Debating a theist: What am I doing wrong?

[roger]

Univsersal constants that are not universal or change over short time scales would be the logical candidates.

You think those would suffice as evidence for no creator, by his arguments/definitions?

 

[FireGarden]

Claim -- "God is a work of fiction"

Evidence -- The ideas about God have spread like many other man-made fictions. ie: by human contact.

As an example of the spread of non-fictional knowledge:
The Maya measured Venus's synodic period (after which it has returned to the same position) as 584 days. The modern measure is 583.92 days

The cause for agreement, by cultures which did not copy each other, is the existence of a non-fiction -- the planet Venus.

Compare the rolodex of Gods from different cultures. All that disagreement is not down to blind men describing elephants, it's down to blind men making things up. Otherwise the disagreement would be cleared up by reference to the elephant: "No, no. It's a rope! Come here and see." After which the guy who reckons its a wall works his way round to the first and (after some misadventures you don't need to know) will discover that the elephant does indeed have "rope like qualities".


Edit: for clarity (well a bit of clarity, anyway)

 

[blutoski]

I haven't read tDvC, but what of Evangelista? Does it get mentioned in the novel?

I'm going to rephrase the question: Evangelista was the gospel of Mary Magdelane. It was rejected as canon, on the grounds that women's testimony cannot be accepted (with the exception of the tomb discovery).

I would have thought it wound its way into TDvC.


edited: "is cannot be" is not exactly comprehensible grammar.

 

[Jimbo07]

I don't strictly hold with Popper. Popper argues that the sun rising tomorrow is an inductive argument (which is still rational I take exception with you there, but just not guaranteed). I argue (but not here, it'd take a book) that the sun rising is a deductive conclusion, so long as we rule out solipistic/brain in a vat/the Matrix type assumptions. I'll gladly stipulate that those assumptions are possible, but if any are true we can devise no test to prove it, so I'm warranted to ignore them until we come up with a test.

And yes, I recognize I am asserting, not proving the above. Can't put 20 years of thought in one post, you see. Or I'm lazy. Something like that.

What? You can't just plop a hideously long, barely literate, rambling post down and claim that it represents 20 years work and not expect to get ridiculed?

I'm not really sure whether the sun rising tomorrow is inductive or deductive. Anybody? Even if it's deductive, there's no guarantee that the sun will rise tomorrow. You can't discount God, brain in a vat, etc. All of these things may be possible. It's just that, given what we know, they're highly unlikely.

Anyway, I'm still not sure whether we're talking about theism or deism. Also, if he's defining God so broadly as to be OOOC, you can't win.

 

[dahduh]

It's possible that all four were composed less than 60 years after the last events related by them, and highly unlikely that all were not already in existence 100 years after such events.

Pardon, I should have been more explicit or inserted a judicious 'possibly'. The significant point is that the events were only documented a lifetime after they occurred.

 

[rocketdodger]

I'm getting nowhere, can I get some pointers? I suck at debate.

I just took a course in religious philosophy so I kinda know what I am talking about.

You can't win a debate about the existence of "something" out there beyond our understanding that may or may not be a "god." It is actually a fascinating area and I encourage you to explore it yourself by reading up on it -- metaphysics and such.

You CAN win a debate about a theistic god, however, because all of the attributes they give a theistic god are either logical contradictions or pure speculation without a shred of evidence.

I gotta go now but I will come back and get into the discussion more, hopefully showing you some usefull things.

 

[Interesting Ian]

On The Miniatures Page, in a thread on The DuuuuhVinci code, I made a crack about how entertaining it was to watch Christians get bent out of shape over a work of bad iction when they believe in their own, equally banal fiction (i.e. God). Of course, I'm now locked in a tooth and nail battle with a theist over the existance of God.

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=76067

I'm getting nowhere, can I get some pointers? I suck at debate.

WOW! It really makes a pleasant change to read someone (i.e your opponent Mulopwepaul) who actually understands!

I honestly believe that you will be unable to get any help. They are all naive atheists on here. Every last one of them.

 

[Interesting Ian]

But if you want to nitpick . .

He says:

Either the physical laws of the universe are grounded in an underlying metaphysical reason (which by definition cannot be fully accessible to human reason) or one has no concrete reason to believe that the sun will in fact rise in the East tomorrow.

I fail to see why it is not accessible to human reason by definition. Of course it seems likely that, due to our limitations in our intellect, the metaphysical reason will forevermore be beyond human ability to comprehend, but that's another thing.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Okay, now he has put his foot in it. Ask him to justify this statement:

Mulopwepaul
Either the physical laws of the universe are grounded in an underlying metaphysical reason (which by definition cannot be fully accessible to human reason) or one has no concrete reason to believe that the sun will in fact rise in the East tomorrow.

Roger
A simple "Evidence" or "why" will suffice. Or, more civily "I don't understand why you say this. Could you clarify your reasoning on this point for me?"
Make sure he is the one making the claims, not you. Just keep coming back with questions, not your own assertions.

What reason do we have that the Sun will rise tomorrow? By the fact that there are physical laws I guess you would say. But that's an empty explanation since physical laws simply describe the uniformities we find in nature. So why is reality uniform rather than there just being chaos? And even if reality has been uniform up to this point, with what justification do we have for supposing it will continue to do so?

Either there is a reason why there are physical laws (i.e that reality operates uniformly), or there isn't. If there isn't then we have no concrete reason for believing the Sun will rise tomorrow (or anything else). If there is a reason, then since it cannot be a scientific reason, it is a metaphysical one.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Mulopwepaul
Either the physical laws of the universe are grounded in an underlying metaphysical reason (which by definition cannot be fully accessible to human reason) or one has no concrete reason to believe that the sun will in fact rise in the East tomorrow.

SuperCoolGuy
Or maybe physical laws of the universe are grounded in underlying natural reasons we have yet determined. They would certainly look metaphysical without adequate understanding.

We cannot have a scientific explanation for why physical laws are as they are since science operates under the assumption that reality is uniform. So you would then be saying maybe physical laws can be explained by physical laws. This is of course circular.

 

[Interesting Ian]

The only thing we've learned in history, is that God actually does less than previous generations thought.

God does less? Perhaps absolutely all processes in the Universe (apart from those initiated by the free actions of finite sentient beings) are a manifestation of God's will.

 

[Interesting Ian]

What? You can't just plop a hideously long, barely literate, rambling post down and claim that it represents 20 years work and not expect to get ridiculed?

I'm not really sure whether the sun rising tomorrow is inductive or deductive. Anybody?

It's inductive.

 

[Z]

What reason do we have that the Sun will rise tomorrow? By the fact that there are physical laws I guess you would say. But that's an empty explanation since physical laws simply describe the uniformities we find in nature. So why is reality uniform rather than there just being chaos? And even if reality has been uniform up to this point, with what justification do we have for supposing it will continue to do so?

Either there is a reason why there are physical laws (i.e that reality operates uniformly), or there isn't. If there isn't then we have no concrete reason for believing the Sun will rise tomorrow (or anything else). If there is a reason, then since it cannot be a scientific reason, it is a metaphysical one.

This is actually a good point, IMO... if we do end up describing a 'why' for our universal physical uniformity, we'll be doing so from a transcendent level - that is, in order to completely describe the system, we'll have to encompass it in a greater, undescribed system.

Sorry, not sure of the exact language to use - I recall it vaguely from some math classes (set theory or something), but don't remember the terms they used.

 

[Jimbo07]

It's inductive.

This is what I would have said, so I'm interested to see the deductive argument for the rising of the sun.

Anyone else?

 

[roger]

Well, what is the definition of deductive reasoning? There are several, natch, but I will use a common definition.

Basically, a deductive reasoning is inference in which the conclusion is of the same generality as the premises, whereas inductive reasoning goes from the particular to the universal, and thus the conclusion is less likely than the premises.

Now, given the premises of 20th century physics, we can deduce the orbit of the sun. A sampling of these premises are: the universal constants are locally constant, Newtonian orbital mechanics is grossly correct (I simplify, we need to include relativity in general, but that hardly matters to figure out where the sun will be tomorrow morning), etc. There are more I haven't listed. But, from these premises we can deduce the position of the sun in the anon.

This is rather different from the Popper argument, as I understand it, which I simplify as "well, we saw the sun rise yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that; so, we can conclude inductively that it will rise tomorrow."

That's a horrific, and unfair simplication of Popper, but what can you do in 1 post? I anticipate that the rebuttal will be it's not so much the rising of the sun that we observe and draw inductive conclusions from, but the laws themselves - orbital mechanics and the such. And that's fair, but it's useful to sketch things out quickly to lay the groundwork, IMO.

I argue that we start with some premises - that it's a material world (we aren't living in the Matrix), that the laws of nature (theories, whatever the heck you want to call them, let's not quibble about dictionary terms) are consistant, and that our human makeup is also material, allowing us access to the 'external' material world, and the rest follows deductively.

I'm expecting an outcry at this point. It's deserved. My reference to "20 years of thought" in this matter was obviously a tongue in cheek joke. I have been thinking about it that long, but not rigorously.

So what follows falls squarly in the 'speculation' category. But let me share my thinking/speculating.

Switch to math for me for a moment. Assume an infinite 2D plane, and I will start giving you data. For each data point, you are to predict the position of a point. (also assume the actual problem is more formally defined; as stated you couldn't actually make the predictions I say you can make. Again, only so much you can do in one post)

data point 1: the position of the point is 290 units from the origin +- 3 units, with 90% accuracy.

prediction: A donut, smeared on the edges, where the density at each point corresponds to the probability of the point lying there.

data point 2: the position of the point is 180 units from (100, 35), +- 20 units, with a 70% accuracy.

prediction: draw a second donut corresponding to the 2nd data point, and take the intersection with the first.

etc.

With enough data points, we can be very precise about the position of the point, and even give error bars for our estimates. We can introduce further complications: the "signal" for each data point can be noisy, there can be known and unknown failure modes, but in each case we can introduce math to handle that case. For example, if 4 out of 5 of the data points jibe, and one doesn't, well, we know probably there was a failure somewhere in the 5th.

This, of course, is how GPS works in the real world. Every time you get in a plane you trust your life to this math modelling. You basically triangulate on the data points, and account for possible data errors and equipment failures. Tracking things in the time domain allows you to figure out where the errors are: if sat 3 gives consistantly wrong data it's an equipment problem, whereas if it only gave wrong data once it was probably transmission related.

And this is the crux of my argument/speculation. We 'triangulate' (metaphorically) onto what is really happening when we observe by making observations by different means. We don't just observe and than make an inductive decision, usually (sometimes we do, and the result is provisional). Rather, we make observations, create a tenative hypothesis, test that with an entirely different set of observations, etc. We 'triangulate'.

So here comes my bald faced hand waving assertion. This error elimination allows us to achieve certainty in our decisions, within the limit of our premises. Yes, of course, if we are a brain in a vat, or some experimenter's computer program, they could change a parameter and all of our science would be invalidated. But it is our premise that this is not true. Thus, some of our knowledge of the world is entirely deductive, and as certain to be true as are the premises certain to be true. Remember, deduction does not require that the premises must be true, only that the conclusions be guaranteed to be true if the premises are true.

Okay, I proved nothing in that paragraph, and I don't have a solid proof in my head, I know it. Some issues I see: I blithely state we can make enough observations, from different 'angles' (metaphorically) to remove all possible errors from the observations, but I have hardly proved it. The question of whether to start from a reductive attitude or constructive attidude eludes me. By that I mean do we start by proving QM, and moving on from there, or at the macro scale (e.g. if I drop this iron ball in a vacuum it will fall at g acceleration). Macro seems like the correct starting point, but then you have quite a few (putting it mildly) assumptions, or premises to make. Even if I deductively prove the behavior of that iron ball, a critic will point out that it is build on a mountain on inductive premises.

I could go on, but you get the idea. It's my pet theory, most of my pet theories have been proven to be wrong in the past, why would this one be any different? Yet, I was bolstered several years ago when I heard an interview on NPR where a prominant scientist (I forget his name) pronounced Popper's ideas as nonsense, as we clearly do acquire definitive knowledge. Perhaps that is the correct tact . This computer I am typing on depends on the correctness of vast swarths of knowledge; any single one of those things being wrong would keep the computer from operating. At some point one has to become tired of saying "but we could be an elaborate experiment in a vat somewhere" and recognize we are truly generating sure knowledge about this world. Given that, challenge the Popperians: I don't know where your logical error lies, but there clearly is one, since your conclusions are in variance with emperical results. Yes, still a bit hand-wavy, but nontheless I find it satisfying.

So, that's what I think is likely to be true. I don't expect you to, and I'm not particularly interested in a typical 20 page JREF debate on the topic, though if someone gave me something to think about in relation to this it sure would be appreciated.

See, told you you didn't want me to address this.


ETA: Dang, about 2 sentence in there were taken nearly verbatim from wikipedia, and I forgot to cite it. Basically I reworded their definition of deductive reasoning. Sorry, that was intellectually sloppy.

 

[bpesta22]

No big deal, but I thought it was Hume who first figured out we can't ever get at cause and effect / induction can not be trully justified (no matter how many times the future is like the past, it'd be circular to claim tomorrow's future will be like the past).

Popper's solution was to use deduction -- if we can't prove that x is true with certainty (Hume), we can instead prove that x is not true via modus tollens (if my theory is true x should happen. X don't happen, so my theory is not true).

Also, I thought the "general to the specific" distinction for induction versus deduction was wrong.

An argument's deductive if the truth of it's premises guarantee the truth of it's conclusion. That's it.

There are deductively valid arguments that go from the specific to the general, for example:

There is some x that is y, therefore

Not all x are not y.

Inductive just means the truth of the premises make the conclusion probably-- versus certainly-- true.

Am I mistaken, or is this a more accurate distinction?

 

[RandFan]

On The Miniatures Page, in a thread on The DuuuuhVinci code, I made a crack about how entertaining it was to watch Christians get bent out of shape over a work of bad iction when they believe in their own, equally banal fiction (i.e. God). Of course, I'm now locked in a tooth and nail battle with a theist over the existance of God.

Thank you, I have wondered the same. Where does this sudden interest in logic and critical thinking come from?

 

[rocketdodger]

WOW! It really makes a pleasant change to read someone (i.e your opponent Mulopwepaul) who actually understands!

I agree. In fact, this mulopwepaul guy seems as sharp as anyone I have seen in a forum -- Mark, you have no chance given your current understanding of metaphysics. This guy will demolish you, hehe.

I honestly believe that you will be unable to get any help. They are all naive atheists on here. Every last one of them.

This is not true at all Ian. I am not a naive atheist, I am probably a less educated (but learning) version of yourself. And I know hammegk (or whatever his name is) and a few others are pretty smart as far as metaphysics goes. That is to say, they seem to be able to do more than simply regurgitate ideas from the books they read.

 

[rocketdodger]

Thank you, I have wondered the same. Where does this sudden interest in logic and critical thinking come from?

Are you really asking that question? As a fan of Rand you should know . . .

 

[RandFan]

Are you really asking that question? As a fan of Rand you should know . . .

No, it was rhetorical.

And, to be intellectually honest, I have defended rationality and logic on the part of theists ever since I came to this forum. St. Thomas, Emanuel Kant, George Boole and Pascal have been but a few of my examples.

I guess my real problem is the skepticism. As if the Bible could only lead to incontrovertible truths. So I guess it is the skepticism I should have complained about but then I knew that answer also.