Reflection on Skeptical Theism

[Perplexity]

Right, and because you were hiding it behind a lot of mush, it took me a while to dig through it all to find the root of it. It is clear to me now, I hope & think, that you are trying to determine if we remove P, can we still infer/imply/expect/whatever Q from the conditional if P, then Q.

All of this stemming from the simple fact that you want us to ignore background information. You are trying to get us to pretend that we do not know P and asking us if we can still expect Q. The answer is no, every time, under any belief system: skeptical theism, nonskeptical theism, atheism, agnosticism, polytheism, pantheism, etc.

I’m really not sure why you’re saying these things.

A conditional probability can be described as follows: if p were the case, would q be the case? ‘p’ might very well be the case, that’s irrelevant. We just want to know if its being true implies q.

For instance, if it were the case that Jones’ finger prints were on the murder weapon, would it be the case that he was the murderer? The jury would say, given that info alone, probably!

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

I’m really not sure why you’re saying these things.

A conditional probability can be described as follows: if p were the case, would q be the case? ‘p’ might very well be the case, that’s irrelevant. We just want to know if its being true implies q.

For instance, if it were the case that Jones’ finger prints were on the murder weapon, would it be the case that he was the murderer? The jury would say, given that info alone, probably!

You are not asking a single P about a single Q, you are asking about two P’s and inferring one Q: if P1 & P2, then Q? Your argument against ST involves removing knowledge, hence removing information for P. You are not just asking, “If ST is true, then can we know something about the future?” but “If ST is true and we remove all background knowledge of experience, then can can we know something about the future?”

P2 (lack of k) makes P1 (ST) irrelevant. If we have absolutely no information about anything in life, except what our faith professes, then we should not be able to answer any question about a future event simply because we have no information to make an assumption, and it does not matter what our faith professes.

 

[prodigalson2011]

You are not asking a single P about a single Q, you are asking about two P’s and inferring one Q: if P1 & P2, then Q? Your argument against ST involves removing knowledge, hence removing information for P. You are not just asking, “If ST is true, then can we know something about the future?” but “If ST is true and we remove all background knowledge of experience, then can can we know something about the future?”

P2 (lack of k) makes P1 (ST) irrelevant. If we have absolutely no information about anything in life, except what our faith professes, then we should not be able to answer any question about a future event simply because we have no information to make an assumption, and it does not matter what our faith professes.

Zing.

 

[Perplexity]

You are not asking a single P about a single Q, you are asking about two P’s and inferring one Q: if P1 & P2, then Q? Your argument against ST involves removing knowledge, hence removing information for P. You are not just asking, “If ST is true, then can we know something about the future?” but “If ST is true and we remove all background knowledge of experience, then can can we know something about the future?”

P2 (lack of k) makes P1 (ST) irrelevant. If we have absolutely no information about anything in life, except what our faith professes, then we should not be able to answer any question about a future event simply because we have no information to make an assumption, and it does not matter what our faith professes.

Yeah, I have no idea where you’re getting this from. The only thing we remove from our background knowledge is whatever E is.

So, take P(Skeptical Theism|George Washington’s death & k). The only thing removed from k is George Washington’s death.

The skeptical theist has all kinds of information in k when dealing with these probabilities. It’s just, it’s all useless to him…because skeptical theism is absurd.

 

[prodigalson2011]

Yeah, I have no idea where you’re getting this from. The only thing we remove from our background knowledge is whatever E is.

So, take P(Skeptical Theism|George Washington’s death & k). The only thing removed from k is George Washington’s death.

The skeptical theist has all kinds of information in k when dealing with these probabilities. It’s just, it’s all useless to him…because skeptical theism is absurd.

I’m going to jump back in. I believe your assertion that all other background information is useless is unfounded. The inability to deduce God’s “moral justifications” from an event in no way affects any other method of prediction. It simply removes the element of certainty from God’s motives therein. You can’t use skeptical theism to interpret physical phenomena any more than you could use the law of gravity to make a ruling in a court case.

To extrapolate, given the law of gravity, can we expect that John Doe will kill his wife?
It’s an absurd question.

Now, the law of gravity is not absurd, but the manner in which it is being employed is.
Likewise for your use of skeptical theism.

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

Yeah, I have no idea where you’re getting this from. The only thing we remove from our background knowledge is whatever E is.

So, take P(Skeptical Theism|George Washington’s death & k). The only thing removed from k is George Washington’s death.

The skeptical theist has all kinds of information in k when dealing with these probabilities. It’s just, it’s all useless to him…because skeptical theism is absurd.

I’m getting it from your series of posts because it seems, to me at least, that you are only presenting half the argument at a time and presenting (making up?) the other half as people inquire.

If you are removing only knowledge of the certainty of his death then your thesis falls apart for the simple reasons of:

• we know that everyone dies
• we know that the average human lifespan is about 75 years
• we know that Washington lived over 200 years ago
• we know that Washington’s body is in his tomb at Mount Vernon

QED: we can say with near absolute certainty that Washington did in fact die because everyone dies, 200 years is over twice the average lifespan of humans, and his body lies at Mount Vernon. No belief in a deity needed, because it is all experience.

When you couple this with a future event, well then you run into the previously stated issue that no one can predict the future, regardless of belief in a deity.

 

[Perplexity]

I’m getting it from your series of posts because it seems, to me at least, that you are only presenting half the argument at a time and presenting (making up?) the other half as people inquire.

I’ve layed the entire argument out, even formalizing it for you. I think you’re just unfamiliar with Bayesianism, as understood by the frequentist school (the position you were advocating) or the epistemic school. If you did, you’d have to know what conditional probabilities were.

If you are removing only knowledge of the certainty of his death then your thesis falls apart for the simple reasons of:

• we know that everyone dies
• we know that the average human lifespan is about 75 years
• we know that Washington lived over 200 years ago
• we know that Washington’s body is in his tomb at Mount Vernon

QED: we can say with near absolute certainty that Washington did in fact die because everyone dies, 200 years is over twice the average lifespan of humans, and his body lies at Mount Vernon. No belief in a deity needed, because it is all experience.

When you couple this with a future event, well then you run into the previously stated issue that no one can predict the future, regardless of belief in a deity.

Right, this is near exactly what I said earlier in this thread. Because of these and other pieces of information in k, P(Washington’s death|theism [or atheism] & k) is crazy high, if not certainty. When theist says this, he’s simultaneously saying God is unlikely to prevent Washington’s death which of course is reasonable. But skeptical theism doesn’t let him say what God is unlikely to do. So, none of this information works on skeptical theism.

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

Right, this is near exactly what I said earlier in this thread. Because of these and other pieces of information in k, P(Washington’s death|theism [or atheism] & k) is crazy high, if not certainty.

With you so far

When theist says this, he’s simultaneously saying God is unlikely to prevent Washington’s death which of course is reasonable.

I disagree. A theist believes that Washington’s death is a certainty because a theist allows for knowledge of experience, not because he is denying God’s intervention in the occurrence of the event. If I recall correctly (do not really feel like running through 10 pages of this thread), but I do believe that someone else had made this point as well, which, again, if I recall correctly, you brushed off.

But skeptical theism doesn’t let him say what God is unlikely to do. So, none of this information works on skeptical theism.

Completely lost as to why you would think this. Or even why this might even be so. Are you asserting that a ST is only lost in his own head and cannot trust his experiences of life?

 

[razredge]

Remember we’re dealing with conditional probabilities. We’re asking whether skeptical theism’s being true would imply certain events. So, the theist’s background knowledge may very well contain a reservoir of information about what God has already done. But, skeptical theism renders that information useless. It doesn’t allow the theist to justifiably use induction. The skeptical theist cannot be sure God would have overriding reasons to do X, or overriding reasons to not do X, for any given X. If he can, then he’s not a skeptical theist.

Why not? You’re can’t just assert this as fact. Again there is a difference between saying God has reasons for allowing some event and saying God allows some event.

Just like a kid might say ‘my Dad won’t let me watch that movie due to X,Y,Z reasons’ and can also simply say ‘my Dad won’t let me watch that movie’ without specifying why.

Your argument attempts to conflate the two so that unless we know God’s reasons for allowing an event we don’t know whether the event will occur. But that doesn’t follow from anything you’ve said.

 

[TheTrueCentrist]

I take Skeptical Theism [from now on, ST] to be 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.

Now, on theism, God not only permits or prohibits every single event; but, has sufficient moral justifications for doing so. ST tells us that we shouldn’t think we’re privy to these moral justifications for some reason or other.

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.

Now, from this, using Bayes’ theorem, we could prove that ST’s probability is near 0.0 (i.e., irrational); but, I don’t want to kill dialogue with technicalities.

So, let’s just suppose that the absurdities described above are enough to make you dubious of ST. So what? What does this imply? 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.

Thoughts?

You have assumed God is not amoral.

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

Why not? You’re can’t just assert this as fact. Again there is a difference between saying God has reasons for allowing some event and saying God allows some event.

Just like a kid might say ‘my Dad won’t let me watch that movie due to X,Y,Z reasons’ and can also simply say ‘my Dad won’t let me watch that movie’ without specifying why.

Your argument attempts to conflate the two so that unless we know God’s reasons for allowing an event we don’t know whether the event will occur. But that doesn’t follow from anything you’ve said.

Exactly!

 

[Perplexity]

Why not? You’re can’t just assert this as fact. Again there is a difference between saying God has reasons for allowing some event and saying God allows some event.

Just like a kid might say ‘my Dad won’t let me watch that movie due to X,Y,Z reasons’ and can also simply say ‘my Dad won’t let me watch that movie’ without specifying why.

Your argument attempts to conflate the two so that unless we know God’s reasons for allowing an event we don’t know whether the event will occur. But that doesn’t follow from anything you’ve said.

I’m sorry but this is just completely baffling to me. The theist cannot know that an event will occur unless he’s sure God would not prevent it and he can only be sure that God would not prevent it if he was privy to God’s moral reasoning. Since this is exactly what skeptical theism says he’s not privy to, he can’t be sure that God wouldn’t prevent the event, and therefore cannot know that an event will occur. i.e., P(X|ST&K)=‘I have no idea’.

 

[Perplexity]

As I claimed in my opening post on theism (not Christain theism) nothing happens without Gods permission. That is Gods permitting of E to occur is a necessary condition for E’s occurrence. People were quick to point out that Gods permission of E isn’t a sufficient condition though. I grant this, of course, especially when dealing with whether choices would obtain. But what you guys are trying to say is that we can be sure that E would occur even though we have no idea if E’s necessary conditions are fulfilled. That’s what I can’t make sense of. I’ve already explained how skeptical theism won’t allow us to know whether God would permit X (i.e., know whether a necessary condition for E obtains).

 

[prodigalson2011]

I’m sorry but this is just completely baffling to me. The theist cannot know that an event will occur unless he’s sure God would not prevent it and he can only be sure that God would not prevent it if he was privy to God’s moral reasoning. Since this is exactly what skeptical theism says he’s not privy to, he can’t be sure that God wouldn’t prevent the event, and therefore cannot know that an event will occur. i.e., P(X|ST&K)=‘I have no idea’.

Well, we clearly have a disagreement with you on the implications of skeptical theism.

I think I can speak for the others on the other side of this argument when I say that, in my view, skeptical theism permits anything to happen, i.e. no event is necessarily “prevented” by God, but we cannot understand why God allows any and all actions to be taken. Mere observation, on any brand of theism, will allow us to ascertain that, in reality, God permits just about any event imaginable to occur, e.g. Hiroshima, child abuse, torture, serial killings, etc., etc. I would say human history as a whole gives us enough background information to assume, even on skeptical theism, that in most cases God DOES NOT necessarily prevent any action from being taken, though it could still be possible that he might in some particular instances.

Aha, you say, I’m walking right into your trap. But wait. The element of uncertainty I just introduced is not unique to skeptical theism, and in fact is virtually universal. Would you concur that, on any worldview, be it naturalistic, theistic or what have you, there will always be certain variables that can drastically change the outcome of any event? In the case of skeptical theism, this variable is whether or not God will intervene. On naturalism, it might be a matter of what time someone leaves the house, or what they said to someone three years ago.

To get back to the point though, the information provided by experience supplies more than sufficient auxiliary information to decide whether or not something is likely to happen, and skeptical theism does not render it useless, given the extreme rarity with which God might intervene, any more than a change in the wind renders meteorology useless.

Ultimately, quite to the contrary of determining whether God has reasons to intervene or not, ST’s essential function, it seems to me, is in asserting that, while all manner of things can and will happen, presumably with no intervention, we can never, in this life, understand why this is the way God operates.

That’s the view from my side of the fence, anyway.

 

[razredge]

I’m sorry but this is just completely baffling to me. The theist cannot know that an event will occur unless he’s sure God would not prevent it and he can only be sure that God would not prevent it if he was privy to God’s moral reasoning. Since this is exactly what skeptical theism says he’s not privy to, he can’t be sure that God wouldn’t prevent the event, and therefore cannot know that an event will occur. i.e., P(X|ST&K)=‘I have no idea’.

I disagree, I find your inability to see the difference equally baffling.

In the worst case the ST would not be sure that a given event will occur since he doesn’t know God’s reasons for allowing/preventing it.

But he may well believe that such an even occuring is likely given past experience.

It may be that for such a class of events he has observed that God is not likely to intervene and so he can assume the same for future events in that class.

Perhaps God has the same reason for permitting each event in this class and so will continue to act (or not act) in these cases as he has done in the past.

This seems perfectly plausible to me.

In any case I personally believe God is quite non-interventionist so would not intervene to prevent any event, so the argument, even if it was valid - wouldn’t apply to those of us with similar views.

 

[Perplexity]

Hm, I don’t feel like this is the kind of issue that can ultimately reduce to differing intuitions. I think, there’s gotta be a way that rational argumentation can allow us to decide one way or the other.

I wonder if we can acheive this by braking the issue into single propositions and asked whether we agree or disagree on them.

Where E = some event, and H = any given hypothesis or position, are we all in agreement that,

(1): We can only say what P(E|H&K) is if we have some idea of the necessary conditions for E’s occurrence, and some confidence that they’re fulfilled.

For example, suppose E = Jones’ finger-prints on the murder weapon, and H = the position that Jones is the murderer.

Can we say that if Jones is the murderer, it’s likely that Jones’ finger-prints would be on the murder weapon without having a clue that Jones even has finger-prints?

 

[empther]

Perplexity becomes more irrational every day:

For example, suppose E = Jones’ finger-prints on the murder weapon, and H = the position that Jones is the murderer.

Can we say that if Jones is the murderer, it’s likely that Jones’ finger-prints would be on the murder weapon without having a clue that Jones even has finger-prints?

:extrahappy:

Since it has already been established that Jones’ finger-prints are on the murder weapon,
Jones has finger-prints.

This is what happens when somebody tries to promote nonsense.

 

[awolbob]

Perplexity becomes more irrational every day:

:extrahappy:

Since it has already been established that Jones’ finger-prints are on the murder weapon,
Jones has finger-prints.

This is what happens when somebody tries to promote nonsense.

You are right about all but one point ,Perplexity has been irrational from day one.
Round and round he go’s where he stops no one knows

 

[prodigalson2011]

Perplexity becomes more irrational every day:

:extrahappy:

Since it has already been established that Jones’ finger-prints are on the murder weapon,
Jones has finger-prints.

This is what happens when somebody tries to promote nonsense.

It has not been established.

His point is that just because Jones is the murderer, this doesn’t necessarily mean his finger prints are on the murder weapon, as he could have burned them off, been wearing gloves, etc. So A (Jones is the murderer) does not necessarily lead to B (fingerprints), unless we also know C (Jones has fingerprints).

 

[Perplexity]

You are right about all but one point ,Perplexity has been irrational from day one.
Round and round he go’s where he stops no one knows

this is crazy…