Reflection on Skeptical Theism

[prodigalson2011]

Like I said, we can’t derive absurdities by using this method of discernment on just any skeptical hypothesis. This is something peculiar to skeptical theism, so it isn’t that this is the wrong method (it works fine for skeptical hypotheses, including cartesian skepticism which it’s been used on), it’s just that skeptical theism is false.

I believe you are committing the fallacy of equivocation. Not only is the term being applied in two different senses, but in two different lexical categories. In one case, as the essence/idea [noun] (Cartesian skepticism) and in the other, the qualifier/type [adjective] (skeptical theism.) So you are comparing two categorically different systems. Cartesian skepticism is a generalized system of doubt that can be dismissed under the right circumstances. Skeptical theism, on the other hand, applies a very absolute skepticism to a very specific question, and further insists that this doubt cannot be dispelled by any human means.

To expound, let’s compare the two systems in action:

Cartesian skepticism is not an absolute skepticism. It only doubts the truth of any knowledge not achieved by logic. Therefore, the necessity of doubt in this case is easily circumvented by use of logic and rational conclusions can then safely be drawn from hypotheses.

Skeptical theism, on the other hand, is absolute skepticism as it asserts an inability to achieve knowledge of God’s motives through any means whatsoever. Hence, the absurdity of using skeptical theism to try do so to begin with.

It is fallacious to argue that because two or more systems share a particular element (skepticism) that they must all be applicable to the same problems. A car and an air conditioner both rely on a motor, yet only one of them will get you to work in a reasonable time, and only the other will regulate the temperature in your house.

 

[empther]

I don’t like to expound. I like plain English. Can we say “Gettsburg Address” ?

Perplexity started talking about a theory called “skeptical theism”,
pointed out that it had absurdities,
and then used that to suggest that there had to be some truth to an alternative theory about God being responsible for bad things,
but without giving a name to this alternative theory
so that you don’t notice his leap in logic.

And that’s how he operates.

 

[prodigalson2011]

I don’t like to expound. I like plain English. Can we say “Gettsburg Address” ?

Perplexity started talking about a theory called “skeptical theism”,
pointed out that it had absurdities,
and then used that to suggest that there had to be some truth to an alternative theory about God being responsible for bad things,
but without giving a name to this alternative theory
so that you don’t notice his leap in logic.

And that’s how he operates.

empther, my point has been that ST does not contain any absurdities. Let me explain.
Skeptical theism is actually an argument FOR the existence of God. From wikipedia:
“Skeptical theists accept that God exists and that we can know general truths about God but denies that in any particular case we can know the reasons for God acting in a particular way.”

Keep this definition in mind as I review Perplexity’s original reflection:

Since on theism, whether any event (E) occurs depends on whether God permits it, and ST informs us that we can’t be sure of whether God would or wouldn’t permit it, it follows that on ST, we can’t be sure of whether any given E will occur.

To drive home the absurdity, make E the death of George Washington. Did he die? Well, on ST, this depends on whether God had sufficient moral reasons for permitting his death and we’re not privy to those reasons. So, we can’t say. And so forth for any other event.

The bolded statement is patently false. Skeptical theism in no way says that we must understand why something happened in order to assert that it happened. It’s point is that things do happen and we don’t know why.

So, in summary, he is attempting to decide whether or not something DID happen by using a philosophical argument that does not make claims one way or the other about whether things will or will not happen, but that we can not understand why they did happen or will happen.

The absurdity lies in attempting to draw conclusions about WHAT happened from a system that only addresses WHY it happened.

That said, I do agree with you and tonyrey that the idea of God’s permitting or prohibiting certain events is false, and really is enough on its own to dismiss the rest of it, but I prefer to go the full monty.

 

[prodigalson2011]

Which, on further reflection, has lead me to realize that the reason for Perplexity’s abuse of skeptical theism is a faulty understanding of it. Again:

Since on theism, whether any event (E) occurs depends on whether God permits it, and ST informs us that we can’t be sure of whether God would or wouldn’t permit it, it follows that on ST, we can’t be sure of whether any given E will occur.

As tonyrey and empther pointed out, the first premise is false.
But also, skeptical theism does not inform us we can’t be sure of whether or not God WOULD allow something, but that we can’t be sure WHY he would allow it. Sorry this discussion has been so muddled. My replies have all been rushed in the bustle of the work day, with no real time to organize my thoughts. :whacky:

 

[empther]

( reply to post #23, #24 popped up in the interim )

That said, I do agree with you and tonyrey that the idea of God’s permitting or prohibiting certain events is false, and really is enough on its own to dismiss the rest of it, but I prefer to go the full monty.

On that, I would add that since it’s clear that God doesn’t prohibit events, neither does he “permit” events as a moral decision, because, in an analogous sense, you can’t have a rope with only one end.

Rather, he created the world and we must stop there as far as his responsibility for what goes wrong in it.

That said,
I think we agree that Perplexity’s ideas are questionable at the very least.

Newcomers to the forum have been warned.

 

[Gorgias]

On that, I would add that since it’s clear that God doesn’t prohibit events, neither does he “permit” events as a moral decision

On the other hand, God implicitly permitted the events that followed creation by the very act of creation, at least in some sense of the word “permit”.

Rather, he created the world and we must stop there as far as his responsibility for what goes wrong in it.

That doesn’t really hold. God’s love trumps any notion of “no responsibility”…

 

[Perplexity]

Alberti_Devoveo:

Oh, I totally agree that the Washington thing is absurd, which is good enough reason for me to reject skeptical theism.

Our background knowledge is all of our knowlelde and beliefs combined. When we ask how probable something (E) is given a hypothesis or position and our background knowledge, we’re asking whether the information in our background knowledge (minus E) along with the position or hypothesis lead us to expect E.

So, let’s take Washington’s death again.

How probable is it that he died, given naturalism and our background knowledge? Well, our background knowledge provides all sorts of anatomical information suggesting that humans die eventually, that Washington at least lived to quite an old age, etc. etc. Further, naturalism gives us no reason to think these things wouldn’t apply to Washington. So, it is quite probable that he died on naturalism and our background knowledge.

The picture changes on theism because we introduce an omni-guy into the picture who can intervene at any point. So, when the theist says it’s quite probable that Washington died, he’s also affirming that it’s highly improbable God miraculously intervened. In other words, he takes himself to be privy to God’s reasons and believes it unlikely that God had any for preserving Washington.

But, on skeptical theism, we can’t be sure whether God would have any moral reasons for preserving Washington or permitting his death. We can’t say it’s unlikely that God would miraculously intervene without affirming God wouldn’t have good moral reasons for doing so. It follows that the skeptical theist has to say “I have no idea” to the question “how probable is that Washington died, given that skeptical theism is true?”

Without numbers behind them, I see absolutely no reason to even introduce Bayesian statistics. You have no way to give a numeric value for the probability of event E, knowledge ST+k, or other variables (such as negation variables) in the Bayes equation. As such, I would not believe any ‘result’ derived from such a poor analysis.

It’s quite simple to do this. As I explained above, the skeptical theist has to say “I have no idea” to the question “how probable is X, given skeptical theism?” He could either represent his ignorance with 0.5, or by saying the probability is inscrutable. In the former case, he must say P(X|ST&K)=0.5. So, for each piece of evidence we plug into X, we’ll get a 0.5 in the likelihood term. Because ST’s posterior probability for X1 becomes its prior probability for X2, and so forth for each X we discern, so long as the prior for ST is < 1.0, ST’s posterior will rapidly decrease until it approaches 0.0.

If he wants to say it’s inscrutable, then there’s no evidence for anything. Either way, ST fails.

I am not dubious of skeptical theism. I do not agree with their premise of a non-personal God, but I am not dubious of their belief. As a side note, an agnostic is a skeptical theist, is he not?

Hmm, skeptical theism isn’t commited to an impersonal God. In fact, I think it’s the opposite.

 

[Perplexity]

Hmm… then it seems that the definition of “theism” that you’re proposing is insufficient to handle the subsequent analysis.

Why must theism be defined as you’ve posited it here? Isn’t an alternate definition possible (and given the difficulties we’ve already seen, isn’t it preferable)?

I’m using a standard understanding of theism, something like:

There necessarily exists an essentially omnipotent, omniscient morally perfect person who causally explains all of contingent reality.

The theist could redefine to avoid the objection (I’m sure); but, that’d make theism ad-hoc, so I’m not sure the benefits would out weigh the costs.

 

[Perplexity]

The usual atheist quibbling by Perplexity.
He admits that “skeptical theism” whatever that is, is false:

If you don’t know what skeptical theism is (as any noob in philosophy of religion should) you have no business arguing about it.

Then he uses this false theory to imply that the alternative can only be that God’s moral justifications are quite a weighty implication, that is, God is somehow responsible for evil events, that is, blame God for all the bad things, or else ( he hopes you’ll conclude… :takethat: ) God doesn’t exist in the first place. :banghead:

I never said the weighty implication is that God is responsible for evil events lol. That’s a pure fabrication. I never even implied that.

Perplexity just wants to destroy your faith.

I don’t find your faith interesting enough to want to destroy it, this is known as philosophy empther, philosophizing about positions doesn’t mean you want to destroy them.

 

[Perplexity]

In one case, as the essence/idea [noun] (Cartesian skepticism) and in the other, the qualifier/type [adjective] (skeptical theism.) So you are comparing two categorically different systems. Cartesian skepticism is a generalized system of doubt that can be dismissed under the right circumstances. Skeptical theism, on the other hand, applies a very absolute skepticism to a very specific question, and further insists that this doubt cannot be dispelled by any human means.

I’m using skeptical theism as a noun. I think your distinction between absolute skepticism and a generalized system of doubt is artificial, but granting it, it’s irrelevant.

My point was that we can plug any hypothesis we want to in Bayes’ theorem. It doesn’t matter what it’s intended for, or what it’s contents are. There’s nothing about skeptical hypotheses per se that excuses them from being able to go through the theorem. In fact, of all the skeptical hypotheses I’ve put through the theorem, only one comes up with absurdities: skeptical theism.

All we’re doing is saying “look, let’s suppose that skeptical theism is true, that is, that our world is such that God exists, and we shouldn’t think we’re privy to God’s moral reasons. Does this supposition along with the information in our background knowledge lead us to expect X?”

 

[Perplexity]

I don’t like to expound. I like plain English. Can we say “Gettsburg Address” ?

Perplexity started talking about a theory called “skeptical theism”,
pointed out that it had absurdities,
and then used that to suggest that there had to be some truth to an alternative theory about God being responsible for bad things,
but without giving a name to this alternative theory
so that you don’t notice his leap in logic.

And that’s how he operates.

Where does he get this stuff? I haven’t said a thing about any alternative theory.

 

[tonyrey]

I’m using a standard understanding of theism, something like:

There necessarily exists an essentially omnipotent, omniscient morally perfect person who causally explains all of contingent reality.

The theist could redefine to avoid the objection (I’m sure); but, that’d make theism ad-hoc, so I’m not sure the benefits would out weigh the costs.

How could an interpretation of reality be anything else - unless it is as simplistic as materialism?

You haven’t specified the nature of the “benefits” and “costs”!

 

[empther]

Quote:
Originally Posted by empther

forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_khaki/viewpost.gif
On that, I would add that since it’s clear that God doesn’t prohibit events, neither does he “permit” events as a moral decision

On the other hand, God implicitly permitted the events that followed creation by the very act of creation, at least in some sense of the word “permit”.

That’s like saying you “permit” your teenaged son to borrow you car, go out and get drunk, and cause a traffic accident killing himself and three other kids. It’s not “permission”.

In order to be persons instead for robots, we must have free will. Not even God can change that. His hands are tied.

 

[empther]

Perplexity’s post #31 :hey_bud:

Originally Posted by empther

I don’t like to expound. I like plain English. Can we say “Gettsburg Address” ?

Perplexity started talking about a theory called “skeptical theism”,
pointed out that it had absurdities,
and then used that to suggest that there had to be some truth to an alternative theory about God being responsible for bad things,
but without giving a name to this alternative theory
so that you don’t notice his leap in logic.

And that’s how he operates.

Where does he get this stuff? I haven’t said a thing about any alternative theory.

Your alternative theory is right there in post #1

Well, it means that we can be reasonable in expecting to know what moral justifications God would have for permitting or prohibiting events. As you can imagine, this is quite a weighty implication, especially if we can’t think of anything.

You’re saying God needs “moral justifications” for events, as if he’s to blame for the bad things that happen. That’s a theory.

People can read, Perplexity. Unfortunately for you they also have reading comprehension.

 

[Perplexity]

Perplexity’s post #31 :hey_bud:

Your alternative theory is right there in post #1

You’re saying God needs “moral justifications” for events, as if he’s to blame for the bad things that happen. That’s a theory.

People can read, Perplexity. Unfortunately for you they also have reading comprehension.

Of course God needs moral justifications. The only theist I know of who disagrees is Van Inwagen. Otherwise, you’re saying something like this:

Billy: “God, why did you allow that hurricane to decimate this country, killing hundreds of thousands?”

God: “I dunno, I don’t have any moral justification I guess.”

No, God’s moral perfection precludes such things. I’m not at all convinced you’re a theist empther, some of these ideas you’re tossing around, when adressing you, I’ll be sure to clarify I’m speaking about ‘Empther-Theism’ which is like theism, but includes some of your ideas.

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

Alberti_Devoveo:

Oh, I totally agree that the Washington thing is absurd, which is good enough reason for me to reject skeptical theism.

So you presented an absurd scenario to reject something outright? I think a better option would have been to ask someone for a scenario to try showing that ST is false.

Our background knowledge is all of our knowlelde and beliefs combined. When we ask how probable something (E) is given a hypothesis or position and our background knowledge, we’re asking whether the information in our background knowledge (minus E) along with the position or hypothesis lead us to expect E.

So, let’s take Washington’s death again.

How probable is it that he died, given naturalism and our background knowledge? Well, our background knowledge provides all sorts of anatomical information suggesting that humans die eventually, that Washington at least lived to quite an old age, etc. etc. Further, naturalism gives us no reason to think these things wouldn’t apply to Washington. So, it is quite probable that he died on naturalism and our background knowledge.

It is very definite that he died.

The picture changes on theism because we introduce an omni-guy into the picture who can intervene at any point. So, when the theist says it’s quite probable that Washington died, he’s also affirming that it’s highly improbable God miraculously intervened. In other words, he takes himself to be privy to God’s reasons and believes it unlikely that God had any for preserving Washington.

I do not see any reason to suspect that someone did not die because God exists. You are asserting that if God exists, then we cannot truly know anything because we are not privy to God’s reasons. I, and likely just about every other logical being on this planet, disagree. We do not need to know the reason something happened to know that something did happen.
You are attempting to shift the burden of proof to us for your ST thesis, when you are the one who needs to prove that we cannot know an event occurred when God is present in logic.

But, on skeptical theism, we can’t be sure whether God would have any moral reasons for preserving Washington or permitting his death. We can’t say it’s unlikely that God would miraculously intervene without affirming God wouldn’t have good moral reasons for doing so. It follows that the skeptical theist has to say “I have no idea” to the question “how probable is that Washington died, given that skeptical theism is true?”

Again, prove that theists cannot know if an event occurred is the case. Otherwise, you are just trolling this thread.

It’s quite simple to do this. As I explained above, the skeptical theist has to say “I have no idea” to the question “how probable is X, given skeptical theism?” He could either represent his ignorance with 0.5, or by saying the probability is inscrutable. In the former case, he must say P(X|ST&K)=0.5. So, for each piece of evidence we plug into X, we’ll get a 0.5 in the likelihood term. Because ST’s posterior probability for X1 becomes its prior probability for X2, and so forth for each X we discern, so long as the prior for ST is < 1.0, ST’s posterior will rapidly decrease until it approaches 0.0.

You are just making up numbers here. There is no logical reason to start with any number for any of these probabilities for the simple fact that there is no way to test the probabilities. One generally applies Bayesian statistics to items that can be tested (accuracy of drug tests, accuracy of physical data, etc). You are trying to apply Bayesian statistics to moral philosophy, something that is impossible because you cannot test these probabilities.

If he wants to say it’s inscrutable, then there’s no evidence for anything. Either way, ST fails.

It only fails because you have designed an extremely flawed scenario, ‘proving’ Washington’s death is impossible to know if theism is true, in order to prove the failure. I am fairly certain that any logic you may have introduced here has absolutely no bearing on reality.

Hmm, skeptical theism isn’t commited to an impersonal God. In fact, I think it’s the opposite.

You defined a skeptical theist as someone who believes that God exists, but does not believe that he can know God’s reasons. That seems very impersonal to me, as the ST seems to agree with the popular Deism of the 1700’s, more commonly referred to as the Watch-Maker God: He created the universe and the just let it run.

 

[empther]

Perplexity blabbered: :hey_bud:

Of course God needs moral justifications. The only theist I know of who disagrees is Van Inwagen. Otherwise, you’re saying something like this:

Of course, in your usual deceptive manner,

you ignore the point that I and others have made many times on this forum and elsewhere,
that to be persons instead of robots we must have free will. Not even God can change that. And so he needs no moral justifictions for things going wrong, which are our own doing anyways.

This is how Perplexity operates, folks. He hides aspects of the case to lead you down the wrong path.

 

[Perplexity]

There seems to be a lot of confusion about my OP. It’s simply a probabilistic interpretation of skeptical theism. That’s all.

I think skeptical theism philosophically interesting per se, but also as it relates to philosophy of religion in general.

Skeptical theism (ST) is one of the most popular objections to an argument from evil.

Supposing T=theism, A=atheism, V=“some prima facie evil event”, the ePoE goes like this: P(V|A) > P(V|T), therefore V is evidence against theism over atheism.

The skeptical theist steps in to say, “whoa whoa whoa… P(V|ST) = inscrutable (or 0.5), so that inequality doesn’t hold, so V isn’t evidence against theism.” That’s where this reflection is relevant. It says “wait…so P(any event|ST)=inscrutable, or 0.5? That’s crazy.”

Now, I don’t want this thread to be about the ePoE (etc.), but I just wanted to clarify for some of the posters what I meant by ‘weighty implications.’

 

[empther]

Oh Lord! Perplexity is back to his patented copyrighted :hey_bud::hey_bud::hey_bud::hey_bud::hey_bud::hey_bud:

There seems to be a lot of confusion about my OP. It’s simply a probabilistic interpretation of skeptical theism. That’s all.

I think skeptical theism philosophically interesting per se, but also as it relates to philosophy of religion in general.

Skeptical theism (ST) is one of the most popular objections to an argument from evil.

Supposing T=theism, A=atheism, V=“some prima facie evil event”, the ePoE goes like this: P(V|A) > P(V|T), therefore V is evidence against theism over atheism.

The skeptical theist steps in to say, “whoa whoa whoa… P(V|ST) = inscrutable (or 0.5), so that inequality doesn’t hold, so V isn’t evidence against theism.” That’s where this reflection is relevant. It says “wait…so P(any event|ST)=inscrutable, or 0.5? That’s crazy.”

Now, I don’t want this thread to be about the ePoE (etc.), but I just wanted to clarify for some of the posters what I meant by 'weighty implications

 

[Perplexity]

So you presented an absurd scenario to reject something outright? I think a better option would have been to ask someone for a scenario to try showing that ST is false.

Well, I’ve simply interpreted ST probabilistically. As we can see, all sorts of absurdities fall out from this, so I wanted to use the most absurd ones I could find (I’ve got a big pool to draw from

I do not see any reason to suspect that someone did not die because God exists. You are asserting that if God exists, then we cannot truly know anything because we are not privy to God’s reasons. I, and likely just about every other logical being on this planet, disagree. We do not need to know the reason something happened to know that something did happen.

I’ve never suggested that you have no reason to suspect someone didn’t die because God exists. I’m also not saying we need to know the reasons something happened to know that something did happen. These (and other) comments suggest to me you’re unfamiliar with what conditional probabilities are, and how we work with them.

“The conditional probability of A given that B, where A and B are statements, is the probability that A will occur in light of the fact that B has occurred.” - Cook, Roy T. A Dictionary of Philosophical Logic. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2009. p. 58

With conditional probabilities we’re trying to figure out whether B implies A, and we do this by assuming that B is true (whether we know or believe it is or not), and seeing if whether this supposition leads us to expect A.

Like I said in my previous reply to you, we remove A from our background knowledge when we do this. So, even if A is something that has obviously occurred (like Washington’s death), when it’s removed from our background knowledge we’re pretending it didn’t occur and seeing if B implies that A would occur.

You are attempting to shift the burden of proof to us for your ST thesis, when you are the one who needs to prove that we cannot know an event occurred when God is present in logic.

This clearly has not been my claim. I’ll formalize this to clarify:

1. If skeptical theism is true, we can’t be sure that God has no morally overriding reason(s) to prevent some event E. (because we’re not privy to any of God’s moral justifications)
2. If we can’t be sure that God has no morally overriding reason(s) to prevent some event E, then we can’t be sure that God wouldn’t prevent E.
3. If we can’t be sure that God wouldn’t prevent E, then we can’t be sure that E would occur. (because on theism, no event occurs unless God permits it)
4. Therefore, if skeptical theism is true, we can’t be sure that E would occur.

You are just making up numbers here. There is no logical reason to start with any number for any of these probabilities for the simple fact that there is no way to test the probabilities. One generally applies Bayesian statistics to items that can be tested (accuracy of drug tests, accuracy of physical data, etc). You are trying to apply Bayesian statistics to moral philosophy, something that is impossible because you cannot test these probabilities.

I’d recommend reading Colin’s Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach. I’m not using Bayesianism in any peculiar way, this is how philosophers and scientists use it.

The numbers are numerical representations of our degrees of confidence. 1.0 = our highest, 0.5 = indifference, 0.0 = the least.

You defined a skeptical theist as someone who believes that God exists, but does not believe that he can know God’s reasons. That seems very impersonal to me, as the ST seems to agree with the popular Deism of the 1700’s, more commonly referred to as the Watch-Maker God: He created the universe and the just let it run.

I’ve clarified what I mean by theism and it certainly isn’t Deism. Look, I’m not saying anything interesting here, this is common knowledge in philosophy of religion. It seems odd to me that it’s this aspect of what I said that you question.