For a second time, I refer you to my post, #62 in this very thread, which addresses precisely this issue at great length. A link is provided, also, to the complete source.
First of all, I am not being sarcastic. I am being very serious. Secondly explain to me why this post of yours demonstrates that what **I have said **is an exaggeration. What is it exactly that I have said that gives you rational cause to accuse me of exaggerating.
“Try to avoid creating straw-men when replying to this post. I know its challenging, but its certainly possible.”
Pot, meet kettle.Generally speaking, I don’t get why folks’ reliance on faith is so hard to understand. Faith is a lot easier and simpler than having to construct logical argument over every detail of my life before I engage in that life and obtain any actionable truths from it. So the “why” question is something that I frankly don’t understand. I’m quite blessed that St. Paul and St. Peter and all those first Christians did all the hard thinking for me. I think it’s quite reasonable for Christians to follow the teachings of the first Christians. Jesus enters the world. People witness miracles. Christians spread that word and the implications about God. This is passed from generation to generation. Because I didn’t get to meet Jesus in person and didn’t get an invite to his Last Supper, it requires all sorts of faith to follow Him. This doesn’t sound irrational to me. Shoot. Even if I were there and witnessed the miracles, it would still require a great deal of faith to come to the truth about His divinity. To your questions!
As already stated, there were defendants who tried quite hard to get their cases heard in an Inquisition Court, instead of a secular court. This, along with the other facts presented in the posting (and on the page linked to) you have been referred to repeatedly, suggests that your characterization of the Inquisition is exaggerated; a tendentious interpretation of history.
A! A! “Pistis” stretches to cover all grades of faith!What is the crucial assumption in the example you give? It is that the examination of the room is adequate to the end of ensuring that the dog cannot escape as you close the door. Yet Penn and Teller have repeatedly done the cup and ball (walnut shells and pea) game with clear glasses and people still get it wrong with about 100% consistency. They are even doing a study now at a university with the central idea of the gullibility of human perception in stage magic. You see, about the only two things a human can be certain of is that they can say in truth “I am,” and that they are wrong. By “wrong” I mean that what might work for one person situationally might get another killed in their circumstances, eg protective clothing in the desert vs the arctic. Both have a “right” for the situation in terms of clothes which is not interchangeable.I recall an explanation of the two forms of thinking: empirical and metaphysical. Put a dog into a room with only one door: examine the room thoroughly to assure yourself there are no windows or trapdoors or trick exits. Close the door then ask: “is there a dog in that room?” The empiricist will say that since he cannot confirm the dog’s presence by sight, touch AND smell there is no dog in the room despite the barking… The metaphycicist will cheerfully agree - “must be!” ERGO, empiricists cannot accept God, Jesus, Religion et al. The wonder of God opens to metaphysicists - only? Throw reason out of the window and believe: faith can (and does) move mountains.
PS I am not a linguist but, according to my lexicon, the greek word for ‘believe’ (pisteuo) can stretch from simply “giving credit or credence to” all the way up to “full confidence in”. The word for ‘faith’ (pistis) is similarly elastic, from “yeah yeah OK” to a total reliance upon." So you doubters, all you need is faith the size of a grain of mustard seed and you’re home and dry!
PPS Charismatics have been criticised in that with their personal relationships with Jesus and the Father they KNOW! And therefore have no need for faith anymore!
The example of Penn and Teller, and stage magic in general, is misleading and doesn’t really apply. It depends on the manipulation of immediate perception and not reasoned thought.What is the crucial assumption in the example you give? It is that the examination of the room is adequate to the end of ensuring that the dog cannot escape as you close the door. Yet Penn and Teller have repeatedly done the cup and ball (walnut shells and pea) game with c
lear glasses and people still get it wrong with about 100% consistency. They are even doing a study now at a university with the central idea of the gullibility of human perception in stage magic. You see, about the only two things a human can be certain of is that they can say in truth “I am,” and that they are wrong. By “wrong” I mean that what might work for one person situationally might get another killed in their circumstances, eg protective clothing in the desert vs the arctic. Both have a “right” for the situation in terms of clothes which is not interchangeable.
As for the dog thing, it is like the Heisenberg’s cat. It may or may not be there. Even if you hear it barking, all you can say in truth is that you hear a dog barking and the sound appears to be coming from the room. Past that, even if it is “reasonable,” fundamentally, to say the same dog is in the room as you left it, is a speculation and not warranted. It’s like the monkey they put in a box that had four ways out and no more. The idea was to test the intelligence of the monkey by which way it discovered to get out. It found a fifth way. We forget, just because we have a mind, that that mind has an phenomenally narrow range of interaction with Universe even aided by instruments. And anybody will assure you that for all practical purposes their paradigm of reality is 1/1 accurate. I guess that is why there is such agreement world wide as to what is, and how things ought to work.
Further, you only have two categories: belief and non belief. There is a third, and as far as the concept of God is concerned it puts both atheism and religion in the same boat. And that is based on the study of the only two things mentioned above about what one can be certain about. It actually puts the ball of considerations relative to God in a court where it can be played usefully beyond religious affirmation or intellectual denial.
So, again, while faith is necessary and useful in a relative way as a part of engaging navigation of the world, teleologically at its extreme it resolves into having to deal with the two factors I mentioned. The first is a door, and the second a tool, maybe a doorknob. Both lead away either from faith or from atheism.
Empiricists rely on data fed via the five senses, as interpreted by the brain. Then toss out the other facilities provided by the brain. Therefore, if a dedicated empiricist cannot see, touch, hear, smell (taste?) God, He cannot exist. The metaphysicist will accept the (name removed by moderator)ut from the five senses but will use the absence of sensory information to switch on his reasoning facility. “I THINK therefore I am.” God CAN and DOES exist in higher, metaphysical thinking. Unless one starts with the premiss “there is no God”, then it is quite possible to come up with an alternative, hopeless, Atheistic answer. I agree that early apologists, like Anslem, had to start with “there IS a God” and prove it. But modern metaphysical thinking starts blind and examines the evidence to reach a conclusion. Your monkey must have been a metaphysicist: he used his brain and hope and faith. And to those who claim the monkey to be his cousin, I say “YOU may be, mate, but God made me”. Here I have to leave ALL reasoning behind and rely on Faith: God says He made me from the mud of the earth and I’m chuffed with that. The alternative is horrid and hopeless. What is the Hope of the faithless Atheist? I suggest Pascal’s theorem: if you think there isn’t a God and there ISN’T, no problem. But if you think there isn’t a God and there IS: boy, you’re in trouble!What is the crucial assumption in the example you give?
As for the dog thing, it is like the Heisenberg’s cat. It may or may not be there. Even if you hear it barking, all you can say in truth is that you hear a dog barking and the sound appears to be coming from the room. Past that, even if it is “reasonable,” fundamentally, to say the same dog is in the room as you left it, is a speculation and not warranted. It’s like the monkey they put in a box that had four ways out and no more. The idea was to test the intelligence of the monkey by which way it discovered to get out. It found a fifth way. We forget, just because we have a mind, that that mind has an phenomenally narrow range of interaction with Universe even aided by instruments. And anybody will assure you that for all practical purposes their paradigm of reality is 1/1 accurate. I guess that is why there is such agreement world wide as to what is, and how things ought to work.
Thank you for elucidating.
Your post is both refreshing and entertaining!Usually the “god” that the empiricist rejects is the presentation of the Abrahamic described version of Deity. Insofar as this representation is completely anthropomorphic, an actual Deity aside, the empiricist is correct in this regard. And this is rightfully so for any description, as the map, usually inaccurate in the case of exoteric religions, especially ascending ones, is awry, and–as any map–is not the territory.
But of course you realize that the “cogito ergo sum” idea is bass ackwards. It is because one can feel “I am” that one can think. Awareness preceeds its contents, though to one who doesn’t examine the nature of their own awareness, it appears to be simultaneous. In a sense it is, but the awareness is the container, and thoughts the contents. This is experienceable.
Grammatically, you just said that if you start with atheism it is possible to come up with atheism, and then you made a judgement about it which most atheists vehemently disagree with based on their experience.
Blind? Maybe you can expand on this?
Bless me! You have attained “monkey mind!” How else could you legitimately make such assertions? Or, are you like so many on here, simply making assertions that make you feel right despite any useful cognitive line?
Of course you do. Your depth of examination of the magnificent and miraculous phenomenon that you are hasn’t even got your toe wet. What else can you do but practice Gaposis? (my word for god of the gaps)
Cool. We all have to do what we can till we know better. Don’t feel alone. When did God tell you all this anyway?
Well, if you buy the line inherent in your belief system that there are only the two alternatives, again a very low level form of logic, then of course you have to go with that. But clearly there are others, even non atheist alternatives. You just haven’t looked sincerely, and don’t want to, and neither do your admirers, so you are living a self fulfilling prophecy, yes?The alternative is horrid and hopeless. What is the Hope of the faithless Atheist? I suggest Pascal’s theorem: if you think there isn’t a God and there ISN’T, no problem. But if you think there isn’t a God and there IS: boy, you’re in trouble!
” for???It’s a combination of factors.
You make quantum mechanics sound almost pedestrian.
Heh. Well, to quote one of my favorite heroes of science, Richard Feynman: “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you don’t understand quantum mechanics.” I think “pedestrian” would be about as far as you could get as a description of the discipline and complexity and difficulty the subject presents. That said, though, the understanding that electrons and other particles (photons are problematic because ‘rest mass’ doesn’t and can’t apply to them, as they don’t ‘rest’ in the sense we use to gauge other particles) have mass is not in the least bit controversial.
Indeed. It’s a fascinating juxtaposition. The model and its various interpretations are mind-bending and seemingly surreal, but at the same time, the QED model is, hands down, the most precisely accurate theory man has ever devised. It’s accuracy pushes the limits of our best and most sophisticated instrumentation (aluminum ion clock experiments accurately projecting differences of 1 part in 10^16, for example).
Yeah, and “jumping” of course is a kind of casual, anthropmorphic term. They don’t go from A to B in way a line goes from point A to point B.
Answers obtain on different levels. On a practical/predictive level, we have a lot of knowledge to apply and test. On a deeper (meta-)physical level – why is the dynamic we call the Pauli Exclusion Principle or wavefunction symmetry/anti-symmetry the way it is? It’s conceivable we can and will discover more fundamental structures that not only explain Pauli exclusion principle, but require it, along with other dynamics we undertand as ‘well tested’ but cannot explain in more fundamental terms. But for now, this is the perimeter of our knowledge.
As you can imagine, this has been the subject of a lot of discussion lately. I’m just going to recommend a video here that stands out from many, many resources that have come up in these many discussions. In terms of keeping the science square, and making recent developments accessible and intelligible, I can’t recommend this video enough:
Several competing hypotheses, all plausible, but none compelling. The answer to this is likely the key to harmonizing QED with GR.
Well, what works as a matter of prediction and empirical performance, works. Scientific epistemology works “from the inside out”, from local sensory experience to more general and universal knowledge, so it is by nature not capable of providing “ultimate” explanations. Not sure if that’s what you are cautioning against, but that’s a well known feature – not a bug! – of scientific epistemology.