A Question for Agnostics and OR Atheist

[Bradski]

Late to the thread, but my lack of belief is simply not being presented with anything coming within a bull’s roar of being credible.

 

[truetofaith]

Late to the thread, but my lack of belief is simply not being presented with anything coming within a bull’s roar of being credible.

The accounts of the miracles of Jesus in the Bible were given by eye witnesses. They were not just made up stories. The apostles and about 5oo people saw Jesus alive after His death on the cross.
Isn’t this enough credibility for you?

 

[Bradski]

The accounts of the miracles of Jesus in the Bible were given by eye witnesses. They were not just made up stories. The apostles and about 5oo people saw Jesus alive after His death on the cross.
Isn’t this enough credibility for you?

That Jesus was meant to have performed miracles was written many decades after the events were supposed to have taken place. That Jesus was seen by 500 people was almost a throw away line by Paul. And written a few weeks travel from where Jesus was meant to have been seen. Any idea who told him about this? Who these people were? Whether they knew Jesus? How he knew it was 500?

And you should look up the definition of eye witness.

 

[patmiron]

On in their own subjective invention of the terms rational and truth

No intelligent discussion can be held on such a quicksand foundation

My computer crashedd so I will be out of reach for a while

 

[PJM]

late to the thread, but my lack of belief is simply not being presented with anything coming within a bull’s roar of being credible.

have you read post #110 & 111 yet?

 

[truetofaith]

That Jesus was meant to have performed miracles was written many decades after the events were supposed to have taken place. That Jesus was seen by 500 people was almost a throw away line by Paul. And written a few weeks travel from where Jesus was meant to have been seen. Any idea who told him about this? Who these people were? Whether they knew Jesus? How he knew it was 500?

And you should look up the definition of eye witness.

I guess you don’t believe Columbus discovered America or the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock since they didn’t write it down, immediately!

 

[Bradski]

I guess you don’t believe Columbus discovered America or the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock since they didn’t write it down, immediately!

You should do some reading on the subject. The Vikings beat Columbus by hundreds of years.

And bear in mind that we don’t have reports of 500 eye witnesses. Someone simply said tbat there were 500. So would it be your position that if someone said that a thousand people saw something, the chances would be even greater that it was true? And that if there were just a few, the chances would be less?

 

[Bradski]

have you read post #110 & 111 yet?

I’m afraid so.

 

[Lion_IRC]

That Jesus was meant to have performed miracles was written many decades after the events were supposed to have taken place.

The documents we have from decades after the events arent the first ever written, they are the only and earliest surviving documents we have.

And by comparison to other surviving historical documents and their proximity to the events they report, the Gospels are virtually “hot off the press”.

You say ‘decades’ as if that’s some sort of a problem but for other historical figures the lag between historical event and surviving written documentation of that event is CENTURIES!

…That Jesus was seen by 500 people was almost a throw away line by Paul.

Citation needed.
Also, do you want to let everyone know how many ‘decades’ it took for Paul to write about the events he experienced?

…And you should look up the definition of eye witness.

If I state, on the record, that 1000 people also saw the thing I am reporting, isn’t that twice as much corroboration than if I state that only 500 saw it? #peer_review

 

[Bradski]

Citation needed.

If I state, on the record, that 1000 people also saw the thing I am reporting, isn’t that twice as much corroboration than if I state that only 500 saw it? #peer_review

Citation? It’s in the bible. Corinthians from memory.

And you would need some evidence that anyone at all saw anything. Just saying so doesn’t make it true. Doubling the number is meaningless without that. Why not say a million?

Because if your position holds, then the less people who are said to have seen something (not eye witness accounts), the less likely it is to have occured. Do you want to run with that? That just a handfull is less than credible?

Or can we ignore the numbers when it suits your claims?

 

[Lion_IRC]

You claimed that Paul"s reference to the 500 was “a throwaway line”.
Can you back that up exegetically?

 

[Bradski]

You claimed that Paul"s reference to the 500 was “a throwaway line”.
Can you back that up exegetically?

Nice round figure. Nothing to corroborate it. No details given. Only mentioned the once. Just slipped it in so people two thousand years down the track can say: Hey, hundreds of people say the risen Christ! That’sgood enough for me!

Perhaps it is. But it doesn’t make it more credible just because you think it’s true.

Would it be less credible if Paul said less than 500?

 

[Picky_Picky]

I guess you don’t believe Columbus discovered America or the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock since they didn’t write it down, immediately!

Your examples are actually quite instructive in this matter of historical evidence,

Columbus did write it down: he kept a journal. He reported his findings when he returned to Europe the following year. Rapidly, successive expeditions confirmed what he reported: there were lands in the region where he said he had encountered them. (In fact I understand there are people who believe the Americas exist even to this day. ) The evidence stacks up.

Not so with Plymouth Rock. There is ample evidence that the Pilgrims did land, but, yes, the absence of contemporary evidence is precisely what has rendered dubious the particular claims for the Rock.

 

[Vonsalza]

It seems to mean different things to different people. I presented it there as a realm that people, with faith, believe they can channel the power of it to alter this reality.

Then we disagree at the semantic level here. “Supernatural” events, if they exist, are the deeds of supernatural beings. The notion that some prayerful human can control these independently (or if not independently, at least authoritatively) is errant in my view. Thus your experiment cannot occur in a controlled environment.

You’re particular take on this seems to be, Jesus take the wheel, approach. Predestination type or is that a wrong assessment?

It is wrong. The supernatural being that performs supernatural deeds may or may not be deterministic in those deeds. I simply couldn’t know.

I merely forward that those deeds are not necessarily dependent on the actions of human beings. It would be false to conflate that with “predestination” when all it does it move the locus of control off of people.

The default position, aka the null hypothesis, about belief is to affirm a disbelief in the topic presented until the person making the positive claim has meet the burden of proof to their audience.

Absolutely. And absent an already proven hypothesis to stand as the null, the null that you reject to is “undefined”. Not “no”. Failure to internalize this fact would inhibit your ability to successfully pass a college-level stats course.

…they change from not believing the claim to believing the claim. It’s not a knowledge claim…

As we’ve covered extensively, the clear distinction between knowing and believing is subjective and arbitrary. The Gettier Problem proves this.

Ergo, any conclusion you draw or system you propose that fundamentally requires such a distinction is not objectively valid. The objectivity there simply doesn’t exist.

This is why the current scientific process works best for getting to the truth of reality.

Only a material and determinable reality. As the theist concedes that not every real thing falls into these categories, it is insufficient for addressing questions that are non-materialistic and non-deterministic. As, frankly, we’ve covered ad nauseam.

Sure, but if my process continues to have a solid track record of self-correction…

Then your process contains within it the inherent disclaimer that no thing is certain. There can’t be “truth”, only “best guess so far”. The latest belief about gravity is subject to a “self-correction” at any time - as has occurred on that particular subject within my lifetime.

 

[Russell_SA]

As we’ve covered extensively, the clear distinction between knowing and believing is subjective and arbitrary. The Gettier Problem proves this.

Ergo, any conclusion you draw or system you propose that fundamentally requires such a distinction is not objectively valid. The objectivity there simply doesn’t exist.

Only a material and determinable reality. As the theist concedes that not every real thing falls into these categories, it is insufficient for addressing questions that are non-materialistic and non-deterministic. As, frankly, we’ve covered ad nauseam.

Then your process contains within it the inherent disclaimer that no thing is certain. There can’t be “truth”, only “best guess so far”. The latest belief about gravity is subject to a “self-correction” at any time - as has occurred on that particular subject within my lifetime.

I’m ever concerned with “justifiable belief”, not absolute belief. Anything we ever experience as a human being is limited and we have yet to ever fully understand anything to absolute certainty for how it operates. This is why the idea of believing something as an absolute as absurd to me. We can only hold beliefs as tentative justified beliefs. Unless you can clarify how we can ever hold anything as an absolute? I don’t see how anyone could ever get to absolute truth/belief about anything since we are limited to the human experience. Our experience is always limited understanding about everything, so we have to go with “justified” belief as a default basis.
For example, if all we can currently understand about the value of Pi is to the 12th decimal place. Then any claims about pi beyond the 12th decimal place are no different than an imagined idea of values beyond the 12th decimal place. We can not investigate beyond that point, so we can not hold a justified belief beyond that point.
I don’t see how what the religious are claiming could fall under justified belief since it is, currently, indistinguishable from an imagined idea. We, currently, do not have anyway of investigating those claims and it’s the investigation part that makes an imagined idea go to a justified belief about reality.
Ex: Jar A has (20) 1d6 dice in it. Jar B has nothing in it. Jar C has supernatural transcendent dice in it. Now tell me a way to be justified in believing that all three jars are actually different. Jar A is obvious, but how do you tell the difference between Jar B and C?

 

[Vonsalza]

I’m ever concerned with “justifiable belief”, not absolute belief.

Then its a relativist construct and not objective truth, thus you can’t craft indubitabe rhetoric with it.
All of your arguments will have to begin with “Assuming that…” and anyone’s free to ask “So if I don’t assume that…?”

Unless you can clarify how we can ever hold anything as an absolute?

The same way you posited the above: via axiom.

For example, if all we can currently understand about the value of Pi is to the 12th decimal place.

Because of how we derive pi, this isn’t a good example (problem of proxy). Do you have another?

I don’t see how what the religious are claiming could fall under justified belief since it is, currently, indistinguishable from an imagined idea.

Because it solves metaphysical problems. As we’ve also discussed, the metaphysical is beyond the reach of quantitative analysis.

We, currently, do not have anyway of investigating those claims and it’s the investigation part that makes an imagined idea go to a justified belief about reality.

We do. It’s called “reasoning”.

 

[Russell_SA]

Then its a relativist construct and not objective truth, thus you can’t craft indubitabe rhetoric with it.
All of your arguments will have to begin with “Assuming that…” and anyone’s free to ask “So if I don’t assume that…?”

The same way you posited the above: via axiom.

Because of how we derive pi, this isn’t a good example (problem of proxy). Do you have another?

Because it solves metaphysical problems. As we’ve also discussed, the metaphysical is beyond the reach of quantitative analysis.

We do. It’s called “reasoning”.

Forgot to add this part:
As I currently understand it, again ad nauseam, knowledge is a subset to belief. Knowledge is what we currently experience about reality and belief is what we understand about the predictability of that understanding.
Ex: I have knowledge about the experience of gravity and I have belief about what causes gravity and that cause is predictable.

 

[Russell_SA]

Then its a relativist construct and not objective truth, thus you can’t craft indubitabe rhetoric with it.
All of your arguments will have to begin with “Assuming that…” and anyone’s free to ask “So if I don’t assume that…?”

It seems what you would call “objective”, I would call “strongly justified belief”. I prefer my definition since I have yet to be convinced of the idea that we can know absolutely everything about anything in reality. This isn’t really a problem for me that I can see since it’s all premised around the idea of, this is what we currently understand about reality and how it functions. Once you claim you have absolute knowledge of something, you are convinced that you are in no way in error of it in the future and would not be likely to accept contrary claims and data on the point.
My process does not allow any idea to be as valid as other ideas. Many ideas are easily dismissed if they can not be justified to be part of reality. They remain in the realm of imagined ideas about reality and are not held as justified belief about reality until they can be demonstrated to be part of reality and investigated. So I wouldn’t agree that I am a relativist since I use reality as a reference point for justified belief as we interact with it.

Because of how we derive pi, this isn’t a good example (problem of proxy). Do you have another?

It’s an analogy that works as I see it. Supplement any other process we use to understand reality and it’s still the same. IE: gravity - we can only analyze gravity up to a “justified understanding” of reality but may not ever know it absolutely. 12th decimal place is the limit currently based on our technology to investigate it, our mathematical understanding of reality, etc.

Because it solves metaphysical problems. As we’ve also discussed, the metaphysical is beyond the reach of quantitative analysis.

could you give me an example of a metaphysical problem?

We do. It’s called “reasoning”.

Reasoning is a good place to show us where to look for something in reality, but we have to actually investigate reality to see if it is there or not. Einstein reasoned, through mathematics, that gravity waves should exist. But we did not teach them as a fact about reality until we could actually detect them in 2015. There are numerous mathematical/reasoned conclusions about reality that have failed to offer actual results/truths about reality when investigated. Until we can investigate them, they just remain on the chalk board as imagined ideas.

 

[Vonsalza]

Forgot to add this part:
As I currently understand it, again ad nauseam, knowledge is a subset to belief.

And, again ad nauseam, the Gettier problem shows that they are not readily distinguishable from one another with consistency.

 

[Vonsalza]

Many ideas are easily dismissed if they can not be justified to be part of reality. They remain in the realm of imagined ideas about reality and are not held as justified belief about reality until they can be demonstrated to be part of reality and investigated.

You only accept as “real” the things that can be quantitatively analyzed. Again, this is a problem for those that concede that not all things are material. “Love”, for instance.

I use reality as a reference point for justified belief as we interact with it.

And again, theists would make an identical claim…

Could you give me an example of a metaphysical problem?

Moral Dilemma like:
The Trolley Problem
Sophie’s Choice
Classic Philosophical Problems like:
The Problem of Good
The Problem of Evil

Seriously, there are hundreds if not thousands.

Reasoning is a good place to show us where to look for something in reality, but we have to actually investigate reality to see if it is there or not.

How does one investigate the non-material?​

I think we’ve pretty sufficiently circled here. A few times.