Belief... or lack thereof

[pocaracas]

First, there are several cosmological arguments. Not all of them need the premise as stated.

Second, “Whatever begins to exist has a cause.” is a special case of principle of causality, saying that each change needs a cause (or, in other words, that anything that is potential has to be actualised by something actual). It is covered in the first step of Feser’s outline. Looks like you shouldn’t have moved from it to the second step…

So, I guess there we should start with pairs of act-potency, substance-accident, form-matter and essence-existence… Do you find their meanings in Thomistic philosophy clear?

Thomistic? as in Thomas Aquinas?
This is messed up…
First google hit for “act potency pair” gives my a book called “physics in the thirteenth century”… really?!
For “substance accident pair”, I get something from Kant (?)… telling me that both these features are sort of axiomatic to every material thing… and accident seems to be the ability for action of a particular piece of matter, while substance is the material itself.
“Form matter pair” is more interesting with particle/anti-particle pair formation, but I don’t think that’s where you’re going… so a bit further down I go to a book about Aristotle about monism and dualism… it’s like matter and form are, again, the things that exist (matter) and their actions (form)… which are constant, kind of like linear momentum* is conserved.

*as you may remember from physics class, linear momentum is the product of mass and velocity. Angular momentum is also conserved, but that requires an alternate mass, the Inertial mass and the angular velocity.

What I don’t get is how this ties up with the cosmological arguments…

Oh, and if you’d like to skip ahead just a little, there are some blog posts concerning the principle of causality, like edwardfeser.blogspot.lt/2012/05/oerter-on-universals-and-causality.html or edwardfeser.blogspot.lt/2014/12/causality-and-radioactive-decay.html.

I tried… but, they’re too long. I’m sure that length is required, but I see too much filler… lots of plays on words.

Yes, and if the neurons in the brain are affected directly, we can take an EEG - if, by a lucky coincidence, we have all electrodes in place at the right time…

Anyway, it was an answer to your complaint that Moses got a physical change and now such changes do not happen (since you probably do not really agree that anything happened to Moses, you probably mean that they are not claimed). And such counterexample should work in either case - unless, of course, you are going to claim that a change in the brain can be non-physical…

Oh, no… I know that a change in the brain can be mostly either chemical or physical… (and chemistry is just a subset of physics ) and the chemical bit can come from simple things we all eat… Our bodies are weird.
People hallucinate, people have epileptic attacks… people hallucinate only in their auditory “processing center” or have attacks in particular parts of the brain that lead to altered states of consciousness, of self, of sensing.
These things happen naturally. Some extreme cases have been attributed to “demon possession”, mild cases are “visions”…
And that is if the claims are minimally accurate. I’m not so sure about Moses…

I don’t “want” anything like that at the moment. I am pointing out that the specific argument you gave doesn’t work as well, as you thought it did. And that you need another one.

Psychology, and altered mental states… still works.

 

[pocaracas]

Well, it could have been so, if “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” was a principle that was actually used, instead of a rationalisation used to reject claims one doesn’t like.

QM had the benefit of actual evidence… reproducible evidence.

The options in the original Pascal’s Wager are the ones most seriously taken by most Frenchmen of that time - Catholicism and atheism.

Hardly universal options…

OK, let me try to restate your argument more formally.

First of all, let’s define (or remember - Wikipedia has the definitions, in case you do not find them obvious) true positives (TP), true negatives (TN), false positives (FP) and false negatives (FN). Then let’s define accuracy (TP+TN) / (TP+TN+FP+FN), sensitivity TP / (TP+FN) and specificity TN / (TN + FP).

Second, you are working with “extraordinary claims” only, as you rules of thumb say nothing about anything else.

Third, you are saying that, among “extraordinary claims”, false claims are more numerous. Thus your rules of thumb, ruling out practically all of them, achieve high accuracy and specificity.

So, does it correspond to what you said?

Looks like it… good job!

And if it does, what about sensitivity and false negatives? You know, classifier “Everyone is healthy.” would achieve similar results for medical screenings, yet it is not the one that is used…

False negatives are sacrificed, until they present evidence that turns them into true positives.

Also, what about the specific false negative? If Catholicism was completely true, would you be able to detect that?

Shouldn’t I?

Well, as it is stated under the Catholic Church, there’s a bunch of stuff that mysterious and they just roll with it. So I know that a series of niggling problems are hidden under the rug and sent off for God to worry about them, thus making the world as it is, even under the guiding influence of the all-powerful God.
Indistinguishable from a non-existing God. What difference does it make?

I can?

Anyway, I am pretty sure that in “Belief-Desire-Intention” model (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief%E2%80%93desire%E2%80%93intention_software_model) the “working assumption” would be covered by “Belief” part.

Of course you can… you’re not uneducated, are you?

As for that definition of “belief”, why did you dig so deep as to go for a computer algorithm?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief:
"
Belief is the state of mind in which a person thinks something to be the case, with or without there being empirical evidence to prove that something is the case with factual certainty. In other words, belief is when someone thinks something is reality, true, when they have no absolute verified foundation for their certainty of the truth or realness of something.
"
“God exists” is the thing they mention there and which my mind doesn’t think it to be the case.

Of course, if you turn it around, and set the thing to “God does not exist” then you’d be claiming that I’m in a state of mind where I think that to be the case, I think that is reality. And here the comparison with “working assumption” becomes blurry… To come up with such an assumption, in our world of ubiquitous belief that God exists, requires some thinking… so I’d end up thinking that reality is better represented by the non-existence of God.

However, the definition does rely on the person having certainty, or being convinced of that certainty… I’m not.

It does show that God’s only goal cannot be making everyone aware of His existence ASAP. But then, it is not something we assert.

No, it’s not… Because, had you done that, the contradiction would be quickly spotted and the religion cease to exist.

Sure - if you fail to organise the investigation properly.
…]
Likewise, in our case the question “What religion is right?” should be split to “Does God exist?”, “Is God one, are are there many?” etc. Each of them has only a very finite amount of possible answers.

How about you start with defining what a God is? or rather, what it is supposed to be.

 

[pocaracas]

Reason tells you that time and space could not have always existed.

Time is a measure of change. And since there was no matter before this Entity created matter, then cannot be a change in that matter, therefore there cannot be time.

Pretty simple logic.

You’re joking, right?

What is created is the Universe.
The Universe’s space and time can be thought as things in the Universe.
But we have no reason to think that there is no space and time out of the Universe.
Space and time, as far as I’m aware can be independent from matter… (although, it seems space-time can generate matter, but let’s not go there, now)

 

[pocaracas]

Well, then you just take the train one car back.

You still need to explain where that material came from.

Unless you believe in magic? Something just appears from nothing?

I have no access to it, how can I (or anyone) hope to explain that?
It’s good enough that we have the Big Bang in this Universe… and that took quite some time to piece together.
Now to consider the possibility of a MegaBang that “created” the “Universe” where the creator of this Universe resides… well, that is way out there, I think. We can’t tell that such a MegaBang occurred, so all we’d have is speculation. And, if we’re going for speculation, pretty much anything is possible…

 

[MPat]

Thomistic? as in Thomas Aquinas?

Yes.

This is messed up…
First google hit for “act potency pair” gives my a book called “physics in the thirteenth century”… really?!
For “substance accident pair”, I get something from Kant (?)… telling me that both these features are sort of axiomatic to every material thing… and accident seems to be the ability for action of a particular piece of matter, while substance is the material itself.
“Form matter pair” is more interesting with particle/anti-particle pair formation, but I don’t think that’s where you’re going… so a bit further down I go to a book about Aristotle about monism and dualism… it’s like matter and form are, again, the things that exist (matter) and their actions (form)… which are constant, kind of like linear momentum* is conserved.

*as you may remember from physics class, linear momentum is the product of mass and velocity. Angular momentum is also conserved, but that requires an alternate mass, the Inertial mass and the angular velocity.

What I don’t get is how this ties up with the cosmological arguments…

Some of the more interesting cosmological arguments have been offered by St. Thomas Aquinas (as in newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm#article3 ). It is only natural that, in order to understand those arguments, you should understand the terms used in them (“act” and “potency” are mentioned in the very first one). That’s why the first step in Feser’s list was “Metaphysical prolegomena”.

And at the moment it looks like you have next to no idea about all that. That’s OK, hardly anyone does.

As you can guess, there’s a lot of material to cover - that’s why I have asked you to move this part of discussion to a separate thread in “Philosophy” subforum. But I suppose we can do it here as well…

Thus, to begin, “act” is how things are. “Potency” is how things could be. For example, a whiteboard can be clean actually and have something written on it potentially.

Now “change” is when something potential becomes actual (for example, whiteboard gets written on). Principle of causality tells us that such change requires an actual cause. That is, something that is only potential does not really exist yet. Thus it cannot get anything done - it cannot bring itself to existence all by itself and it cannot bring anything else into existence.

Please note that I am not deriving anything from example - just from the fact that things that do not exist do not do anything.

So, anything in here that is unclear or disagreeable to you at this point…?

Oh, no… I know that a change in the brain can be mostly either chemical or physical… (and chemistry is just a subset of physics ) and the chemical bit can come from simple things we all eat… Our bodies are weird.
People hallucinate, people have epileptic attacks… people hallucinate only in their auditory “processing center” or have attacks in particular parts of the brain that lead to altered states of consciousness, of self, of sensing.
These things happen naturally. Some extreme cases have been attributed to “demon possession”, mild cases are “visions”…
And that is if the claims are minimally accurate. I’m not so sure about Moses…

Sure - I am not trying to get you to accept that miracles happen at this point. I’m just pointing out that they are still being claimed - as you have said it was strange they are not.

Psychology, and altered mental states… still works.

I’m afraid you missed what this part was about. You have claimed that changes of behaviour after brain injury prove that behaviour is determined by brain alone. I have offered a counterexample that demonstrates that such argument doesn’t work.

I think you answered thinking that I was talking about the “previous” argument (one quotation above) - “visions” and “physical changes”. I was not. (But such things do happen in threads that are a bit too broad.)

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Hi CompSciGuy.

There is some evidence to support the notion that our minds are determined by our brains… …]
A few decades earlier, a guy had an accident where a pipe went through his face at high speed and took out a piece of his brain. The guy was previously married, a kind husband and father and had a steady job… after that, he became unstable to the point of his wife wanting a divorce, he couldn’t hold a job… his previous personality was replaced by another, it seems… Or was it his free will that changed?

Phineas Gage . There’s a nice book about his story and the story of many other people that had a part of their prefrontal cortex damaged or removed and the common impact this had on their personalities in a book called “Descartes Error.”

 

[PRmerger]

We hit a problem in immediately assuming that something created the universe.

Really?

I always am bemused by that type of thinking.

Something just magically appeared out of nothing.

It’s so…superstitious.

Nothing at all–ever, in the entirety of your being, has ever appeared without a cause.

But…whatevs…

But, we can indeed let that slide.

We also have a problem in that you have already decided what the answer is, so you are not looking for an answer (you already have it), you are looking for confirmation that a decision you have already made is correct. It’s not like you’re going to tick all these off and then realise - wow, I was right after all! But anyway…

I don’t see a problem with that.

That’s the way math is taught sometimes, after all, isn’t it?

The Calc professor offers the problem, gives the solution, and then the students try to work out the answer and get to the same solution that they know is the correct one.

What’s the matter with that?

youtube.com/watch?v=vXCDMOMjAkc

 

[PRmerger]

You’re joking, right?

What is created is the Universe.
The Universe’s space and time can be thought as things in the Universe.
But we have no reason to think that there is no space and time out of the Universe.
Space and time, as far as I’m aware can be independent from matter… (although, it seems space-time can generate matter, but let’s not go there, now)

Well, again, you’re just putting it back one car on the train whose existence you still need to explain.

 

[Bradski]

That’s the way math is taught sometimes, after all, isn’t it?

We’re not doing maths.

You have started with a belief: God created the universe. You have then taken the attributes that you associate with God and then asked what could have caused the universe that has these attributes. It’s hardly surprising that you get the answer you want. It’s equally unsurprising that you will only accept attributes that you can associate with God and reject any that you can’t.

‘The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion … draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises … in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate’. Francis Bacon

I’m starting up a new venture. The person to lead this will be well paid. I believe that the person best qualified is my wife. Why is that, you ask. Well, the attributes that I have decided that the person needs are:

Female
Same age as me
Background in finance
Married with a family
Celtic background
Australian passport holder
An interest in rugby
Speaks Spanish

Well, Holy Toledo. Wouldn’t you know it…she is the best qualified after all. Whoda thunk…

So anyway, you have to tell me why different attributes can’t be associated with E without referring back to God. Otherwise we have a circular argument.

 

[PRmerger]

We’re not doing maths.

Why should that model be permissible for math but not for this?

 

[ericc]

Crystals do self-replicate, under particular conditions.
They are not carbon-based life forms, that is a fact and they tend to mineralize when the conditions are no longer favorable to self-replication… thus becoming mere minerals.
What does it mean for a non-carbon-based system to be alive?

Oh come on. Just answer the question. Are crystals living organisms? Yes or no? If they are not , don’t pass them off as something that is living. Sugar is carbon based. It got all your C, H and O. It is not alive right? In your post #66, you stated “by some conjunction of events, these molecules would become self-replicating, thus starting the life cycle that still lasts”. C, H , O , then life starts. Brilliant! That is how one explains life began.

I gave you an overview of it… you didn’t care, apparently.
I don’t on which page it is… the book explains things from the simple to the complex… you have to read it all.

You gave me a book title. What overview? Dumping a book on my lap is not an overview. That book is almost 500 pages long.You don’t even quote which part of the book that actually disprove the so-call bogus line. If you don’t give me that relevant quote, I can’t read it and wouldn’t be able to refute it. Why are you so afraid of letting me know what it is? Because it is not there. Dawkins has no idea how to create an eye, bit by bit, mutation by mutation. When it comes to the detail part of how evolution actually get it done, scientists don’t know how it is done. Overviews are fine, we just need to zoom to the details to see how it is done. That is a a poor tactic to use “it is all in the book”.

I think Behe described the way Dawkins created the eye as assembling a stereo set. Adding complex systems to complex systems. You connect the speakers, to the amplifier, connect the CD, plug in the interconnects and you have a stereo. No one bothered to explain where the speakers, the amplifier, the wiring come into being. There were just there.

My overview for an eye to work. You need:

1. The pupil
2. Iris
3. Lens
4. Macula
   5.Optic nerve
   6.Vitreous humour
5. Many other enzymes and proteins

Each of these items are in itself complex. For an eye to function, all of these must be present to work as a unit. Now how could gradual mutation and selection produce an eye, and each of these sub-systems needed to evolve to functioning units, simultaneously? This is irreducible complexity. The answer is not in the book. Answer is you can’t evolve that way. And this is not really an overview, just a fistful of ingredients needed.

Hint, chemists don’t concern themselves with strong nuclear forces.
Biologists don’t concern themselves with basic chemical reactions.

Yep, that is a gloss alright. No proof required. And you call that science?

Conjecture based on the fact that the first hard bodies in the fossil record show shells. And present-day shells are build from carbonates.

And you have no idea how the information to build the shell comes from. They just build themselves.

Right… earthhistory.org.uk/wp-content/KvD_Padian_s040.jpg
earthhistory.org.uk/wp-content/KvD_Padian_s042.jpg

eweb.furman.edu/~wworthen/bio111/10sp23.jpg

Do not how many millions of years those small changes required…

I just told you to watch out for artists rendering of nice pictures to depict evolution. And you did that again. Artistically drawn pictures are not proof, period. They can be used to bluff 7 grade students only. Haeckel’s embryonic drawings are a prime example of why they should not be relied on.

Of course… the mechanism is evolution. From bacteria to fish, seriously?

Choose your favorite animal. I don’t actually care if it is fish or insect or worms. And you are hiding behind the magic word again, “Evolution” without a clue how it is done. You are stuck with the where the information comes from again because the specimen prior to that did not have it.

 

[ericc]

Because the same building blocks that are part of every living organism on Earth are also present on Mars and have been detected on extra-solar planets.
Why look for such elements in the first place, then? Because those elements are theorized to have been generated in first generation stars… so they’re expected to be in many places, not just in this Solar System… wherever a star has gone nova, the building blocks for life will be there.

I can use the same reasoning for God. Billions of people have claimed that God exists. Theologians have theorized on the existence of God. Miracles have been seen, experienced.

Yes, but are they just trying out anything?
Or do they go for things that are hypothesized and only when the hypothesis is based on sound principles?
Do they try to look for chronitons?

Same logic for God. People theorized that God exist. And when they seek Him, they found him.

I’m not afraid of any God.
I’m afraid of fooling myself. So, if I am to acknowledge that such an amazing entity exists, then I expect it to give me some good reason for it… not just something that can be mistaken for self-delusion.

That’s ok. You are not compelled to believe against your will.

Success comes when you get it right. Sometimes, you get beginner’s luck, sometimes you don’t.

Agree but luck is getting oneself prepared so that when an opportunity present itself you can avail yourself to it.

I’m always seeking God (or any other god from any other pantheon, you never know…)… thus far, nothing, just people.

Good to know. God is everywhere, even in people.

 

[Bradski]

Why should that model be permissible for math but not for this?

I’ve already explained. It’s not a maths question with only one answer. You believe there is only one answer, but that is what we are trying to find out, so not accepting any other possibilities makes the exercise something of a waste of time. You are asking what entity could possibly have created the universe, but the only attributes that you will allow this entity to have are the ones associated with the only answer you will accept.

Perhaps we can forget the maths comparison and you can discuss my reply to the attributes you proffered.

Why does it have to be eternal? It could have ceased to exist at the moment the universe was formed.
Why does it have to be omnipotent? It could have no control over how things have evolved.
Why does it have to be omniscient? It doesn’t have to live in the eternal now and therefore be able to see everything. It could exist within the fabric of the universe and not outside it and be as unaware at how events unfold as we are.

I’ve got an idea that the answer might be something along the lines of – ‘well, if it isn’t eternal and isn’t omnipotent etc, then it’s not the greatest thing that we can imagine’. Well…that’s right. It isn’t. But why would that be a problem? Why does it HAVE to have the attributes you listed (other than the fact that they are God’s attributes)?

 

[MPat]

QM had the benefit of actual evidence… reproducible evidence.

The problem was that we have no idea what is an extraordinary claim. Mere evidence for the specific claim doesn’t help here.

Also, let’s look at it another way: do you have some evidence that “Extraordinary claims require…” is not a rationalisation only used after the claim has been rejected?

For that matter, we have one fact: in this thread you have noticed that QM was accepted without extraordinary evidence. My hypothesis can explain this fact: you used another method to find out if QM should be accepted, and thus didn’t try it with “Extraordinary claims require…”. Do you have an alternative explanation? (For all I know the real method is “Claims that people I respect happen to accept are true and claims that people I respect happen to reject are false.”) After all, if you really had tried “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” with QM, you would have rejected QM - or noticed that something is wrong at that time.

Hardly universal options…

But universal enough for you.

After all, in this discussion you are not making much of a case for Shintoism.

False negatives are sacrificed, until they present evidence that turns them into true positives.

Um, false negatives are claims. They do not present evidence themselves.

Anyway, you seem to be strangely OK with having false negatives. Let’s test it with a specific belief… So, are you OK with rejection of a claim that Earth goes round the Sun…?

Shouldn’t I?

Well, as it is stated under the Catholic Church, there’s a bunch of stuff that mysterious and they just roll with it. So I know that a series of niggling problems are hidden under the rug and sent off for God to worry about them, thus making the world as it is, even under the guiding influence of the all-powerful God.
Indistinguishable from a non-existing God. What difference does it make?

OK, so, are you saying that you would be able to detect truth of Catholicism, or that you wouldn’t? That “Shouldn’t I?” would seem to indicate that you would (without an argument) and the rest seems to be a way to explain that you wouldn’t - and you’re OK with that…

What difference does it make?

The difference of knowing the truth and not knowing the truth? Maybe even the difference of burning in Hell and not burning in Hell?

For that matter, what difference does accepting or rejecting QM make to you?

Of course you can… you’re not uneducated, are you?

I’m afraid that “educated guess” is not “a guess made by someone who is educated”… And no, I don’t think I can do it.

As for that definition of “belief”, why did you dig so deep as to go for a computer algorithm?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief:
"
Belief is the state of mind in which a person thinks something to be the case, with or without there being empirical evidence to prove that something is the case with factual certainty. In other words, belief is when someone thinks something is reality, true, when they have no absolute verified foundation for their certainty of the truth or realness of something.
"
“God exists” is the thing they mention there and which my mind doesn’t think it to be the case.

Of course, if you turn it around, and set the thing to “God does not exist” then you’d be claiming that I’m in a state of mind where I think that to be the case, I think that is reality. And here the comparison with “working assumption” becomes blurry… To come up with such an assumption, in our world of ubiquitous belief that God exists, requires some thinking… so I’d end up thinking that reality is better represented by the non-existence of God.

However, the definition does rely on the person having certainty, or being convinced of that certainty… I’m not.

So, in other words, you think you do not have a belief in non-existence of God, because your faith in non-existence of God is weak…?

How about you start with defining what a God is? or rather, what it is supposed to be.

Well, you started the thread saying you do not believe in God, thus, presumably, you should know…

But anyway, skipping ahead, “Unmoved mover”, “Pure act” or “Uncaused cause” would be definitions relevant to arguments of St. Thomas Aquinas.

 

[ericc]

No one was there to record it, so we don’t know is the only honest answer I can give you.
What we know is that, looking at the fossil record, at a given time, there is life with a certain set of features and, at a later time, there are animals with different features. Most, if not all, seem to be teaks over the features of the previous life forms. and then it happens again for a new time… and again, and again, and again.
This tweaking is called evolution.
Body parts don’t appear out of thin air. They appear as tweaks of other previously existing parts.

That is what the Cambrian explosion is. Body plans all of a sudden with no precursor. Microbes and simple organisms and suddenly complex body forms. They have gone through all those layers of mud. Accept it, they really tried.

We don’t have to be there. Nature recorded it. If it is there.

Trial and error, most likely.
Where the errors got eaten and the successful trials made it to see another day.
Genes being rather resilient to change, only did so very slowly, after many generations.
Again, no one was there to record it, so… we don’t know exactly.

Ok don’t know the answer.

Imagine you’re a microbe… you want to remain a microbe. It’s worked well enough for your ancestors, it should work well enough for you, too.

Imagine you’re a microbe with a slight defect that turns out to be slightly advantageous in a particular place of the pond you’re in… you’re going to get more nutrients than the others and, as a result, have more offspring. These offspring will carry that slight advantage, but now there will be many of them with the same advantage. Doesn’t make it an advantage now… until down the generational line, another one crops up with a new slight advantage.

And I’ll remain a microbe may be with some enhanced capabilities or an impaired microbe. But I won’t become another species.

The slight advantage of light sensing cells evolved to eyes.
The slight advantage of living on land, evolved lungs (this was way way after fish showed up)
The slight advantage of an internal hard piece evolved into a skeleton.

The advantage of multi-cellularity required some way of delivering nutrients to all cells, so animals with cells dedicated to that delivery service were advantageous.

Of course, this skips a bunch of stuff that must have happened in between, but it seems you’re only interested in quick answers to things that require millions of generations…

You are mistaken. I am not interested in quick answers. I am interested in detailed explainable answers. Advantages of having certain attributes does not caused such attributes to happen by itself. First you must have the capability to generate it in the first place, which they don’t.

I told you already, a number of times: the root problem is unsolved.
It is a gap in the scientific knowledge. People are working on it. Until then, we wait and simply say: we don’t know.
If you want the quick answer to be satisfied, then, by all means, god-of-the-gaps to table 4.
Enjoy it.

OK, don’t know the answer. Just accept evolution as the answer. Wow, incredible scientific method.

Says I and no, it’s not proven.
But there is something to it… upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Jelly_cc11.jpg

Why bother presenting that in the first place? I do audit your sources for credibility and existence.

 

[Bradski]

And I’ll remain a microbe may be with some enhanced capabilities or an impaired microbe. But I won’t become another species.

Guys, you need to take this offline. Argue it out in PMs or something or you will get the thread closed.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

The problem was that we have no idea what is an extraordinary claim. Mere evidence for the specific claim doesn’t help here.

Inserting my thoughts here.

An extraordinary claim is a claim involving elements that one has not normally encountered. Note that this says something about the experience and knowledge of the person involved in evaluating this claim. A claim presented to that person is going to be compared, contrasted, and/or tested for consistency against their current knowledge map/semantic map. Claims that are found to be extraordinary are claims that contradict or are totally detached from their knowledge. For example if you could find a person that has had no [modern technology] exposure and tell him or her that men have walked on the moon or that people travel through the sky in big metal sky boats to this person these claims are extraordinary.

Note this means there is a subjective element to this. A claim that has an explanation that was sufficiently explained or demonstrated to someone might no longer be considered extraordinary by someone.

I think the word “require” is being used to express a contingency…] I think what is being expressed is that “my belief of your claim is contingent on information being provided that I can adopt into my knowledge map” (note: the claims that form that information may also require other information).

Whether or not effort is take to provide the person with additional information may depend on other factors. A primary factor may be “Do I care if my audience believes me.” Some times the answer to that is “no.” I present the claim here that “I live in the Metro Atlanta area of Georgia, USA.” If some one in these forums doesn’t believe that I’m totally fine with that (apathetic) and will let their disbelief continue without making any effort to convince him/her. If I make the claim that “My neighbor broke into my house” to a court of law chances are I’ve got additional motivations that may move me to provide more information and evidence.

For that matter, we have one fact: in this thread you have noticed that QM was accepted without extraordinary evidence.

My personal opinion is that Quantum Mechanics might not be the best of example; it can be used without being believed. Without knowing whether or not the Bohr model of the atom is correct it still has utility for certain chemical analysis or predicting the wavelengths of photon emissions from electrons stimulated by ration, so on. It’s composed of lots of models that have utility even if not believed to be descriptive of what’s really going on.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Guys, you need to take this offline. Argue it out in PMs or something or you will get the thread closed.

+1 to this.

As posted by the mods in one of the sticky post:

*“For the foreseeable future, there shall be no discussion in the Philosophy Forum of evolution. Anyone who starts such a thread or revives an old thread on those topics will be banned. This ban is planned to be temporary, but there are to be no public or private petitions that the ban be lifted. It will be lifted only when the mod (yours truly) discerns that the atmosphere in this forum has sufficiently cooled.”

“This will also be in effect in Apologetics and Sacred Scripture.
God bless”*

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=410885

 

[ericc]

Ericc, you have a problem. And that is…there is too much to believe. It appears from what you say that you want people to believe in your specific God.

I have a problem? No I don’t think so. I am not even trying to promote my God to you. I am trying to find out why poca disbelief in the existence of God.

The one that couldn’t allow nature to take it’s course and have life emerge and evolve as a natural process.

There is no reason to. It doesn’t have the capability. You haven’t make a case for it.

You should know that I have more certainty in the process of evolution than I do about my disbelief in God.

It is good to be sure of something. It is not so good to assume certainty when experts acknowledge they don’t know the answer.

That is, I don’t know for a fact that God doesn’t exist, but I do know for certain that Meyer and Behe and Demski are wrong.

You haven’t proven Meyer, Behe and Demski are wrong. But I am open to hear your reasons. They are experts in their fields. For you to prove them wrong, I presume you have expertise in theirs.

So if I have to believe that they are right to believe in your God, then that is impossible.

It is equally impossible for them to disbelief in my God. What is your point? That you are right and they are wrong?

I was taught all the stories associated with Christianity from birth. We never got into the most esoteric aspects of theology until I was a teenager. But I accepted everything that I was told. As Poca said, this is quite natural. All children are programmed to accept what adults tell them. It’s an evolutionary trait. So I soaked it all up.

Creation, Adam and Eve, the flood, the Virgin birth, stone tablets and burning bushes, parting seas, death and resurrection. The whole box and dice.

Ok

Then, approaching an age when I’d started to think a little more critically, it gradually dawned on me that these stories weren’t just stories to help us live better lives. People actually believed it all happened. Now you can discount some of the Sunday School stories about Jonah and the whale and animals two by two. That isn’t what belief in God is about!

Well some people like stories, but some stories in themselves do not lead to better lives.
I look at it holistically, not something to be ticked off.

But you still want me to believe that macro evolution is not possible. You may as well expect me to believe that someone built an arc.

I did not sell you the ark story.

The points I have made to poca is that evidence for Darwinism to support macroevolution is not there. It is a dead theory. Behe, Meyer, Demski explains why using their knowledge. You are jumping to conclusion about stuff that I didn’t say. If someone has a better theory than Darwinism, let us hear them. I haven’t reach the stage of having to slot God of the Gaps. We are at a very early stage of disproving a theory that does not have explanatory/predictive power for macroevolution. Christians obviously have our own answers but we need not market that to non-believers. Non-believers would need to come up with their own versions. Failing which they can look at what others are thinking.

The question is, how much could anyone, in your opinion, discount before you have left any concept of the Christian God behind? I don’t know about other atheists, but I started as a Christian and then started ticking off various aspects of Christianity as not being credible. Eventually you reach a point where you say to yourself: Hey, there’s nothing really left.

At that point, you pause for a moment the next time you have to fill in a form and state your religion. You used to put Christian because that was how you were brought up and it was what you thought you believed. But there’s not enough left to support that belief so you put n/a.

I don’t approach religion as a checklist of things. I look for the message and its meaning. It need not be very complicated but it can be if one want to go deep.

Incidentally, I didn’t then suddenly start acting un-Christianlike. No-one would have noticed the change. I was still the same guy. I still honoured my mother and father and tried to tell the truth and not intentionally hurt anyone. It beats me why anyone should suggest that ‘there will be consequences’ because I wrote n/a.

In fact, to tell you the truth, it makes me quite angry. That’s a fault, I know. But I’m working on it. Trying to be a good Christian. I’m sure Jesus would approve.

You see even when we are bad, there is still hope, until death strikes. I went bad for 20 years. Un-Christianlike behavior indeed. No, I don’t think Jesus approved of what I did. I don’t think Jesus would approve of you rejecting him. You can tell him your reasons but if he can rebut everyone one of your reasons, it may be too late to take/change sides. No, I am not going to talk about consequences. It is not the topic of this thread. There is no reason to get angry when people don’t agree with us. We can calmly discuss what is written and proposed, but let us not jump to conclusions on unsaid stuff.

 

[ericc]

So the God you describe is one that allows nature to take its course on almost everything. We say that ‘nature takes its course’ because we have an understanding of the processes. But there are aspects of existence whereby He has to specifically step in and do that Kazam thing and divinely order things to follow a route that is not natural. We can say ‘not natural’ because it doesn’t and could not (on your insistence) happen naturally.

It just happens that the only occasions where you can claim this is where there is a gap in our knowledge. If there wasn’t a gap, we could say it was part of the natural processes. And God makes an appearance where those gaps occur and fills them in with a divine command. Do you see where the God of the gaps claim comes from?

You appear to be giving indications that you are, if not a creationist, then something quite close to that. Either way, I might suggest discussions steer clear of any aspect of that as any counter will involve evolution and that would be a sure method of having the thread closed.

In any case, the God you have described is not the God of many Christians. In fact, not of many Catholics. In fact, I would hazard that it is not the God of some of the Catholics posting on this thread. I could believe in God. He could exist. I have no problem saying that whatsoever. But as I said, there are too many conditions placed on belief. You HAVE to believe this, you HAVE to believe that. And in your case, you HAVE to believe that God stepped in to organise life and even evolution and that it is not a natural process.

It seems I’m an atheist as regards all gods except yours. I KNOW yours doesn’t exist. So do I have to keep ticking them off? This one I don’t believe. That one I don’t believe. The one that this person believes in seems less likely, but hers seems possible. Maybe the God of the philosophers. Or can I skip the bits that don’t make sense to me and just go with the bits that do.

Which God is everyone talking about? I’ve been involved with so many threads on so many topics whereby there is disagreement about so many aspects of God. Is there a minimum requirement?

I believe this was for me?

I only know of what my God said he did in Genesis. He made things in a sequence. Cosmos, plants, animals, man. He didn’t say he made the universe and the universe made the others. If he did that, then the biblical writers didn’t write it down correctly. But I have no reason to doubt that the biblical writers didn’t write it down correctly.

Thousands and thousands of years ago, this was what was written. We didn’t change a single thing. Then recently, people start to offer new methods, new theories. There is no reason for me to accept these new theories. Because things such as the Big Bang actually do support Genesis sequence of events. First nothing, then cosmos, then plant life, then animal life then human life. How would Moses know that sequence thousands of years ago before such knowledge of the Big Bang existed? Lucky guess?

You KNOW my God don’t exist? How quaint to have such a conviction. That is your entitlement to believe it so. But that is not the topic of this thread. This topic is not about the existence of my God nor your knowledge.