausibility of various
facts about the universe, clearly predicted by QM and verified
about as conclusively as anything can be, I don't think we're
entitled to expect that the underlying facts (whatever they
may be) are prima facie plausible.
>>> incidentally by far the more implausible ontological postulates I have
>>> come across come from naturalists trying to interpret quantum
>>> mechanics.)
>>
>> Plausibility is, unfortunately, notoriously not something people
>> all agree about :-)
>
> One more reason not to use this concept to attack the postulates of
> the worldviews one is comparing.
Or (better, I think) to see what common ground we can find
among our various notions of plausibility.
> Perhaps we should then ignore the
> prima facie plausibility of the postulates and proceed to check how
> well the ontological theory based on them works.
Very well. Then my theory is simply this: Everything is exactly
as it happens to be. Every observation we make is an axiom of my
theory; so is every true statement about those observations.
(I'm taking "observations" as broadly as possible here; e.g.,
if as you claim we can Just See that we experience a "phenomenal
consciousness" that is necessarily non-material, then that's
an axiom too.)
"There is no God" is another, extra, axiom.
This theory (by construction) works *perfectly* as an explainer
of experience, at least in your sense: any fact about our experience
is fully described by the theory. I am sure you will immediately
convert to atheism, since the nonexistence of God is also an
implication of the theory. (At which point I'd better convert
back to some variety of theism, in the face of another theory
which is identical to mine except that it has "There is a God"
as its extra axiom instead.)
This is, of course, perfectly preposterous. The reason why it's
preposterous is that the "theory" I've described, if you take
my description as defining it, is almost entirely unknown; and
that any specific candidate for an instantiation of my theory
is vastly complicated and therefore vastly improbable: to be
confident that it was correct we'd need far more evidence than
we could ever really collect.
>>> The important point though is that any hypothesis, whether
>>> ontological or not, has implications on which that hypothesis can be
>>> judged. If the hypothesis works well then it is justified no matter
>>> how implausible it may appear at first.
>>
>> Because a sufficient quantity of working-well can generally
>> far outweigh the (bounded and usually not very large) difference
>> in plausibility at the outset.
>>
>> This depends on there being a good supply of test cases. In
>> empirical science, for instance, that's often true. In questions
>> of philosophy or religion, it's often not, which is one reason
>> why arguments about such topics so often come down to a clash
>> of one person's intuitions against another's.
>
> Well, reality as we subjectively experience it (which is the greatest
> and most relevant part of the human condition) is impossible to
> measure scientifically but this does not mean that that reality is
> therefore not quite real or not quite important.
You appear to be imagining that I've claimed that things that
can't be measured scientifically aren't real or aren't important.
To the best of my knowledge I have never made any such claim.
> As for test cases,
> these exist in this realm: According to all great religious traditions
> there are spiritual exercises, or more generally ways of life, which
> transform to a lesser or greater degree the subjective part of the
> human condition.
These do not constitute useful test cases because they lack
discriminating power: some degree of "transformation of the
subjective part of the human condition" might result from
these exercises even if, say, scientific naturalism is correct.
Using such things as test cases is like using "this stone will
fall downwards when I drop it" as a test case for general
relativity: yes, GR predicts that that will happen, but so do
lots of other theories, including Newtonian mechanics.
> The empirical sciences fit as well with theism as
> with naturalism (actually they fit better), but theism also explains
> and thus gives us control over the qualitative part of our existence.
> Now one may argue that these test cases for theism are rather vague
> and subjective, but in any case, in comparison, scientific naturalism
> does not enjoy of any test cases whatsoever. At this juncture an
> atheist may suggest that in the future brain science might explain why
> these spiritual exercises are so beneficial, which is indeed probable
> but also beside the point.
>> Please don't imagine that my reluctance to discuss these
>> questions with you at present has anything to do with a lack
>> of interest or engagement in the issues themselves.
>
> Swell. We have time to discuss these issues in the future then.
Just as soon as you give me some evidence that doing so won't
be as colossal a waste of time as it has been in the past.
>> I adopt something-like-scientific-naturalism as a working
>> hypothesis. It seems to work rather well (but then, I find
>> myself without many of the extraordinary metaphysical intuitions
>> that you seem to think every 10-year-old has; perhaps I'm
>> mentally defective).
>
> I never said or implied that a 10-year-old has extraordinary
> metaphysical intuitions; I only claimed that a normal 10-year-old uses
> the concept of "consciousness" in a coherent and intelligent matter
> which evidences that a normal 10-year-old understands the meaning of
> that concept.
... which concept you also claimed to carry all sorts of
metaphysical freight. But, again, no more on this.
>>>> Yes, those words appear in "River out of Eden", and so far as
>>>> I can tell Dawkins really means them. But I don't think he means
>>>> by them what you are trying to claim he means.
...
>>> Well it seems to me that the clear implication of what he writes
>>> is that as the universe we observe has the same properties we would
>>> expect if there is at bottom no evil and no good one has therefore
>>> no reason to believe that evil and good do at bottom exist. Why else
>>> would have he written the above?
(I gave several possible reasons he might have had. Apparently
you don't like them. Fair enough, but unless you think the reasons
I give are all so transparently crazy that Dawkins couldn't possibly
have written what he did for any combination of those reasons, it
doesn't matter in the least for present purposes if you think they
have flaws. I'll discuss only one of your specific criticisms.)
>> Perhaps to suggest that attempting to derive our beliefs about
>> what is right from a careful observation of what is actual and
>> some idea that "whatever is, is right" is silly and dangerous.
>
> Well, at least for a methodological naturalist, there is no way to
> derive any knowledge except by objective observation.
That doesn't mean that methodological naturalists have to believe
"whatever is, is right", and *that* is what I was suggesting Dawkins
might have been arguing against.
>> There seem to me to be any number of possible explanations that
>> have nothing to do with moral nihilism.
>>
>> And Dawkins does not, on the whole, appear to be a moral nihilist;
>> it seems pretty clear that he finds some things Wrong and others
>> Right. (I don't know whether he's a moral *realist*, which is
>> not the same question.)
>
> I think it is. A moral nihilist is somebody who believes that nothing
> is objectively wrong; on the other hand a moral nihilist cannot deny
> that moral values exist, as people obviously do hold them, but will
> consider them all inventions.
I suggest that there are two possibly useful distinctions here:
firstly, between those who think moral judgements are statements
of objective fact (or anti-fact) and those who don't; secondly,
between those who make moral judgements at all and those who don't.
It seems to me that "moral nihilist" suggests the second distinction
much more readily than the first; that "moral nonrealist" will do
nicely for the first, but is clearly inappropriate for the second;
and that using the term "moral nihilist" for the first distinction
is liable to give an entirely misleading impression. (I would regard
that as a bug; perhaps for some it might be a feature.)
>>> Well the frequency of "existence of god" in a site that discusses
>>> the existence or non-existence of God is to be expected. The large
>>> frequency of "intelligent design" speaks in favor of my argument,
>>> namely that atheists often focus on red herrings.
>>
>> The fact that *you* regard that as a red herring doesn't mean
>> that it *is* a red herring.
>
> Well, of course when one speaks one is expressing one's own thoughts.
> Of course one can always be wrong. So I don't really understand the
> point you are making here.
Gosh, if only I'd done something like, I dunno, not ending the
paragraph there but instead going on to explain what my point
was. Oh look, I did.
>> Lots of people, some of them quite
>> clever, think that "intelligent design" gives reason for believing
>> in God. Many of them would say things like "Every specific claim
>> of Christianity could be false, but intelligent design would
>> still show that there is a Designer".
>
> I said that in my experience atheists often focus on red herrings.
> Clearly most atheists believe (as I do) that intelligent design (i.e.
> the thesis that the best scientific explanation for the origin of the
> species is not evolution but design by some exterior intelligence) is
> nonsense. Further, intelligent design is not entailed in theism, nor
> in Christianity, so for an atheist to point out the foolishness of
> intelligent design is a red herring. I don’t see how the probable fact
> that some intelligent people think as you describe changes anything in
> that.
That might all make sense if richarddawkins.net had some sort of
charter as a place where all discussion was focused on the single
question: "Is there, or is there not, a god?". Curiously enough,
that isn't the case.
1. Lots of people, some of them quite clever, think that
"intelligent design" gives reason for believing in God.
Therefore, if someone -- on richarddawkins.net or elsewhere --
wants to engage with actual theists rather than with some
idealized theoretical theist who isn't at all swayed by
bad arguments, then they might want to say something about
"intelligent design".
2. Creationists, in some cases funded by people with deep pockets,
have used the ideas of "intelligent design" as weapons in their
campaign to destroy science education in US public schools.
Therefore, if someone -- on richarddawkins.net or elsewhere --
is concerned that science education not be destroyed, then
they might want to say something about "intelligent design".
3. Some atheists might think (and in fact I expect some do) that
"intelligent design", or at least some of the ideas associated
with that label, provides the nearest thing there is to a good
reason for believing in God. Such a person, even if trying to
engage an idealized theoretical theist, might therefore want
to say somethign about "intelligent design".
For all these reasons, the fact that "intelligent design" gets
a lot of mention on richarddawkins.net need not indicate that
the people there are using red herrings.
> As for Dawkins's
> site as well as the success of God Delusion I think it evidences how
> little critical thought there is around including in atheistic
> circles.
Is it supposed to be news that lots of people aren't good thinkers?
Or that atheism isn't a guarantee of being a good thinker? Gosh.
>>> Well, atheism is not even a positive ontological position.
>>
>> Nor is theism.
>
> Surely theism is. Theism says what is out there.
Theism says very little about what is out there -- there are
vastly many very different things that could be called "God".
(Some of them might not really be rightly called "things",
but let's ignore that technicality for now.)
> Indeed the common
> ground of all theism (what I call plain vanilla theism) makes a very
> concrete and radical thesis: that reality is based on the existence of
> one personal being who is perfect in all respects.
There are plenty of people who should plainly be categorized
as theists but who do not believe that.
>> Both leave a great many important questions
>> unanswered. I mean, clearly neither theism nor atheism gives
>> you more than about one bit of information, right?
>
> No, not right, even plain vanilla theism gives you a huge amount of
> information as the implications of its thesis are very far-reaching.
What you call "plain vanilla theism" is not the same thing
as theism; it says a lot more than theism-as-such does. And
it *still* leaves a great deal open.
>> See above: the same complaint can be made against theism;
>> knowing merely that someone is some kind of theist tells you
>> very little about what she believes.
>
> In almost all cases it tells you quite a bit: that one God exists,
> that God is a person who is perfect in all respects,
I would guess that among theological sophisticates (let's remember
that you consider it a red herring to address the views of anyone
other than theological sophisticates...) probably not more than
half believe that.
> that God has
> created the environment in which we find ourselves,
I would guess that among theological sophisticates rather a lot
(though I wouldn't care to put a figure to it) would say that
that, if true at all, requires an awful lot of qualifications.
In any case, it certainly isn't entailed by theism as such,
nor even by your so-called "plain vanilla theism" (though
those words "based on" do smuggle in something related).
> that our life has
> a deeper meaning namely salvation,
*Obviously* not part of theism as such, nor even of "plain
vanilla theism".
> that there are objective ethical
> values,
Obviously not part of theism as such, nor even of "plain vanilla
theism". (It's not even presumed by the definition of the latter;
God might be perfect according to every objective measure, but
goodness might not be among the things that have objective measures.)
> that we possess libertarian freedom,
Obviously not part of theism as such, nor even of "plain vanilla
theism".
> that life is eternal,
Obviously not part of theism as such, nor even of "plain vanilla
theism".
> that the choices we make carry relevance for the afterlife,
Obviously not part of theism as such, nor even of "plain vanilla
theism".
> and so on.
Of course I can't comment on whatever items you didn't get round
to listing :-).
> Indeed virtually all theists will agree with the above propositions.
Maybe so, though I think most of those propositions are commonly
disputed by sophisticated theologians. (Whereas unsophisticated
theologians commonly believe things like "the Bible is inerrant"
and "intelligent design is good evidence for the existence of God",
and therefore discussing *their* views would be a Red Herring.)
> Theists disagree about a lot, but not about the fundamentals. The same
> goes for scientific naturalists; virtually all of them will agree with
> the proposition "The whole of reality is based on the existence of an
> impersonal world as described by science." I think the basic
> differences are quite clear between the two worldviews are quite
> clear; what remains is to see which works better.
If you are taking "theism" to include all the propositions you've
listed there, and (I guess) others that enjoy similar levels of
consensus among theists, then I agree that what-you-call-theism
has some actual content to it and might be suitably pitted against
scientific naturalism (or some other such view) rather than mere
atheism.
(But I also think it's perfectly reasonable to put it up against
mere atheism; if it's reasonable to ask whether X is true, it's
never unreasonable to ask whether X is more plausible than not-X.)
Richard Corfield
> Richard Corfield <Richard....@REVERSE.uk.me.littondale> wrote:
>> Not tried. Any good? (Is it a skirt or a dress?)
>
> proper one and they are surprisingly heavy.
>
> Neither a skirt or a dress has the "wrap around" style which comes from
> its evolution from a long length of wollen cloth, about 6yds by 2yds,
> which could be used as a day garment or sort of sleeping bag-come-blanket
> to sleep in. Between 8 and 10yds of cloth are now used in a kilt.
>
> See http://www.macgregorandmacduff.co.uk/History_of_kilt.htm
>
> Traditionally nothing was worn underneath though, in more modern times,
> especially if ladies may be present, it is usual to wear something when
> dancing.
>
> Regretably my waist has expanded such that I can no longer wear mine, which
> I had when I was around 18, and I cannot justify the expense of a replacement
I'd heard they are expensive. Do you have to be vaguely Scottish to wear
one though?
- Richard
loiner2003
(Re kilts)
>
> I'd heard they are expensive. Do you have to be vaguely Scottish to wear
> one though?
>
Some would say so, and some would insist that only bona fide members of
a given clan or set of clans have the right to wear specific tartans.
But this is all the result of the Victorian romanticising of the tartans
and clans - which itself was a reaction against the earlier view of
non-Gaels that they were associated with barbarians! Some of the clan
chiefs became "lairds" with all the claims to aristocracy and
exclusiveness that implied.
In truth, a kilt is a garment like any other; and clan tartans are, to
some extent, artificial constructs. Originally they were homespun to
local designs So if you want to wear one, go ahead!
Adam Funk
[Kilts]
> I'd heard they are expensive. Do you have to be vaguely Scottish to wear
> one though?
I doubt that the shops check your ancestry, but wearing a clan tartan
without being at least connected to that family is probably considered
like falsely wearing a university or club tie.
You can get them without clan tartans, however:
Richard Corfield
I don't think I'm brave enough. (So much for the internal strength bit
of religion - who cares what they think of you?)
Also it would be draughty on the bike and a bit dangerous with an
updraft ;-)
I once saw a bloke walking around Headingly, Leeds, with a black kilt
and fishnets.
- Richard
Adam Funk
>> [Kilts]
>> You can get them without clan tartans, however:
>>
>> http://www.thinkgeek.com/apparel/hoodies/9be6/
>
> I don't think I'm brave enough. (So much for the internal strength bit
> of religion - who cares what they think of you?)
>
> Also it would be draughty on the bike and a bit dangerous with an
> updraft ;-)
Well, you sometimes see women cycling while while wearing skirts.
Maybe sewing some curtain weights in the hem would help. I look
forward to reading (someone else's) experimental results.
> I once saw a bloke walking around Headingly, Leeds, with a black kilt
> and fishnets.
I'm certain that's not an approved Scottish tradition.
Richard Corfield
>> and fishnets.
>
> I'm certain that's not an approved Scottish tradition.
He stood out, but didn't seem out of place in himself.
- Richard
Alasdair
wrote:
>On 2008-08-15, Richard Corfield wrote:
>
>>> [Kilts]
>
>>> You can get them without clan tartans, however:
>>>
>>> http://www.thinkgeek.com/apparel/hoodies/9be6/
It was common to have a kilt in hodden grey at the time of Robert
Burns
>>
>> I don't think I'm brave enough. (So much for the internal strength bit
>> of religion - who cares what they think of you?)
>>
>> Also it would be draughty on the bike and a bit dangerous with an
>> updraft ;-)
>
>Well, you sometimes see women cycling while while wearing skirts.
>Maybe sewing some curtain weights in the hem would help. I look
>forward to reading (someone else's) experimental results.
>
>> I once saw a bloke walking around Headingly, Leeds, with a black kilt
>> and fishnets.
>
>I'm certain that's not an approved Scottish tradition.
No, I rather think not. The kilt currently worn by highland regiments
is a fairly recent garment and is called am féileadh beag or small
kilt as opposed to am féileadh mor or large kilt. Details are
available at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilt
--
Alasdair.
Frederick Williams
>
> On 2008-08-15, Richard Corfield wrote:
>
> >> [Kilts]
>
> >> You can get them without clan tartans, however:
> >>
> >> http://www.thinkgeek.com/apparel/hoodies/9be6/
> >
> > I don't think I'm brave enough. (So much for the internal strength bit
> > of religion - who cares what they think of you?)
> >
> > Also it would be draughty on the bike and a bit dangerous with an
> > updraft ;-)
>
> Well, you sometimes see women cycling while while wearing skirts.
> Maybe sewing some curtain weights in the hem would help.
There was once a vicar who, mindful of the need to keep his cassock from
billowing up while he was riding a bicycle, sewed weights on its hem,
and the idea was taken up by women cyclists.
> I look
> forward to reading (someone else's) experimental results.
>
> > I once saw a bloke walking around Headingly, Leeds, with a black kilt
> > and fishnets.
>
> I'm certain that's not an approved Scottish tradition.
Not cricket either?
Frederick Williams
>
> .... Do you have to be vaguely Scottish to wear
> one though?
You have a choice: you may vaguely wear a precise kilt, or you may
precisely wear a vague kilt.
Richard Corfield
> Richard Corfield wrote:
>>
>> .... Do you have to be vaguely Scottish to wear
>> one though?
>
> You have a choice: you may vaguely wear a precise kilt, or you may
> precisely wear a vague kilt.
>
I've just read the first couple of chapters of the Diamond Sutra
(Buddhist).
There is no kilt. Nor is there a me to wear the kilt.
This is getting very Matrix. ("There is no spoon")
Interesting ideas in there though, even with the non-duality.
- Richard
Gareth McCaughan
[Adam Funk:]
>> I'm certain that's not an approved Scottish tradition.
[Frederick:]
> Not cricket either?
No, cricket definitely isn't an approved Scottish tradition.
Richard Corfield
>
> I've just read the first couple of chapters of the Diamond Sutra
> (Buddhist).
>
> There is no kilt. Nor is there a me to wear the kilt.
>
> This is getting very Matrix. ("There is no spoon")
>
> Interesting ideas in there though, even with the non-duality.
>
I think I started to get it around numbered-section-number 30, so a
little before the end where it's laid out in clearer terms. It doesn't
mention spoons at all, but as I'm thinking of that film
The Spoon is not a <intrinsic object, label, set of ideas>Spoon, hence
it can be called a spoon.
I've not read the commentaries yet. I think there's a good case for
universalism in it if you want to defend universalism from Buddhist
scripture (or if I'm looking for it which may guide how I interpret
things).
Interestingly if I had better knowledge of the bible I'd be able to
probably write verse numbers along side some bits. The Thich Nach Han
copy I have seems to include parallels to "Go and teach this to all
nations" and the Tathagata seeing himself as indeed very acomplished,
with the proviso about Accomplised not being Accomplished which is why
it is called Accomplished.
Also something I picked up on was the idea that compassion and goodness
out of true compassion and goodness is far superior to compassion or
goodness that is rooted in external symbols or signs. The Buddha rates
this above even "Filling the 3000 <some object> with <large quantity>
of precious jewels out of generosity" or "giving up all your mornings,
even all your days out of generosity". It's an interesting question. For
a Christian where does the externally triggered "love of Christ" become a
"true internal love"? I think it would happen.
Again I may be just looking for confirmation of ideas that I already have,
which I think Thich Nach Han warns against in his introduction.
Maybe the commentaries will help.
- Richard
loiner2003
> Frederick Williams wrote:
>
> [Adam Funk:]
>>> I'm certain that's not an approved Scottish tradition.
>
> [Frederick:]
>> Not cricket either?
>
> No, cricket definitely isn't an approved Scottish tradition.
>
And yet, just six miles from here, is the sign indicating the
Clackmannan County Cricket Club! :-) It doesn't really compare with
Headingley!
(I reckon they might just about be of the standard of a mid-level league
club in Yorkshire or Lancashire. An inbteresting fact which not many
people know: Headingley is the home not primarily of Yorkshire CCC but
of the Leeds local league team - and of Leeds Rhinos, of course.)
michaeld
[...]
> But you've pointed out that someone could alternatively
> say
>
> 2b If there is no God / everything ultimately comes
> down to the behaviour of quantum fields, then I don't
> see what basis there can be in such a world for
> anything to be objectively right or wrong: how can
> one set of wavefunctions be morally preferable to
> another?
>
> and might have a purely empirical reason for believing
> in moral realism, such as the fact that people tend to
> agree about what's right and what's wrong. So, if such
> a person were an atheist / naturalist, they could find
> themselves in the position of being convinced that
> moral right and wrong are objectively real, while having
> no coherent account of *how* they could be so.
>
> I sort of agree, but (looking at it from a different
> angle) it seems to me that belief in #2b undermines any
> such purely empirical argument for #1. That is: if you
> are firmly convinced that objective right and wrong are
> impossible, or nonsensical, in a godless / purely material
> world, then surely the right response to seeing moral
> agreement between people is to look for other ways it
> could happen -- such as, e.g., all having similar brains
> as a result of a shared evolutionary history.
Well obviously I'm very sympathetic with this possibility since it *is*
more or less my view. I agree with your overall position, but wasn't sure
your argument would work for someone who believed the moral agreement
between people was way in excess of what would be plausible in a
"naturalistic" worldview.
> Another way of putting this: the inference in the empirical
> argument from "people agree about morals" to "therefore
> morals are objectively real" seems terribly weak, unless
> there's some further metaphysical assumption lurking in
> the background, so that seems like the obvious thing to
> break if you find that accepting it leads you to a
> contradiction.
I think there is nothing wrong with the structure of the argument in
principle - it's just that, as it happens, the nature and extent of this
agreement about morality isn't anything like enough to make the argument
actually work.
> I think Dianelos has a slightly different version again
> of #2, something like
>
> 2c If there is no God / everything ultimately comes
> down to the behaviour of quantum fields, then I don't
> see how one can give any objective *meaning* to
> ethical statements, never mind actually believing
> them to be true. The laws of physics don't have
> anything about goodness in them.
>
> I think that if someone believes *that* and takes atheism
> (resp. naturalism) as a serious possibility, then they can't
> possibly have much confidence in #1 -- because they aren't
> even sure that #1 is a meaningful statement unless they're
> actually tacitly assuming that atheism / naturalism is wrong.
Hmmm. Let's say #1 is the statement that the massless particles emitted
during gamma decay have spin 1, #2 is the statement that if no massless
particles are emitted during gamma decay then it's meaningless to talk
about their spin and #3 is the statement that, therefore, massless
particles are in fact emitted during gamma decay. This seems like a
correct argument to me (albeit a rather contrived one). Would you say that
it can't be right because to the extent I believe #2 it's questionable
whether #1 is even a meaningful statement?
> >>> I think the idea is that it gives insight to how things *are*
> >>> (independently of society, the human brain, etc.) rather than
> >>> necessarily how things *must* be.
> >>
> >> But it seems to me (and, again, I'm open to persuasion otherwise)
> >> that what makes these insights seem like they're into something
> >> "independent of society, the human brain, etc." is precisely that
> >> they feel like insights into how things *must* be.
> >
> > As far as I understand it, people who hold this position consider their
> > conscience to be a sort of sixth sense. They believe (rightly or wrongly)
> > it gives them information about objective reality, independent of the
> > human brain etc., for exactly the same reasons they believe the other five
> > senses do. I don't see where inevitability comes into it.
>
> I think we're slightly at cross purposes, and I think it's mostly
> my fault. Let me try to fix this.
>
> I'll take myself as an example, because I do have the sort of
> intuitions we're talking about and find myself inclined to take
> them as evidence for moral realism. Of course other people
> may be very different.
OK - just for the record I don't really have these intuitions (and I'm not
a moral realist) so can't really compare this part with you.
> My apparently-knowing that torturing babies for fun is wrong
> feels to me much more like my apparently-knowing that there are
> infinitely many integers than like my apparently-knowing that
> there's a desk in front of me on which my arms are resting.
> It doesn't feel much like a *perception*.
On the other hand there's an obvious alternative explanation for the
difference between these two feelings other than that one corresponds to
something "contingent" and the other something "logically inevitable".
Namely: it's easy to imagine a desk not being in front of you - in fact it
doesn't take much imagination since you do quite often experience a desk
not being in front of you - but, because God's morality and hence the
basic ethical intuitions we're talking about have never changed, it's much
harder to even imagine the possibility of their being different. (Of
course your moral intuitions may sometimes have changed somewhat in some
of their finer points - just like the way you think of natural numbers
probably has at times.)
As an analogy, many quite intelligent people start with a strong intuition
that the world follows Aristotelian mechanics by logical necessity,
because in their everyday experience they only ever see this happen, and
it's therefore hard to imagine it being different. Whereas it's now
generally agreed that the laws of mechanics are contingent not logically
necessary (at least if anything is).
> It doesn't feel
> like something contingent, or something that could be different
> without a radical upheaval in the universe.
It's conceivable, I think, that such a change is in fact impossible
without a radical upheaval in the universe, even if the divine command
theory is correct, because God may have determined ethics logically-before
many of the other contingent facts about the universe.
> Whereas according to a divine-command notion of ethics, it seems
> that it could become right to torture babies without any such
> upheaval: God could just change his mind. (Or have an unchanging
> intention that on April 16, 2009, it will become right to torture
> babies. So even if, as some theists believe, God cannot change
> his mind, it could abruptly become right to torture babies without
> the universe being grossly rearranged.) The same sort of thing
> applies if it's God's preferences that determine what's right;
> God might turn out to have a preference for untortured babies
> until 2009-04-16 and tortured babies thereafter.
>
> So the intuitions that incline me toward moral realism seem just as
> opposed to divine command ethics as to moral nonrealism. And, so
> far as I can tell -- again, I could be badly wrong -- the features
> of those intuitions that make this so are generally shared by others
> who have intuitions that make moral nonrealism feel unacceptable.
>
> Of course divine-command theories aren't the only way of trying to
> make God the foundation of morals. For instance, you can say that
> right and wrong are somehow consequences of God's nature (which you
> might claim is necessarily unchanging, or something) rather than
> of his choices or decrees or preferences.
Yes - and if I were a Christian I think this is the view I'd take, rather
than either the divine command theory or the theory that ethics is
logically prior to God. (The latter, of course, doesn't even claim to
provide such a foundation for morality).
> It seems to me that an
> advocate of this sort of view needs to explain enough about that
> "somehow" to show why "it's a consequence of God's nature" is
> better than "it's a consequence of how the world is". On the face
> of it, it's far from clear how you can get from "God is like this"
> to "we should do that, and not do the other" without some separate
> moral principles to justify that derivation -- and if you have
> those, then in what sense is God really providing a *foundation*
> for morals?
I agree with this. I think that in the context of theism it's much easier
to make sense of moral realism[1] than with a typical atheistic worldview
- at least if we take "moral realism" to mean that there is something
objectively out there in the external world, which we may call morality,
that our conscience acts as a sensory organ for. But theism has just as
much trouble as atheism with solving the is/ought problem (if you consider
it a problem at all). The belief that something called morality
objectively exists, is what our moral intuitions are pointing towards and
is also the will of the creator of the universe may well be fairly placed
under "moral realism", but it doesn't imply that one *should* follow this
thing called "morality". I don't see any way of justifying that without
making other assumptions about what the word "should" entails, and if one
can do that then we atheists have no more problem than the theists.
[1] But I don't have much good reason for taking moral realism seriously.
Michael
--
----== posted via PHP Headliner ==----
michaeld
> >My favourite example of this:
> >
> >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYAzoPvI_sM&feature=related
> >
> In the context of my discussion, my remark was intended to be a
> 'throw-away' comment.
>
> >(In case it's not clear what we sort of theology we're dealing with here,
> >see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2ruQjSy2ZU&feature=related - in
> >particular the little bombshell he drops on 2:07. Or nearly any of his
> >other 300 or so videos.)
>
> For those who are committed Christians - the guy makes a valid point
> that 'religion' is often a 'way of earning God's favour' - and to that
> end is missing the point.
>
> However, the second video is plain *wrong*, as the fact is that God
> loves everyone[1], but there are some things that may affect us badly,
> especially in our relationship with Him. Consequently, we should turn
> away from them.
I will agree with him on one point and one alone - the idea that God loves
everyone but will burn some people alive in the afterlife, or allow some
equally terrible eternal fate to occur (self-inflicted or not), is simply
an absurdity, and all attempts to reconcile these two ideas (including the
standard free-will-defence) are simply hopeless. Unfortunately, having
realised this, instead of becoming a universalist he goes for the other
equally consistent possibility.
> Just as I sometimes say to my kids, "I love you, but I hate what you
> do", so God says the same to us. *Then* "religion" (or Christian
> religion, at any rate) is a matter of responding in love to one's
> Father.
>
> Mike
>
> [1] see John 3:16, or 1 John 4:10-16
For his response to this (which I only recommend watching if you happen to
find his material as entertaining as I do) see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQbPTY4z21c&feature=related (and the link
in the description) and also
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7USIWrGBZ-0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARWPRTUJMIY&feature=related