Epistemology is the key

[R_Daneel]

Absolutely true! “useless” is the key word.

At least we have some common ground here.

The supreme criterion of any form of knowledge is whether it satisfies the command to believe in love.

Oh, brother, you slipped here big time! First, love is to be “commanded”??? Is it now not valueless if it is not spontaneous? Hah! And should one believe in love? Love should be experienced and practiced, not “believed in”. Sheesh…

If any interpretation of reality implies that life is irrational, valueless and insignificant we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is not only false but evil because it undermines the very basis of knowledge.

There is some value that can be attributed to life, but only in some context. The value of vegetation is that it sustains the grazers. The value of the grazers is that they sustain the predators. The value of the predators that they provide food for other predators, and that they keep the population of the grazers in check… and so on. Human life has value as long as humans fill it up with value. What is the value of sociopaths? What is the value of disease causing microbes? There is no “abstract” value for anything. And where does “knowledge” get into this? Knowledge is correct information about something.

Besides, the universe does not care if there is life or not. The universe us indifferent to life, or very hostile to it. You did not even attempt to give an “alternate” method of epistemology…

 

[R_Daneel]

Well if you see an epistemological truth in Girard’s theories and his theories are demonstrated over and over again in the Bible (enough so to become a major theme of the various books), then wouldn’ t that be an epistemology of sorts?

Guess what, how did Girard come to his conclusion? Yes, he made observations (the first step in obtaining knowledge).

You might also enjoy selections from “Critical Thinking for Christians” by Peter Kreeft that I posted today.

Sorry, I read many of Kreeft’s writings, and came to the conclusion that he is an idiot.

My favorite part of Dr. Kreeft’s essay:

"We should “live according to reason,” said the ancient Greeks, meaning not that we should be computers rather than human beings, but that we should be human beings rather than animals.

Reason is not limited to logic, though logic is one of the things that sharply distinguish human reason from animal consciousness. The meaning of that great old word “Reason” was arbitrarily narrowed to “calculation” beginning with Descartes and the Enlightenment (which I prefer to call the Endarkenment) and with the restriction of all approved thinking to what can be proved by the scientific method – which, of course, is self-contradictory since that very principle cannot be proved by the scientific method!

The fact that you call the Enlightement Endarkenment tells me volumes. Maybe you call the Dark Ages the “Light Ages”? And the highlighted text is the same nonsense which was espoused by WSP, and which has been corrected innumerable times now. The scientific method is not part of the physical world - it is about obtaining knowledge about the physical world. Metaphysics is NOT the same as physics.

 

[R_Daneel]

but it seems to me that any standard for truth cannot meet its own standard, cant be said to be a standard of truth. its really then just “best guess” in a particular situation.

Or a basic principle (in the case of natural sciences) and axioms (in the case of abstract sciences). .

notice now though, that you admit empiricism is inapplicable to the ‘abstract’ sciences. what do you think metaphysics is if not an abstract science?

Funny, that I never said otherwise. I explicitly made a difference between the natural and abstract sciences - many times. You either neglected to read what I said, or never comprehended it. Well, metaphysics is part of philosophy, which can be called an “abstract science”, though it is more like empty speculation.

 

[tonyrey]

The supreme criterion of any form of knowledge is whether it satisfies the command to believe in love.

The slip is yours. I stated that the command is to believe in love - which is obviously a prerequisite for love. If you don’t believe in it, as some materialists have stated, you can hardly practise it - at least knowingly.

Hah! And should one believe in love? Love should be experienced and practiced, not “believed in”. Sheesh…

I’m delighted to learn that you believe love should be experienced and practised - and therefore believed in! We agree on the most important fact of all - which is no mean achievement…

If any interpretation of reality implies that life is irrational, valueless and insignificant we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is not only false but evil because it undermines the very basis of knowledge.

There is some value that can be attributed to life, but only in some context. The value of vegetation is that it sustains the grazers. The value of the grazers is that they sustain the predators. The value of the predators that they provide food for other predators, and that they keep the population of the grazers in check… and so on.

Your concept of value here is usefulness to another being - primarily as food! I hope that doesn’t apply to us as well! Otherwise we need a few cannibals around… Don’t you think the fact that animals obtain pleasure and satisfaction from life means that life is valuable for them as well as others? Why should their value depend on our opinion? Surely we aren’t the measure of all things…

Human life has value as long as humans fill it up with value.

I agree that our life is more valuable if we take advantage of the opportunities it offers.
But does life become entirely valueless if a person wastes those opportunities? And how do we decide if opportunities are being wasted? The right to life is based on the value of life. If we regard a person’s life as valueless does it mean he/she has no right to life? It’s a grim prospect if that is the case…

What is the value of sociopaths?

They give you an opportunity to question me and my beliefs! But seriously, it is not for us to decide who is valuable or not. That was the Nazi mentality which led to the murder of millions of innocent people.

What is the value of disease-causing microbes? There is no “abstract” value for anything.

That seems a huge leap! Anyway value is not abstract but related to individual, living beings and also to the world without which they could not exist. If there were only one person in the world - you or I for example - the universe would be valuable because it is necessary for our physical existence. BTW There are beneficial microbes as well as harmful ones. How could we have one without the other?

And where does “knowledge” get into this? Knowledge is correct information about something.

The point is that knowledge is valuable and presupposes the value of life. Epistemology without a metaphysical context is meaningless.

Besides, the universe does not care if there is life or not. The universe is indifferent to life, or very hostile to it.

What does it matter if the universe is indifferent? We know (or believe) it is unaware of our existence but how does that affect our value? I suppose you could say that if the universe is valueless everything in it is also valueless. That seems logical **if **the universe is purposeless - but that is only a belief held by materialists who haven’t explained how purposeful activity has emerged from purposeless processes. The universe is indifferent but what if the universe has a Creator? That changes everything…

You did not even attempt to give an “alternate” method of epistemology…

I did but you didn’t recognise it as a way of knowing - which love is. In fact it is the supreme form of knowledge beside which all the others pale into insignificance. It puts everything else into its proper perspective - as you intimated when you noted that love should be experienced and practised… It gives our lives a meaning they could otherwise never have. What is life without love?

 

[JP2Admirer]

Well, metaphysics is part of philosophy, which can be called an “abstract science”, though it is more like empty speculation.

Explain what you mean by “empty?” Why is it empty? Is the definition of a triangle empty? A three sided figure which sides add up to two right angles is purely speculative; is that an empty concept? It is entirely separate from matter; an ens rationis, if you will. Does that make it empty?

 

[yppop]

Materialists (or atheists) divide the Universe into two parts: physical and conceptual (or abstract). The way to gain knowledge, or information about the physical reality is the method of empiricism. Empiricism is based upon observation, hypothesis forming, prediction and verification. This is the epistemological method pertaining to physical reality. It is based on basic principles, which are commonly accepted. This is called the inductive method. Believers also subscribe to this method when it comes to the physical reality.

RD
Interesting challenge. However you set it up in a way that it is hard to refute your implication that knowledge of the supernatural (spiritual, really) cannot be generated by any known epistemological method. Your trick is to be found in the first paragraph in which you define the empirical method as that associated with the classic scientific method of observation, hypothesis forming, prediction and verification. Then in your third paragraph of the OP you invoke falsification as the method of verification. Surely you must know that there is much “empirical” knowledge accepted as scientific that can’t be falsified, the big bang for instance or continental drift, all of archeology and paleontology, parallel universes, etc., etc. Then there are those instances in which an observation falsified a specific law of physics, such as the excessive rotation of galaxies. Science merely shrugged off that falsification and still accepted it as empirical knowledge by creating an abstraction, in this case, with “dark matter”. Then there is the observed flatness of universal space that cannot be explained through any of the laws of physics and had to be explained by abstracting new unobservable phenomena: dark matter and dark energy. Or the Higg’s particle, or entanglement, or superposition of the wave function, or etc., etc. These observed phenomena can neither be falsified nor explained and yet they are considered to be empirical knowledge. So what is my point?

I happen to believe that the examples given above are all scientific knowledge; they just were not derived by the methodology you defined in paragraph 1. They arrive by other methods such as discovery or mathematical formulation or supposition. Most scientific knowledge that has achieved text book status generally has one epistemological element in common: a plausible explanation. Thus, in speaking of epistemological methodology you should include this: a hypothesis, without being either predictive or verifiable, can be accepted as science and become a theory through consensus of the scientific community on the basis that it is a “plausible explanation verified by logical deduction of known facts”. The method you espoused in paragraph 1 is known as predictive science; plausible explanation methodology is known as postdictive science.

Now the answer to your challenge: when the theory of God is finally determined it will be postdictive in that it will explain reality in the sense that science currently cannot. Karl Popper, who introduced falsification into the modern scientific paradigm; contended that a scientific theory is best when it describes the largest amount of phenomena with the simplest possible theory; in short it must be comprehensive.

Consider the current state of empiricism when judged by its comprehensiveness: the sequence of theories that describe creation of the cosmos to the mind of man begins with the big bang followed by diverse theories such as gravitational aggregation; nuclear fusion; nuclear synthesis; super novae explosion; the nebular hypothesis; planetary differentiation; the giant impact hypothesis; proto-planet collision; the oxygen catastrophe; abiogenesis, Oparin’s theory; theory of evolution; morphogenesis; the dynamic core hypothesis and a gazillion other diverse theories purported to reveal the truth about reality. Science has self-restricted itself to material reality and thus is restricted to merely describing what IS and not even bothering to find out why IS is. (shades of Bill Clinton). Science and the empirical method merely describe relationships that have their true cause at a deeper level of reality.

When science eventually gets around to delving into the mechanism that operates at the ground of reality it will find the impetus for the dynamics in the Mind of God. And non-believers will be shocked to find that God’s mechanism driving material reality is the same as the one that gets you out of bed each morning. Every phenomenon that is described by modern science is merely a manifestation of a mechanism operating at a deeper level of reality. God operates the cosmos and physical reality; the spirit of God within each of us operates our own body, mind and soul.

I offered one possible and plausible mechanism that might work at the ground of reality in my thread “God exists, but how?” without anyone understanding the larger import of such a thesis. It can explain most of the observed phenomena in a very comprehensive way. The methodology that I use, namely to explain how God operates without conflicting modern science, might be called, metascience.
Yppop

 

[Touchstone]

The next step for me was trying to understand why the early Christians believed so strongly in their faith. I look at similar groups of dedicated people, both in ancient and modern times, for example, the Heaven’s Gate suicide cult. And I’ve decided that the actions of the early Christians are best explained by the conclusion that there was something simply amazing about Jesus Christ that could inspire this. Something different than all the other modern cult leaders of today.

Ok, but would you say this is based on the evidence? That is, would you expect any reasonable investigator reviewing the evidence to come to the same conclusion?

To tell the truth, the competitor to Christianity that gives me the most pause, in terms of dedicated followers, is Scientology. I can’t fathom how so many people can follow such total nonsense.

I don’t think we have the passion-unto-a-martyr’s-death that we see in the accounts of the original apostles, but that’s a example I have pointed to before in terms of fanaticism-on-a-mission, a mission that seems quite at odds with a non-Xenu view of the world…

The early Mormons, witness and apostles, were zealots for the cause as well passioinate unto martyrdom. Some of them recanted their witness, but there are many troubling cases in there, too, for the Catholic or mainstream Christian who supposes that the zeal of the apostles of Jesus was somehow historically unique (not to mention other examples we could look at…).

I hadn’t really considered the neo-pagan and Wiccan practices, so I can see your point.

Like I said, I don’t know the numbers. A little Googling suggest you are likely correct that polytheism, active as it may be in some areas, is losing to monotheism. Islam is making hay right now in southeast Asia and other parts of the world, and it is winning through natalism – Muslims (monotheists, all) are a fecund bunch, as a whole, producing little monotheists at a much higher rate than other groups I looked at.

Another trend I notice can be seen directly in the Bible, the transition from the angry and vindictive God of the Old Testament to the God of Love in the New Testament.

Yes, I agree. Even in Islam, I see this. Many think that militant Islamist movements are an indicator that this is NOT happening, but according to Muslim friends and colleagues, and credible materials they’ve given me on the subject, the militant faction is a medieval bit of reaction to the overall trend in Islam towards a more modernized and benevolent Allah.

In any case, I think that trend obtains. The OT God is increasingly an orphan, even from faithful Christians. Religion ain’t going anywhere anytime soon, so given that, it’s a positive trend.

-TS

 

[warpspeedpetey]

And the highlighted text is the same nonsense which was espoused by WSP, and which has been corrected innumerable times now. The scientific method is not part of the physical world - it is about obtaining knowledge about the physical world. Metaphysics is NOT the same as physics.

we arent talking about the scientific method, but empiricism.

empiricism is a metaphysical claim about the nature of reality, namely that only ones senses can be a source of knowledge. that claim is self refuting. it is not one that you can arrive at by the senses.

the scientifc method, is based on empiricism and thus suffers the faults inherent to its foundation.

thats why we keep repeating this to you.

and no, metaphysics is not physics, we are not saying that. physics is just a subset of metaphysics. hence the name.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Or a basic principle (in the case of natural sciences) and axioms (in the case of abstract sciences). .

finally a break through!

your standard of evidence cannot be applied to systems of logic. exactly what we keep pointing out.

empiricism is the wrong tool for the job. so when you want empirical evidence for metaphysical claims, other than what might be incident to being, in general. your barkinng up the wrong tree.

Funny, that I never said otherwise. I explicitly made a difference between the natural and abstract sciences - many times. You either neglected to read what I said, or never comprehended it. Well, metaphysics is part of philosophy, which can be called an “abstract science”, though it is more like empty speculation.

i read, and comprehended. this is the first time that you havent been arguing against settled logic for a while now.

can you finally put down the empiricism when we are talking about metaphysics? it isnt speculation any more than any other logic system. its like say mathematices or deontic logic is merely speculation.

just like them we start with certain axioms and then we reason. you just dont like that when we reason, we find G-d.

metaphysics is the highest form of reasoning that man is capable of. theololgy is all revelation, over which we have no control. mathematics reaches to metaphysics as it leaves the empirical behind. science strictly deals with the empirical. it is limited to the physically observable. useful yes, greatly. useful as a measure of truth concerning the non-emprirical reality, no. not at all.

these are all different tools for analyzing reality.

 

[Touchstone]

empiricism and verification schemes are self refuting, they dont meet their own standard. the scientific method is inductive, it cant prove anything.

Empiricism doesn’t prove anything. It’s inductive, you said so yourself, right there! On it’s own principles, it’s exceedingly successful. Induction, I guess I have to point, as your usage here doesn’t indicate a grasp of the idea, goes from the specific to the general. It’s not a fallacy or self-refuting, it’s a heuristic that gets judged by its utility and performance (science also integrates plenty of deductive thinking in to the process, as well, but that’s another subject).

If you think you can defend your claim, here, I invite you to spin up a thread to do so, and I will be happy to defend and establish the poverty and ignorance of your claim.

the part i bolded

I was thinking that was the only part that really could have been left out and still gotten my point across.

??? How do you get to that point? Cornered by what, and how do you know this?

cornered by the logical fallacy youre trying to dismiss. and i know it because you stay pretty reasonable until youre cornered, and then you get excited. its a dead give away.

No, I get excited when people have the contempt for honest dealing such that they will tell me black is white, with an apparently straight face, and expect me to accept it. It’s beyond the pale of decent conversation, and you wouldn’t like people to treat you with the contempt you display here in the responses you give. It’s a conspicuous violation of the Golden Rule.

I roam hither and yon through the interwebs and talk with and debate all kinds of people, and I am happy to count ardent believers in all sorts of ideas I reject my friends. I run a homeschooling forum with many hundreds of active users, and it is filled with pious Catholics and Protestants, and I am the only atheist in the group. I have plenty of desire and ability to find friendship and comity with people who don’t believe what I believe.

But I know when I’m not being given the decency of thoughtful, honest responses. That isn’t just intellectually “incorrect”, it’s just bad behavior. You apparently think that your bad behavior is some sign of fear or threat to me, which just makes me roll my eyes. We could be having a serious, thoughtful, if adversarial conversation. But no, you’re committed to the black-is-white schtick. Disagreeing is fine, but just wasting my time to soothe your dissonance is not. Satisfy yourself that you’ve score some sort of hit, as you like. I understand your arguments to not be serious, thoughtful ones, and it’s exasperating to get bogged down in when we could be talking like grown-ups.

On another forum, I’ve been diagnosed as “rattled” because I’m offended on behalf of American military personnel who are thought to be “bloodthirsty”, and as lawless as al Qaeda. Why would I object passionately to that, unless I JUST COULDN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH, eh? blank out

why are you looking for a more parsimonious answer? because you think that some events are too implausible to happen.

I don’t know what “too implausible to happen” means. I wouldn’t know what that threshold was, even if it does exist. I don’t have an absolute measure like that, and can’t see it as anything but folly to suppose one does. But I can look at how nature behaves, and the principles and dynamics it demonstrates throughout its many layers of interaction, and say that claim A is more plausible against that background than claim B. And the resurrection claim, based on everything we observe and know around us, is BY FAR the least plausible of the explanations put forward.

Again, that’s the whole point of the claim. God did it. God messed with reality in the most fundamental of ways. He’s sovereign, and laughs at the puny mortals’ reliance on empiricism and induction. He breaks the rules of physics precisely to show that they are subservient to him. Except in your case, where God is non-miraculous (except he is), and is the conclusion, resurrection and all (!) of… critical thinking. All the rules which argue against miracles you suppose really do – yet another mystery! – lead inexorably to the miracle of the resurrection (among other fantastic claims).

hence, your argument that these miracles are not plausible is based on a logical fallacy (incredulity) and as such is invalid.

You’ve misunderstood the problem identified by ‘argument from incredulity’. As you have it, one could not disbelieve anything, else he’d be committing this fallacy. I wonder if you could tell me on what grounds one might reject a claim, and NOT be guilty of “incredulity”?

i have bolded the parts that admit to the fallacy of incredulity. simply because you do not know how an event happened, says nothing about the probability it did.

You’re ahead of yourself again. We haven’t established what happened in the first place! If there was no resurrection, there’s nothing to explain, right? If the resurrection happened, I’m hardly bothered by how it happened, it was a miracle, and as interested as I may be, so long as I recognize it was “supernatural”, it’s likely to just be completely opaque to me. Good luck researching the mechanics of how miracles mess with the laws of physics.

So, if I grant that resurrection happened, the “how” really is not a problem. It’s just not a plausible claim to admit in the first place. By any reasonable account, it did not happen, and more plausible, non-miraculous explanations obtain.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

this is no joke, its not a reversal of anything. its always been the situation. its a logical fallacy as true before there were people and will be long after.

how can you be an atheist and not know the basics?

Well, let’s test that, then. I asked above how one could reject any claim and not be guilty of “incredulity”, in your view. I expect your answer will shed light on who understands what on this question.

no, logic is still logic, math is still math, skepticism is a 2 edged sword. you just use them wrong. as above you ignore the obvious logical fallacy either because you are not able to grasp it, or because it hurts your cherished belief. now, since i know you are an intelligent man, i can only see that you are willing to accept the obvious logical fallacy in order to protect your cherished belief. so you have a faith. the very thing that you decry.

Given all that I’ve had to give up to be “out” as an atheist, from putting my marriage, family relationships, friendships and standing in my profession and community at great risk, and the hero’s welcome and adulation I’d be treated to if I were to “re-credulate”, this kind of armchair psychology just makes me laugh. You don’t have the first clue. Really giving it a go in terms of reason, critical thinking, logic and disciplined thinking is a hard, brutal path to follow, and it can produce a thoroughgoing agnosticsm, but it doesn’t lead to Christ, or anywhere near that.

That’s part of what sets me off, the counterfeit pretense to these hard things as the “path to Jesus”.

im dishonest because logic, rationalism, annd intellectual honesty lead me to Christ?

No, because you claim they do. Let’s tease it out, if you are willing, and I will show you how each of your claims are false, black-is-white kind of false, earth-is-6000-years-old kind of false. It mocks the commitment to these principles to make the claims you do.

thats plainly false on its face. the principles that you think skewer belief, obviously dont.

They do, and I am prepared to show they do, and that your claim there is just a cozy set of euphemisms, faith-as-faux-logic, faith-as-faux-critical thinking, etc.

Don’t get me wrong. Christians can and do use these things the real way – they can and do think critically about this, or that. But the claim that that is what leads to the cross is ludicrous.

btw, your confusing faith and unfounded belief. the faith you refer to is the virtue of faith, believing that G-d loves you and will save you. not unfounded belief, the usual atheist definition.

I don’t see a distinction there, or any foundation for such belief, beyond intuition and desire.

did you not know that one can find G-d strictly by reason? what kind of Christian were you? a Catholic? its been a tenet of the Church for a very long time.

Yeah, that claim was part of what really signalled that my conversion to Catholicism was going to be a sham, if I proceeded. Protestantism is way more wacky about its foundation for it’s beliefs, but it’s a lot more honest about being wacky. For all of Catholicism’s advantages in being more reasonable on many fronts, it is simply out to lunch, and completely deceiving itself on this question. Aquinas as poster child for this kind of foolishness.

from the way youre getting real excited and questioning my honesty tells me, youve never considered these things before, and now you see the rising tide swallowing your cherished belief up and you feel cornered. dont worry ive been there. the world rocks, what you thought was true is not. pretty soon you will have a road to Damascus moment. soem of that gnosis you deny is going to hit and push you over the edge into theism

Well, I don’t know the feature, but it sounds unlikely. In any case, I think we can both agree, in a moment of candor from you, that this, as implausible as it is, is at least a conceivable path to Christ, unlike your path – logic, critical thinking, reason, etc. At least gnostic revelation conceptually accounts for getting there. Your path does not, not hardly.

its a common route for atheists to come home. so just let it happen, quit fighting, you dont need intellectual pride, you dont need other people to think your smart, you definitely dont need the things of this world. you have been here, with us, for a long time now. its for a reason, and i have to believe in your darkest places. you know this. He is calling you, if you cannot get over some logical hurdle than accept the revelation. it will not matter to Him how you get here, but only that you must come. you must come home.

Ugh. You’re forging not just critics, but enemies of Catholicism. This is a kind of mentality and contempt for thoughtful discourse that doesn’t just deserve criticism, but sound, robust defeat. Is this what Christianity produces, the kind of dishonesty that has one declaring in a public forum like this that a Christian can have his cake and eat it too, embracing the faith, and yet claiming he reached his beliefs by all the tools that discredit and expose religious faith for the folly it is. If God does exist, I’d rather be condemned and live honestly and thoughtfully than be transformed into something like that.

-TS

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Empiricism doesn’t prove anything. It’s inductive, you said so yourself, right there! On it’s own principles, it’s exceedingly successful.

and not on anyone elses. like metaphysics.

Induction, I guess I have to point, as your usage here doesn’t indicate a grasp of the idea, goes from the specific to the general. It’s not a fallacy or self-refuting,

you misread it.

empiricism is self refuting, the scientific method is inductive.

it’s a heuristic that gets judged by its utility and performance (science also integrates plenty of deductive thinking in to the process, as well, but that’s another subject).

im sure some scientists do start with theory in some situations, what does this have to do with anything? it doesnt change the bare fact that the process is supposed to be inductive.

If you think you can defend your claim, here, I invite you to spin up a thread to do so, and I will be happy to defend and establish the poverty and ignorance of your claim.

if you could, you would have right here.

I was thinking that was the only part that really could have been left out and still gotten my point across.

No, I get excited when people have the contempt for honest dealing such that they will tell me black is white, with an apparently straight face, and expect me to accept it. It’s beyond the pale of decent conversation, and you wouldn’t like people to treat you with the contempt you display here in the responses you give. It’s a conspicuous violation of the Golden Rule.

i absolutely defy you to tell me something i told you that was a lie. you just dont like that the wsword cuts both ways.

I roam hither and yon through the interwebs and talk with and debate all kinds of people, and I am happy to count ardent believers in all sorts of ideas I reject my friends. I run a homeschooling forum with many hundreds of active users, and it is filled with pious Catholics and Protestants, and I am the only atheist in the group. I have plenty of desire and ability to find friendship and comity with people who don’t believe what I believe.

what does this have to do with anything? youre wearing your heart on your sleeve. youre cherished belief is drowning. isnt it possible it could simply be wrong?

But I know when I’m not being given the decency of thoughtful, honest responses. That isn’t just intellectually “incorrect”, it’s just bad behavior. You apparently think that your bad behavior is some sign of fear or threat to me, which just makes me roll my eyes. We could be having a serious, thoughtful, if adversarial conversation. But no, you’re committed to the black-is-white schtick. Disagreeing is fine, but just wasting my time to soothe your dissonance is not. Satisfy yourself that you’ve score some sort of hit, as you like. I understand your arguments to not be serious, thoughtful ones, and it’s exasperating to get bogged down in when we could be talking like grown-ups.

im commited to where the logic leads. why arent you? either we are operating under total intellectual honesty, or we have cherished beliefs that arent open to question. and you sound very much like your cherished beliefs arent open to question.

your refutations are boiling down to a “nuh-huh” you claim its black/white reversal and the rest because you cannot fight the logic. its an obvious fallacy.

On another forum, I’ve been diagnosed as “rattled” because I’m offended on behalf of American military personnel who are thought to be “bloodthirsty”, and as lawless as al Qaeda. Why would I object passionately to that, unless I JUST COULDN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH, eh? blank out

now its the patriotism schtick.

schtik to the bare logic.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

I don’t know what “too implausible to happen” means. I wouldn’t know what that threshold was, even if it does exist. I don’t have an absolute measure like that, and can’t see it as anything but folly to suppose one does. But I can look at how nature behaves, and the principles and dynamics it demonstrates throughout its many layers of interaction, and say that claim A is more plausible against that background than claim B. And the resurrection claim, based on everything we observe and know around us, is BY FAR the least plausible of the explanations put forward.

you just keep repeating the same logical fallacy. youre incredulous of the events in Scripture. you then base the need for a more parsimonious answer on the fallacious incredulity.

fact is, you dont know how it was done, any more than an amazon tribesman knows how cancer is treated with a gamma knife. so like the tribesman, you say, its a miracle!

you have no idea if that is true. the advance of science shows that there are no such things as miracles, there are simply processes you do not understand.

Again, that’s the whole point of the claim. God did it. God messed with reality in the most fundamental of ways. He’s sovereign, and laughs at the puny mortals’ reliance on empiricism and induction. He breaks the rules of physics precisely to show that they are subservient to him. Except in your case, where God is non-miraculous (except he is), and is the conclusion, resurrection and all (!) of… critical thinking. All the rules which argue against miracles you suppose really do – yet another mystery! – lead inexorably to the miracle of the resurrection (among other fantastic claims).

case in point, how do you know that G-d breaks the rules of physics? do you know all the rules of physics? because ive had more than a couple classes and i dont remember being told that physics is anywhere near a settled matter.

you simply believe that miracles exist, just like some amazonian tribesmen. even i dont believe in actual miracles. i simply admit that i dont know what process was used to make an event occur.

but then i dont follow the self refuting empirical idea that reality is somehow magically restricted to what we see.

your makinng magical claims and claims of omniscience that you simply cant support. because you have no idea what process a “miracle” may occur by.

You’ve misunderstood the problem identified by ‘argument from incredulity’. As you have it, one could not disbelieve anything, else he’d be committing this fallacy. I wonder if you could tell me on what grounds one might reject a claim, and NOT be guilty of “incredulity”?

Argument from personal incredulity
The common version of the argument from personal incredulity are:

“I can’t believe this is possible, so it can’t be true.” (The person is asserting that a proposition must be wrong because he or she is incapable of accepting that it may be true.)
This terminology was introduced by Richard Dawkins[3][4], who used it to describe the Argument from Design. He summarizes this argument thus:

I personally cannot imagine a natural sequence of events whereby X could have come about. Therefore, it must have come about by supernatural means.[5]

i think i have it right, and i think your fellow atheist coined it. but if you want, the argument from ignorance applies. it wouldnt change my point.

You’re ahead of yourself again. We haven’t established what happened in the first place! If there was no resurrection, there’s nothing to explain, right? If the resurrection happened, I’m hardly bothered by how it happened, it was a miracle, and as interested as I may be, so long as I recognize it was “supernatural”, it’s likely to just be completely opaque to me. Good luck researching the mechanics of how miracles mess with the laws of physics.

So, if I grant that resurrection happened, the “how” really is not a problem. It’s just not a plausible claim to admit in the first place. By any reasonable account, it did not happen, and more plausible, non-miraculous explanations obtain.

-TS

we know what happened, several different accounts document it. simply because you think it incredulous doesnt cast any doubt on the event or the accounts of it.

i cant believe a rational man is chalking up events to “miracles” because he doesnt know the process that occured. that is so middle ages.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Well, let’s test that, then. I asked above how one could reject any claim and not be guilty of “incredulity”, in your view. I expect your answer will shed light on who understands what on this question.

by rejecting it on the basis of some known impossibility. not on a lack of imagination. if you like we will switch to the argiument from ignorance. it wont change my argument.

Given all that I’ve had to give up to be “out” as an atheist, from putting my marriage, family relationships, friendships and standing in my profession and community at great risk, and the hero’s welcome and adulation I’d be treated to if I were to “re-credulate”, this kind of armchair psychology just makes me laugh. You don’t have the first clue. Really giving it a go in terms of reason, critical thinking, logic and disciplined thinking is a hard, brutal path to follow, and it can produce a thoroughgoing agnosticsm, but it doesn’t lead to Christ, or anywhere near that.

 

[Just_Lurking]

Ok, but would you say this is based on the evidence? That is, would you expect any reasonable investigator reviewing the evidence to come to the same conclusion?

No, that’s just my conclusion. I don’t have any training in psychology, which is the area I would look to for a definitive answer, except that I don’t think the field is far enough along.

The early Mormons, witness and apostles, were zealots for the cause as well passioinate unto martyrdom. Some of them recanted their witness, but there are many troubling cases in there, too, for the Catholic or mainstream Christian who supposes that the zeal of the apostles of Jesus was somehow historically unique (not to mention other examples we could look at…).

I don’t know a lot about the Mormons, except I’m a fan of the Big Love series. I’ll have to take a deeper look at them.

Anyway, this is a topic that I think about from time to time, rechecking my conclusions. Falun Gong is another group that I wonder about, based on their persecution.

 

[Touchstone]

No, that’s just my conclusion. I don’t have any training in psychology, which is the area I would look to for a definitive answer, except that I don’t think the field is far enough along.

OK, fair enough.

I don’t know a lot about the Mormons, except I’m a fan of the Big Love series. I’ll have to take a deeper look at them.

As one who did a two year stint in Mapleton, UT some time ago (a town that is literally 98% Mormon, or was in the mid 1990s), I get a kick out of that show. The FLDS I knew with polyg marriages were much more secretive than the show lets on, but that aside, it’s a really interesting development in modern religion, a kind of neo-counterfeit Catholicism, with a henotheistic twist (and interesting cosmology ideas in light of modern physics!).

Anyway, this is a topic that I think about from time to time, rechecking my conclusions. Falun Gong is another group that I wonder about, based on their persecution.

Yeah, one of the things that appears to happen is that persecution just galvanizes belief and commitment to the cult, or movement.

-TS

 

[The_Exodus]

Daneel - first, this post makes me smile It shows to me that you are seriously interested in understand the presuppositions of those you are arguing with, and also trying to clarify your own. I think this is a very mature and intellectually honest way to go about finding out about things.

Needless to say, you have a lot of material here to deal with. A lot of people have responded with articles, links, etc. So I will offer as briefly as I can the major objections to your own epistemology, and hopefully shed a little light on the Christian (at least the Catholic) worldview.

Materialists (or atheists) divide the Universe into two parts: physical and conceptual (or abstract). The way to gain knowledge, or information about the physical reality is the method of empiricism.

This is, as I’m sure you are aware, a drastic oversimplifaction and unsubstantiated assertion. There is no reason given for some sort of “division” of the universe, nor have you gone into detail very much about the difference between “physical” and “abstract.” (I.e. are thoughts/feelings physical? Is time physical? What do we use to measure these things, and who says these tools are the only ones accurate?)

It is based on basic principles, which are commonly accepted.

Simply because the principles are commonly accepted doesn’t make them true, or even reliable. For example, you do not believe Christ to be the Son of God- although this is accepted by many people.

Believers assert that there is another (third) type of existence, which they call supernatural.

I think this comes from a misunderstanding. What is commonly refered to as the “supernatural” is not some additional “type of existence.” It is an existence which is more foundational than our current one.

Believers do not claim there are all sorts of different “universes” or “worlds” out there, but only one - God, who is Existence and Being Himself. All subsequent things which exist, exist in some way in a relation to him. Thus the division you are trying to draw - between things you can “see” and things you “feel/think” (I suppose that’s the distinction you are making?) is, to the Christian, a false dichotomy and an inaccurate view of existence from the get go.

They insist that this type of existence is neither physical, not purely conceptual. They insist that this kind of existence is at least “somewhat” knowable - one can have true and false claims about this existence. The question is: what kind of epistemological method is there to employ? How does one differentiate between a true claim about the supernatural and a false claim about the supernatural?

Excellent question. Classic Catholic theology has always maintained that God is the God of Truth and Reason, and therefore He cannot violate Himself -i.e. cannot do the instrinsically “impossible” such as exist and not exist at the same time.

Basically, metaphysics abides by the simple rules of logic - Law of Identity and Non Contradiction. It is what governs all methods of thought. The problem is, however, what appears impossible, is not necessarily “intrinsically impossible.” Hence I could say, “it is impossible for a man to rise from the dead,” when, in actuality, there is nothing instrinsically impossible about it. I merely mean “I do not know how this could happen.” This is very different from claiming “I man can be and not be at the same time,” which is obviously instrinsically impossible (so long as you are not speaking poetically/metaphorically.)

They deny the empiricist method.

This is false. They only deny that empricism is the only way of acquiring knowledge. Some of the greatest Christian minds have been empiricists (Newton, Pascal, Mendel, etc)

Of course, they immediately run into a problem here. At the very least the supernatural is supposed to interact with the physical world. At the point of interaction the supernatural can be caught “red handed”, becuse there is a change in the physical reality, which is subject to empirical verification. They conveniantly overlook this aspect of the supernatural, which is a methodological error.

On the contrary, miracles are counted as certain “proofs” of the existence of the supernature. Christ performed miracles in front of people, for example, in order to prove he was divine.

Maybe you aren’t aware but the Catholic Church actually (although rarely) proclaims certain events to be miraculous. These events are thoroughly investigated by scientists. You can see a little of what I’m talking about here: miraclehunter.com/marian_apparitions/approved_apparitions/lourdes/miracles2.html

Also, probably the biggest problem with saying empiricism is the only way we acquire knowledge (besides the fact that this is an unjustifiable, and thus a position which would be reasonable not to hold) is where do we gain insight as to what is meaningful?

 

[R_Daneel]

Interesting challenge. However you set it up in a way that it is hard to refute your implication that knowledge of the supernatural (spiritual, really) cannot be generated by any known epistemological method.

That is the question I posited. I am curious if there is any objective method that can substatitate the claims of “supernatural”.

Your trick is to be found in the first paragraph in which you define the empirical method as that associated with the classic scientific method of observation, hypothesis forming, prediction and verification. Then in your third paragraph of the OP you invoke falsification as the method of verification.

It is not a “trick”, is it?

I happen to believe that the examples given above are all scientific knowledge; they just were not derived by the methodology you defined in paragraph 1. They arrive by other methods such as discovery or mathematical formulation or supposition. Most scientific knowledge that has achieved text book status generally has one epistemological element in common: a plausible explanation. Thus, in speaking of epistemological methodology you should include this: a hypothesis, without being either predictive or verifiable, can be accepted as science and become a theory through consensus of the scientific community on the basis that it is a “plausible explanation verified by logical deduction of known facts”. The method you espoused in paragraph 1 is known as predictive science; plausible explanation methodology is known as postdictive science.

You are correct in pointing out that the first step is observation. The second step in the hypothesis forming or modeling. A good model attempts to grasp the important part - via intuition - and builds a model. So far we are in agreement. Of course it needs to be a “plausible explanation”. You say: “verified by logical deduction of known facts” - verified as you say. Which means further observation and the correlation of theory and facts.

Every bit of science science was descriptive at the beginning. Biology was just a whole lot of observation and description - nothing more. Only much later did it start to become something more. Description without prediction is an empty speculation. Only prediction makes science what it is. Electrons were just a hypothesis at first. They were merely assumed to exist, to make a plausible explanation of something that needed an explanation. Only later did the theory robust and strong enough to allow to make predictions, and those predictions lent credence to the theory.

On the contrary, the “plausible” assumption of ether - when used to make a prediction (light travels faster in the direction of the ether-wind and travels slower across it) did it become obvious that the theory is falsified by the famous Michaelson-Morley experiment.

To summarize: without prediction there is no science.

Now the answer to your challenge: when the theory of God is finally determined it will be postdictive in that it will explain reality in the sense that science currently cannot. Karl Popper, who introduced falsification into the modern scientific paradigm; contended that a scientific theory is best when it describes the largest amount of phenomena with the simplest possible theory; in short it must be comprehensive.

Exactly. And the God-hypothesis can be said to be “simple”, no question about that. What could be simpler than “God did it”? What it lacks is any kind of predictive value. But it lacks something more. After all the God-hypothesis does not stop there - God created everything. It involves a whole lot of other assumptions, and those are partly nonsensical, partly self-contradictory and fully at odds with the actual observed universe.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Materialists (or atheists) divide the Universe into two parts: physical and conceptual (or abstract). The way to gain knowledge, or information about the physical reality is the method of empiricism. Empiricism is based upon observation, hypothesis forming, prediction and verification. This is the epistemological method pertaining to physical reality. It is based on basic principles, which are commonly accepted. This is called the inductive method. Believers also subscribe to this method when it comes to the physical reality.

The second type of reality is the abstract or conceptual reality. The ways and means to gain knowledge about this aspect of reality in not empirical. It is based upon axioms and logical deductions from those axioms. This is called the deductive method.

Believers assert that there is another (third) type of existence, which they call supernatural. They insist that this type of existence is neither physical, not purely conceptual. They insist that this kind of existence is at least “somewhat” knowable - one can have true and false claims about this existence. The question is: what kind of epistemological method is there to employ? How does one differentiate between a true claim about the supernatural and a false claim about the supernatural?

They deny the empiricist method. Of course, they immediately run into a problem here. At the very least the supernatural is supposed to interact with the physical world. At the point of interaction the supernatural can be caught “red handed”, becuse there is a change in the physical reality, which is subject to empirical verification. They conveniantly overlook this aspect of the supernatural, which is a methodological error.

Furthermore, any epistemological method worth to be contemplated must be objective, and must offer a method of separating a true claim from a false claim. Without these attributes it just “hangs in the air”, it is useless.

So, the ball is in your court: what kind of epistemological method can you offer?

Assume, for a moment, that God exists. Would it be possible for Him to give us evidence for His existence? Preliminarily, it seems like it would. Would any of this evidence be properly empirical? No.

Inferring to the existence of God is an ontological inference. Scientists make ontological inferences all the time, although many philosophers of science dislike the idea. Van Frassen, for example, says that we should not infer the *existence *of electrons, but rather infer that some objects *which have the effects that electrons have *exist.

If scientists consider themselves justified in inferring the existence of entities, not just their effects, then the existence of a superpowerful being – given the right observations – would be a valid scientific inference. (I will agree that one could never simply infer the property of omnipotence, without some appeal to a priori knowledge.) If scientists do not consider themselves justified in inferring to the existence of entities, then we should stop talking about electrons and quarks, etc. In fact, we should stop talking about trees, and just say that certain things create the effects that trees would have!

Are we justified in inferring to the existence of God? This enters the realm of “inference to the best explanation”, broadly construed, which is precisely how we have “evidence” of objects like trees and donuts. The existence of these objects best explains our experience. What is the best explanation for the laws of nature, however, or the fact that human life is possible? “Intelligent design”, in my estimation.

From a purely scientific standpoint, however, superpowerful is not all-powerful. It could be that our universe is the product of a science experiment in another universe, and this scientist who created us is not “all-powerful”, but merely quite potent, relatively speaking. But why does he exist? It seems like at some meta-level of the universe, the “limit” of superpower must be reached, and we call this God.

So far, so good, but what is God like? Here naturalistic explanations at some point fail us, and we must either a) assume that there is no other knowledge than empirical and (narrow) conceptual knowledge, or b) consider whether there are synthetic *a priori *truths, and wonder how these truths might be known. The answers – *insight *and *revelation *-- force us to humble ourselves from our presumptuous view that we could control our own universe, by “rationally” deciding which things are true.

Your answer: Inference to the best explanation, insight, and revelation. The first is the most reliable, the last is the most expansive. Naturally, revelation and insight resist translation into words. This is because God does not desire to be known by those who do not wish to know Him. In one sense, this is a courtesy to them, because humbling yourself before your creator is terribly painful.

 

[yppop]

=R Daneel;It is not a “trick”, is it?

RD
The trick is this: in paragraph 1 you state that knowledge of the physical world is generated by the inductive method. Then in paragraph 3 you imply that knowledge of the “supernatural” (FYI: this term has a mildly insulting ring - of ghosts and goblins - to we who believe in the “spiritual”) can only be derived by invoking the concept of falsification. I don’t know whether or not you are aware that Karl Popper, who introduced falsification as a criterion for scientific status, introduced it because he found the inductive method lacking a logic foundation for reasons WSP has clearly delineated in this thread. So, if you are knowledgeable about the philosophy of science espoused by Popper then it is trickery to expect those you are challenging to meet a “double standard”. If you insist on falsification as the required element for proof of a theory, then it seems to me that you should also allow the rest of Popper’s argument, namely, that scientific knowledge can be created through a “plausible explanation verified by logical deduction of known facts”.

To summarize: without prediction there is no science.

Never heard of postdictive science? It is that which is explained after the fact of observation!

I believe you are intelligent enough to realize that there is more than one methodology leading to knowledge of physical reality, so I am not going to bother to give examples. Instead I will address your basic challenge of describing an epistemological method that yields knowledge of the physical, the abstract, and the spiritual using a single mechanism organized as a plausible explanatory model.

Exactly. And the God-hypothesis can be said to be “simple”, no question about that. What could be simpler than “God did it”? What it lacks is any kind of predictive value. But it lacks something more. After all the God-hypothesis does not stop there - God created everything. It involves a whole lot of other assumptions, and those are partly nonsensical, partly self-contradictory and fully at odds with the actual observed universe.

Now here is challenge to you: Go to page 10 in this forum, look up the thread, “God Exists, But How?” and start reading. In among the flack you will find my thesis, and see if you can refute it and don’t give me argument that it can’t be falsified. What I prefer is a straight forward rebuttal as to why it doesn’t make sense. And if you do decide to take up this challenge take notice how few non-believers responded to my thread. Unfortunately for me, I spent an inordinate amount of time defending my thesis from friendly fire from other believers.

Hope to hear from you soon. If I don’t, the challenge in your OP will have become superfluous.
Good luck.
Yppop