On the Necessity of Proving Things

[warpspeedpetey]

I just love when non-mathematicians try to argue about mathematics. It is so entertaining…

then please, demonstrate the fault.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

lol well the dude has totally lost me, and maths was a big part of my degree.

we all have degrees.

please demonstrate the fault then.

What on earth his post has to do with the fact that we have overwhelming evidence for the moon landings and zero evidence for a god, is beyond me.

we have the same evidence for both things. if you reject one, you must reject the other. or one enters a logical fallacy or a hypocritical double standard. depending on their reason for rejection. in either case the denier becomes dismissable.

 

[Image_of_God]

Well, I suggest you start to put your money where your mouth is. Science tells you that drinking poison is bad for your health. You don’t think that science is justified to make such a prediction (based upon the finite number of observations). So, please drink a little nicotine abstract, and see how wonderful you will feel after it… I predict that you will feel pretty bad (if at all) - if you drink more than a mouthful, you will probably die. But you don’t believe my prediction - after all it is only based upon a finite number of prior observations. You know what? Even rats learn from their experience… are you smarter than those rodents?

When you are really doing here is telling Syntax to trust the testimony of you and scientists. They told him he should drink poison, they told him it was bad for him, therefore he shouldn’t do it. And he would be irrational if he tried to drink poison But why?

And Jesus said that if you commit mortal sins and do not repent, you will go to hell. Why should we believe him? Does Jesus really have any less authority than “science”?

I think here, R Daneel, you are getting towards the silliness of empiricism.

 

[Image_of_God]

Chain story, that is, a story written by multiple people over a period of time. That describes the bible pretty well. It kind of tells you that itself, you know. Book titles being different people and all. Eye witness accounts they may be, but warped over 20 centuries of retelling. It may be enough evidence to conclude that there is a good likelihood that someone called Jesus existed. It is nowhere near enough evidence to conclude that he breaks physics.

It is based on *reason *that we know that each book of the Bible was written by a different person (there’s no empirical evidence for it). But it is simply your assumption that the Bible was warped over 20 centuries of retelling. You have absolutely no proof of that.

 

[Syntax]

Mathematics is defined within a rigid framework. Defined within that framework, certain theories can be proven.

Exactly. That something is unfalsifiable by empirical methods does not entail it is highly improbable. That’s the point. It’s a dumb argument.

I hope you’re not equating the bible with mathematical laws. That’s sad.

Of course not. I am criticizing the soundness of your argument. The conclusion is false, so one of your premises must be, namely, the one I just mentioned.

Nah, all you have to do is mention that the teapot is too small to detect.

Wrong. Detect in what fashion? Difficulty in determining X, does not establish a *principle *of unfalsifiability for X. Read your logical positivists. Also read Popper, the biggest proponent of the virtue of falsifiability in science.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

As a mathematician

what kind of mathematician is a strict empiricist? thats nearly an oxymoron, one would have to be among the most severe of constructivists to find that palatable. it cuts the heart out of mathematical reasoning.

 

[Syntax]

what kind of mathematician is a strict empiricist? thats nearly an oxymoron, one would have to be among the most severe of constructivists to find that palatable. it cuts the heart out of mathematical reasoning.

I don’t know…none of this backwards worship of science makes any sense.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Well, I suggest you start to put your money where your mouth is. Science tells you that drinking poison is bad for your health. You don’t think that science is justified to make such a prediction (based upon the finite number of observations). So, please drink a little nicotine abstract, and see how wonderful you will feel after it… I predict that you will feel pretty bad (if at all) - if you drink more than a mouthful, you will probably die. But you don’t believe my prediction - after all it is only based upon a finite number of prior observations. You know what? Even rats learn from their experience… are you smarter than those rodents?

and when the inductive process fails? for instance we find that the solvent used to make the extract is the actual killer?

it need not be a true theory, to be avoided because of associated consequences.

but the whole “rats” thing is just bad form.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Based on context, that’s not the way the word “some” is being used for here. If that were the case, then the author would have said, “Empiricists endorse the following claim for some subject areas.” The plural there would make clear that the author was addressing a fraction of some whole. The word “some” is being here used as one would say “such-and-such”. By using the word “some”, he is simply referring to an unspecified subject.

mmmmm…more apples.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Quite right. RDaneel is trying to twist something here that Empiricists were not really saying.

classical cognitive dissonance.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

You know R Daneel, you missed what I my point in bringing up the analogy of historical events.

We never witness historical events. We just believe what the textbooks tell us. And the people who write the textbooks base their facts off of documents assumed to be written by people who witness a particular historical event. How do we know that the person who wrote the document wasn’t lying? Well, the fact is, we don’t know for sure. There’s no way to prove that the person who wrote the document wasn’t lying. However, we believe the person to be true because of reason and intuition—because of “faith” essentially. Because of reason and intuition, we arrive at the idea that the person who wrote the document probably had nothing to gain from lying. He was probably telling the truth.

But if we were to follow scientific realist or empiricist ideology, then that document wouldn’t really prove anything. Why? Because we would have to experience the event with our senses in order for it to be true. In fact, that’s the *only *way it can be true. If we don’t see that event with our own eyes, if we don’t hear it with our own ears, then according to empiricist ideology, it cannot be true. And of course, we won’t be able to experience past events, because they’ve already happened, so therefore, according to empiricism, it cannot be true. But according to reason, something that has occurred in the past is always true, even if its existence has passed.

I recall science textbooks. If we were truly honest, then we would acknowledge that most people have never seen an atom. So why should they believe what scientists have said: that atoms exist and that everything is made up of them? Most people will never see one, so therefore, at least to those people, the existence of an atom is based on pure faith in testimony of scientists. Imagine if Albert Einstein tried to prove again all the mathematical theorems of the Greeks and Egyptians, the Laws of Kepler, the findings of Galileo and Newton, just so he could confirm their existence empirically (which is what empiricism/scientific realism basically demands). He wouldn’t have had much time to come up with the General Relativity Theory, would he?

How is this at all different from the Bible? The Bible tells us about a God we have never seen. How do we know that the Apostles were telling truth? We didn’t see the miracles of Jesus. We weren’t there to empirically test them. Yet, we know them to be true because of reason, intuition, and most especially faith.

Just because you have never seen, heard, smelt, tasted or felt something does not mean it is not true.

just a brilliant, concise represtentation of the argument. bravo.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

It’s not incredulity. It’s informed incredulity. I know that you need sperm and sex or in vitro fertilisation to conceive a foetus. The only evidence you have of it occurring in another way is a chain story. Therefore, it didn’t happen.

you dont know that sperm and an egg are required you simply cant imagine a way that it could be otherwise, “therefore it didnt happen”, that is the definition of incredulity.

1. I cannot imagine how P could possibly be true
2. Therefore, not-P

its a dead on fallacy. i dont see a distinction between what youre saying and how the fallacy is defined.

Yes, where is the evidence, I say. A chain story.

a chain story requires cooperation between writers, conspiracy.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_novel

A chain novel or chain story is **written collectively by a group **of authors. The novel is passed along from author to author, each adding a new chapter or section to the work, with **the rule that each subsequent chapter or section should elaborate and follow the plotline of preceding chapters or sections. **

on top of that, the bookss of the Bible are written by people who lived centuries apart, spoke different languages, lived in different cultures, etc. if you want to make claims of conspiracy or any collective action, then evidence is necessary

All extraordinary claims should be considered false until evidence is produced.

why would you assume they are false? incredulity. you cant imagine how they may be possible so you reject them as false. that just leads back to the fallacy from incredulity.

You have none. Incredulity is usually used when evidence is there but rejected out of incredulity. There is a difference between “I don’t know how this could have happened, so it didn’t”, and “there is no evidence that it happened, so it didn’t”.

the evidence is the documentation, the same as you have for the moonlanding. you may be thinking of physical evidence but as i pointed out you would never have a way to verify its authenticity. that aside, empiricism is on that list of self refuting claims i posted earlier. besides which Biblical archeology has as much evidence as you might expect for a 2000 year old religion, founded in the middle of its enemies, and in the middle of the most conflict ridden area on earth. and they keep finding more and more.

All things that have observable effects can be studied by the scientific method. Those that do not have observable effects don’t concern anyone precisely because they do not have observable effects.

a mathematician, metaphysician and logicians would all disagree. non-empirical observations are of great import. only people practicing the scientific method would be uninterested. that is not all people. that is only a certain set of scientists.

What part of ‘don’t need conspiracies’ don’t you understand? And even if I did need it, in this case it’s pretty easy. The church has a vested interest in keeping itself alive. When you’re in power, falsifying a chain story is pretty easy.

as i demonstrated above, collective action and planning is required for a chain book, which the Bible isnt.

education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/conspiracy

con·spir·a·cy (kn-spîr-s) KEY

NOUN:
pl. con·spir·a·cies
An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.

further, a vested interest isnt ‘evidence’, its ‘motivation’ two very different things. add to that the bare fact that the Church wasnt in power for hundreds of years after the Crucifixion, we had to hide in caves and catacombs, they murdered us by the hundreds. we werent in charge of anything. which is part of the reason that there is little physical evidence, we couldnt just leave stuff lying around, we had to use secret symbols, and as everyone knows “the victors write the history” and we werent the victors for several centuries.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

What part of how more evidence is harder to fake don’t you understand? It’s not a matter of whether you can fake all the evidence or not. It’s how much evidence must be faked. This is a simple pissing contest. The bible has one bit of evidence that must be faked, and that is itself. The moonlanding would have hundreds, at the very least.

so the amount of evidence is it? you think it is easier to fake carbon dated documents, at least hundreds of years older than the Church, than it would be to mock up some props, shoot some green screen video, and buy off a few "witnesses’ for a fake moonlanding?

i say the Biblical events would be much harder to fake than a moonlanding, after all the process for faking a moonlanding is essentially the same as making a movie, and hollywood does that dozens of times a year like clock work.

faking the the Bible would take a time machine.

on top of that though, the amount of evidence that needs to be faked really has nothing to do with it, that is really just a matter of how determined or resourceful the faker is.

It’s not. It’s a false attempt at equating a myth chain story with a real event.

If they only thing surviving of the moon landing is a chain story, they are correct to doubt it’s veracity. It’ll be gone once they go to the moon and see a flag and a few retroreflectors though.

what chain story? by the definiton i found, the Bible doesnt qualify. and you seem to be ignoring Biblical archeology, as though it doesnt exist at all.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_archaeology#Table_II:_Artifacts

A chain story may be good enough to establish approximately or roughly how events that would not break laws of physics occurred, like a battle or campaign. Even then, uncertainty is widely admitted by those who study the accounts, with the glory of the winning side usually exaggerated. It is far from good enough to justify believing in something that breaks science as we know it.

ive already dealt with the chain story claim, you need evidence to prove it. as to icredulity at sciennce as we know it being broken, thats still just the fallacy of incredulity. as demonstrated above.

I’ve replied to this. In a sentence, the number of pieces of evidence for scripture (that is, one piece) is less than the number of pieces for the moon landing (hundreds), and is not enough to establish that something that would beak science as we know it actually happened.

ive addressed the “number of pieces of evidence” above. this “breaking science as we know it” is still just a fallacious rejection on grounds of incredulity.

1. I cannot imagine how P could possibly be true
2. Therefore, not-P

this isnt a contest. we have this discussion with most atheists that come here. there is a very glaring flaw in the worldview that most have concerning epistemology. we already know how this argument turns out, it ends in the logical fallacy or double standard we have subscribed.

if you expect us to listen to you, then you must be just as rational about the matter as we are, and that means avoiding logical fallacies and contradictions. if you want our cherished beliefs to be open to refutation, your cherished beliefs need to be as well.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Chain story, that is, a story written by multiple people over a period of time. That describes the bible pretty well. It kind of tells you that itself, you know. Book titles being different people and all. Eye witness accounts they may be, but warped over 20 centuries of retelling. It may be enough evidence to conclude that there is a good likelihood that someone called Jesus existed. It is nowhere near enough evidence to conclude that he breaks physics.

when you say this, or similar things

It is nowhere near enough evidence to conclude that he breaks physics.

that is the very essence of the the demonstrated fallacy.

1.I cannot imagine how P could possibly be true
2.Therefore, not-P

the march of science shows there is no magic or miracles, there are simply things that we do not yet understand. these things are no different.

this is beginning to look alot like cognitive dissonance.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Mathematics is defined within a rigid framework. Defined within that framework, certain theories can be proven. I hope you’re not equating the bible with mathematical laws. That’s sad.

the framework of which is non-empirical. that doesnt move the ball.

 

[AlbertBall]

You’re just begging the question! That’s precisely my point. The decision comes from force of habit and, not from any epistemically justified belief that the flame will, in fact, burn my hand. So to say that it’s “rational” to believe that it will, is presupposing that you have some standard of empirical justification in mind for which you don’t. Though your beliefs that the future will be conformable to the past are useful to you, usefulness is no measure of truth because things can always turn out otherwise. Whether I do or do not believe that putting my hand in the flame will in fact burn my hand, this belief alone has no bearing on whether or not I am, in fact,** justified** in thinking that it will burn my hand. Utility and truth come apart–and the history of scientific-theories being continually falsfied show this!

duh…

No it does not come from habit. It comes from the knowledge. Tell me, when man first went to the moon, why did they take oxygen? Was it based on force of habit from all the other times (NONE) that they had been to the moon?

 

[AlbertBall]

everyone of which concerning the moonlanding could be faked. so if you reject Biblical claims on the grounds that they could be faked, but then accept the moonlanding in spite of this same situation, you are applying a double standard.

Your kidding, right?

 

[warpspeedpetey]

I don’t know…none of this backwards worship of science makes any sense.

i suppose its the educational system. they are only taught the scientific method, they arent taught the philosophies of science, of logical systems, or mathematics. they know how to calculate and compare. they dont know how to think critically about the tools they use. just as a carpenter can use a hammer to great effect, and measure with yardstick. he has no idea the process used to forge the hammer, or the agreement upon which the yard is based.

so i think it is something like a carpenter worshipping the house that is built, as though the whole world were in the house. he cannot bringhimself to believe that there is anything outside the house, or in fact there is anything but lumber and nails upon which his tools work.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

No it does not come from habit. It comes from the knowledge. Tell me, when man first went to the moon, why did they take oxygen? Was it based on force of habit from all the other times (NONE) that they had been to the moon?

one needs oxygen to live, thats not an induction to be shown false by later observation, thats a deduction that results in death.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Your kidding, right?

not in the least.

is there a reason i havent already refuted in another post, to think otherwise?