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prodigalson2011
Guest
P.S. My point, exactly.Yeah, I can’t make any sense of this
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Alberti_Devoveo
Guest
Think of it this way: Suppose you think that the degree of confidence is 0.5 about some event E occurring. But suppose that I have a degree of confidence of 0.55 about some event E occurring. According to Bayesian statistics, who is right? According to Bayes’ theorem, we both are. How on earth can that be reconciled? It cannot, and therein lies the problem.
True statistics is the more useful one: one where you can test outcomes of events and be able to make predictions on future outcomes of similar events based on your previous testing. Case in point, you have a 10-sided die and you roll it 1000 times, approximately how many times will an even number show up? Roughly 50% of the time. This is an example of true statistics.
If you are not interested in true statistics, then there is no reason to introduce probabilities since probabilities is based on true statistics. What you want to describe is just your level of feeling on a particular issue. You can do that all you want without using the word “probability” or “Bayesianism.”
Exactly! It is all you want to satisfy your need to reject something. You have no inkling of a reason to say that your degree of confidence can be something different than 1.0, 0.0, or 0.5. None whatsoever. And my point is that, because it is so subjective, that there is no reason for any of us (the people whom you are trying to convince) to believe those numbers.
You are still doing it! You are ignoring your own conclusion! It is mind-boggling that you are ignoring your conclusion in order to try to discredit me. Your conclusion states that if ST is true, then one could not know whether an event could occur, would occur, or has occurred–all tenses!
You have stated previously that in your using Bayesian statistics, you are removing background knowledge. Background knowledge would include the knowledge that a past event had occurred! You have been attempting to force us to think outside the proverbial box and think of only an ST who has no background knowledge and must make a guess based on their belief in a deity who does not communicate with them the moral justification for any event. In that case, an ST cannot know the future, past, or present when considering an event based solely on their belief in a non-communicative God.
Further, the last sentence of the amended conclusion means that if you replace ST with: “atheist,” “monotheist,” “polytheist,” “pantheist,” or “agnostic,” then you have someone who cannot predict the future! Is this what you have been trying to prove? That no one can predict the future? I think most of us could have come up with that by trying to predict what number would come up when rolling a 10-sided die or in playing the lottery.
It is the same thing, when considering the removal of background knowledge.
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Perplexity
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Hmm, yeah I guess I’ll bow out. I’m not sure this is headed anywhere productive anymore. But, thanks guys putting the time and effort in!
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SteveGC
Guest
Perhaps there was some clarity after all?
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tonyrey
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Thanks for giving us some light-hearted entertainment!
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Perplexity
Guest
No, no, thank you!Thanks for giving us some light-hearted entertainment!
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JDaniel
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Perplexed:
I ask you if you can tell me which chocolate chip cookie tastes the best, in your opinion, and you ask me what I know about cooking. Perplexity! Please!
I want just two examples of real possibles. Not conjectures; not imaginary giant dinosaurs that take down Tokyo; not giant rocks too heavy for anything in Heaven to lift. Two real possibles. You are not restricted from using your imagination either. And, no lecture on possible worlds senselessness.
God bless,
jd
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razredge
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Your whole argument seems to be based around this ST straw man, I do not see any contradiction between saying any event X is likely and also saying that you don’t know why God would allow X to occur.
The onus is on you to show that these two separate beliefs cannot be held simultaneously - so far you just insist that a ST must conflate the two and assume skepticism on any event since he doesn’t know God’s reasons for allowing/disallowing it to occur.
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empther
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For centuries people wondered why God “allowed”
earthquakes,until now it’s understood they’re caused by tectonic plate acitvity, which has distributed land masses in the last half billion years to permit the climate necessary for the development of higher forms of life such as ourselves,
and also causes the recycling of carbon which is locked into seashells like the White Cliffs of Dover which sinks deep into the Earth, melted, and the CO2 returned to the surface by volcanoes without which we would be in serious trouble
etc etc etc,
all of which scientific concepts are simple compared to predicting the outcome of interactions of millions of human beings’s actions, good and bad, and trying to guess how history would have developed if somebody had done this differently or if Hitler had died in infancy
etc etc etc.
But enough. You should get the idea.
Trying to guess whether God permits this of that event or human activity and why or why not and whether he’s obliged to do it for moral reasons or not
blah blah blah,
makes no sense at all. Admit it. We just don’t know and never can.
Can we say “Book of Job” ?This whole thread has been a waste of time, which is what Perplexity wanted.
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Perplexity
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Unfortunately, things aren’t this simple. My understanding of skeptical theism shouldn’t be under question (if it is).
Bergmann and Rea (leading skeptical theists) take skeptical theism to be the addition of the theistic hypothesis to three skeptical hypotheses:
ST1: We have no good reason for thinking that the possible goods we know of are representative of the possible goods there are.
ST2: We have no good reason for thinking that the possible evils we know of are representative of the possible evils there are.
ST3: We have no good reason for thinking that the entailment relations we know of between possible goods and the permission of possible evils are representative of the entailment relations there are between possible goods and the permission of possible evils.
Now, the principle of minimal ordinance enjoins us to employ the weakest premises we can, which are capable of supporting our conclusion, because they’re less vulnerable to objections. (i.e., we want our premises as self-evidently true as possible)
So, I’ve defined skeptical theism as: “the hypothesis that theism is true, and we should be skeptical that we can be privy to God’s moral justifications, for any number of reasons, perhaps our cognitive limitations for instance.”
All the skeptical theists like Bergmann and Rea have to do is substitute ST1-ST3 in place of the above bolded statement.
I say all this to illustrate that I haven’t straw-maned the hypothesis itself. Have I done so with my inferences from it?
No. From our inability to be sure of God’s moral reasonings, it follows that for any given event E, we cannot be sure whether God would have morally overriding reason(s) or moral obligation(s) to permit E, or to prohibit E. That just seems like a re-wording of the original claim: it’s self-evident.
But, because God could, by virtue of his omnipotence or whatever, (notice I’ve weakened the claim) permit or prohibit any given event E (perhaps through miraculous means), the theist can only say E is likely to occur if he’s sure God wouldn’t prohibit E. Normally, this isn’t an issue.
But, how on earth could he be sure God wouldn’t prohibit E if he didn’t know whether God had morally overriding reason(s) or moral obligation(s) to prohibit E? If God did have such reasons or obligations, you’d bet he’d prohibit E!
So, it seems like the two following claims are incompatible:
(1): We can’t be sure whether for any event E, God has morally overriding reason(s) or obligation(s) to prohibit E.
(2): We’re sure that God wouldn’t prohibit E.
But, we’ve derived (1) from skeptical theism. And so, the argument has developed into a hypothetical syllogism:
- If skeptical theism is true, then we can’t be sure whether for any event E, God has morally overriding reason(s) or obligation(s) to prohibit E.
- If we can’t be sure whether for any event E, God has morally overriding reason(s) or obligation(s) to prohibit E, then we can’t be sure God wouldn’t prohibit E.
- If we can’t be sure God wouldn’t prohibit E, then we can’t be sure E would occur.
- Therefore, if skeptical theism is true, then we can’t be sure E would occur.
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empther
Guest
As I pointed out on another thread,
not even God can know the future actions of beings he never creates since there is nothing knowable about George, Harry, and Martha if George, Harry, and Martha are never created.
Likewise, whereas natural disasters affect human beings, in their lives, actions and future situations, God cannot know the outcome of these actions not happening.
He calculates the odds, but at an infinitely more sophisticated level than we can even imagine.
Therefore,
we cannot second guess God’s justifications for what he does or doesn’t do,
because we are like insects compared to his omniscience of all knowable.
This thread’s purpose,
besides Perplexity’s primary purpose of wasting our time and casting doubt about God’s morality,
is hopeless, useless, and presumptive of our having intelligence far above reality.
not even God can know the future actions of beings he never creates since there is nothing knowable about George, Harry, and Martha if George, Harry, and Martha are never created.
Likewise, whereas natural disasters affect human beings, in their lives, actions and future situations, God cannot know the outcome of these actions not happening.
He calculates the odds, but at an infinitely more sophisticated level than we can even imagine.
Therefore,
we cannot second guess God’s justifications for what he does or doesn’t do,
because we are like insects compared to his omniscience of all knowable.
This thread’s purpose,
besides Perplexity’s primary purpose of wasting our time and casting doubt about God’s morality,
is hopeless, useless, and presumptive of our having intelligence far above reality.
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razredge
Guest
That seems reasonable to me
Not yet
Yes
See I don’t see this as being incompatible at all, let’s apply similar reasoning to another agent - say we have an SS captain whose company has captured a group of Jews, now to me it seems perfectly reasonable for us to believe that he will kill them all while not knowing his reasons for doing so.
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awolbob
Guest
I will not attempt to debate you as many have done because simply put ,God is not knowable except through Jesus no one except Jesus has seen or talked to that Eternal Essence ,that we call God ,Jesus called Father. Apart from Jesus or the Spirit of the Father no one can know His ways. Only through Jesus do we have any understanding of God ,Jesus was the Word of God made flesh,to know Him is the only way to know the truth of God
As for skeptical theism it is simply not believing in Jesus or His Church, your understanding can and should be tested ,by you.there is no other way ,God is not a math problem
Faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of God.ST is not any thing to hang your soul on
Bob
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Perplexity
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In order to make this analogous, we can’t just say we wouldn’t know his reasons for killing them. That implies he would kill them. We need to say we have no idea whether he has morally overriding reasons or obligations to kill them or not. Once you say that, it’s entirely unclear whether he would kill them.
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Alberti_Devoveo
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I still do not see how not knowing moral reasoning disproves the knowledge of a future action. Further, I do not see how knowing moral reasoning would prove the knowledge of a future action.
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Perplexity
Guest
In saying a person is likely to perform an action, we’re simultaneously saying they’re unlikely to not perform that action. I think we can at least agree on that much.
But, if it’s entirely unknown whether that person would have compelling and overriding reasons to perform the action, or compelling and overriding reasons to not perform the action, it’s impossible to (reasonably) say they’re unlikely to perform the action.
This is how our ignorance of God’s moral reasoning is relevant. On ST, we are entirely ignorant of whether God would have morally compelling and overriding reasons to perform some action, or morally compelling and overriding reasons to not perform that action. So, if ST is true, we can’t reasonably say God would be unlikely to perform any given action.
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empther
Guest
Perplexity’s nonsense
We are in the position of watching the world champion chess player defend his title. We can’t anticipate the strategy of his moves, because he’s the world champion, not us, but we know the rules of the game, and the goal.
Likewise, we know what God’s goal for mankind is but can’t know the significance of every event. But we are not entirely ignorant of what God is doing.
We are not ignoranr of God’s moral reasoniing. The Bible is full of explanation. Each one of his actions, or omissions, is morally justified. *He works for our benefit. He gets nothing out of it himself. *
ST is completely irrelevant.
We are in the position of watching the world champion chess player defend his title. We can’t anticipate the strategy of his moves, because he’s the world champion, not us, but we know the rules of the game, and the goal.
Likewise, we know what God’s goal for mankind is but can’t know the significance of every event. But we are not entirely ignorant of what God is doing.
But ST is false because it say’s we are entirely ignorant of what God does which is nonsense. So your conclusion is meaningless.
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Perplexity
Guest
I’m not sure how the Bible is relevant to the theistic hypothesis we’re working with here.
I agree that it’s false! That’s what I’ve been trying to show. We can derive all kinds of absurdities from it. So, I’m not sure how my conclusion is meaningless, my conclusion is that ST is false!
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Alberti_Devoveo
Guest
I can agree with this.
But even knowing their reasons, we still do not know if the person would or would not perform the action.
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empther
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Perplexity wants to have it both ways:
I wrote:
So what is Perplexity saying? He never says anything.
Perplexity is forever tap dancing, without actually getting anywhere.
His purpose is to confuse and cast doubt.
It’s easy to do this. Just mention a theory such as ST which makes no sense, then bring up something else whether related or not, make neither the first nor the second clear, then you can write endless reams of nonsense falsely connecting one to the other in some way, positively or negatively. You can’t refute what he’s doing because there’s no connection to disprove in the first place.
I wrote:
He blabbered:
But my comment was in response to his:
Now he says ST is false, in which case his conclusion is meaningless.
So what is Perplexity saying? He never says anything.
Perplexity is forever tap dancing, without actually getting anywhere.
His purpose is to confuse and cast doubt.
It’s easy to do this. Just mention a theory such as ST which makes no sense, then bring up something else whether related or not, make neither the first nor the second clear, then you can write endless reams of nonsense falsely connecting one to the other in some way, positively or negatively. You can’t refute what he’s doing because there’s no connection to disprove in the first place.
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