Can atheists be rational? (not a parody thread)

[cj.23]

From Wikipedia:

There goes your "never successfully explained".

The Shankland paper? Hell it hardly ended there in 1955 did it? In fact the actual cause is still disputed today, or at least was in the late 90's. Maybe it has been resolved now, but while Einstein accepted the Shankland explanation I think there is a much simpler one -- and mIller was not the only person to fail to replicate the experiment. Tht was why General Relativity remained controversial so long...

cj x

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

According to millions of people throughout history, across different cultures, yes, they have directly experienced the divine. I haven't, but then I have never experienced Peru either - or appearing on Top of the Pops, or many other things I know exist. The problem is that experience is just like most theories subject to the problem of underdetermination - it could be the evidence fits another hypothesis.

And you think this is the same kind of "observation" you guys are talking about wrt quarks? You're playing with an ambiguity in the term "observation" to try to make "God" sound like just another scientific hypothesis.

If that's the approach, then I hope you'll admit that as a scientific hypothesis the "God theory" has a horrible history of failure and deserves to be discarded. (I won't complain if you keep it as a matter of faith, but it's not a good scientific hypothesis.)

I reject your notion that anything that cannot be disproven (or determined "impossible") makes for a rational belief.

Did I ever assert that was the case? Because I certainly do not believe it.

There's this:

Well then. Is it rational to think the World was created Last Tuesday?

A simple "Yes" or "No" will do

Yes entirely. As I said it's completely unfalsifiable - I believe Bertrand Russell himself cited it as an example of a rational but unreasonable belief

Aren't you saying that anything that is unfalsifiable is a rational belief? In that thread your main point seems to be that if it's not possible to disprove the existence of God then believing it is rational.

I think we're using a different definition of "rational". For me, it's synonymous with "reasonable". I suspect a lot of these discussions would benefit from noting that we're using the terms in a different way.

 

[cj.23]

Hey Joe,

Sorry not up to much typing today, but just saw your reply...

And you think this is the same kind of "observation" you guys are talking about wrt quarks? You're playing with an ambiguity in the term "observation" to try to make "God" sound like just another scientific hypothesis.

Actually I'm outlining the observation/detection difference that is crucial to Non-Realist theories of Science. The Realists would agree with you there is no real distinction - see my objection above concerning glasses etc. However a look at the entry i linked on this debate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_realism
will show that I am not simply making this up to favour my point as you seem to suggest. The Stanford entry is much better, but as usual very densely written - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/
I don't think many people ever bother to look at the links I provide, MM and Hokulele honourable exceptions, and i can understand why - reading my posts is quite a time expended in itself, and life is short - but I do try to reference my points and provide interesting links when possible to show that I am not making stuff up.

If that's the approach, then I hope you'll admit that as a scientific hypothesis the "God theory" has a horrible history of failure and deserves to be discarded. (I won't complain if you keep it as a matter of faith, but it's not a good scientific hypothesis.)

Yes, because God is not and can not be a scientific hypothesis, for the very reason that methodological naturalism renders the question irrelevant and unaskable. (see most of early part of thread and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)#Methodological_and_Metaphysical_Naturalism )

Aren't you saying that anything that is unfalsifiable is a rational belief? In that thread your main point seems to be that if it's not possible to disprove the existence of God then believing it is rational.

No, of course not. Bertrand Russell's example is deliberately designed so that all the evidence can be accounted for, and absence of any evidence forms part of the theory, which is why it is rational (entirely logically coherent and internally consistent) and yet wholly unreasonable. However I can think of few other cases where this is true! Not many involve creating the whole universe to make it look like it's older..

I think we're using a different definition of "rational". For me, it's synonymous with "reasonable". I suspect a lot of these discussions would benefit from noting that we're using the terms in a different way.

Ah, for me it's as stated above - logically coherent and internally consistent, as in Rationalist (as opposed to Empirical) -- same use as in this link --
http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/religion/blrel_theism_irrational.htm

cj x

 

[Oliver]

a) It's an irrelevant critique to my given personal position as a theist, as I thought was obvious from the thread

and

b) Lmarck, Darwin, Buffon, Lysenko, Chambers, Kammerer all produced varying understandings and models of Evolution. None were wholly correct, and some were very wrong - but evolution remains objectively true. Logically the plethora of revealed religions tells us nothing about the validity of the God hypothesis.

Hope helps!
cj x

Ehm, what does evolution have to do with the fact that no one
knows for certain that there is a god or that ones pet-god is the
only true god?

Heck, even Aliens from outer Space could've "designed" all life on
this planet. Does that mean that Aliens are God's? Of course not.

 

[PixyMisa]

The Shankland paper? Hell it hardly ended there in 1955 did it? In fact the actual cause is still disputed today, or at least was in the late 90's. Maybe it has been resolved now, but while Einstein accepted the Shankland explanation I think there is a much simpler one -- and mIller was not the only person to fail to replicate the experiment. Tht was why General Relativity remained controversial so long...

Remember what I said about "it's what you know for sure that just ain't so"?

General Relativity is not controversial at all. It simply isn't, and hasn't been for several decades. It's been confirmed over and over. The Michelson-Morley experiment (which itself has been confirmed over and over) is just one tiny part of the evidence confirming it.

Like GPS, for example.

You seem, again, to be very selective with what you consider as evidence. You can't pick and choose, CJ. You can't take one experiment that claims a result (when that result is below statistical noise) and ignore the null results from everyone else.

I'd be interested to know what you think is the "much simpler" explanation. Simpler than experimental error? Really?

 

[PixyMisa]

a) It's an irrelevant critique to my given personal position as a theist, as I thought was obvious from the thread

I don't see it as irrelevant. You're an Anglican. Why?

b) Lmarck, Darwin, Buffon, Lysenko, Chambers, Kammerer all produced varying understandings and models of Evolution. None were wholly correct, and some were very wrong - but evolution remains objectively true.

Yes. We have a mountain of objective evidence that has allowed us to determine that Darwin was right and Lamarck was wrong.

Logically the plethora of revealed religions tells us nothing about the validity of the God hypothesis.

Okay, first up: It's not a hypothesis. It's not even internally consistent.

Second: You have no objective evidence.

Third: Your subjective evidence - which you have pointed out is second-hand at best - is subject to as many interpretations as there are sources, is readily explicable without invoking your God, and is indistinguishable from a thousand other beliefs in nonexistent things.

Again, you try to construct an equivalence between actual science and your post-hoc rationalisations. The equivalence is false.

 

[MattusMaximus]

We're not close to replicating the Big Bang, that is true, but you don't need to do any of that to test many aspects of string theory, such as the prediction that there are six or seven additional dimensions to spacetime. You can test that just by carefully measuring gravitational effects over short distances. This is finicky work, but can be conducted just fine at room temperature.

Interestingly, just this evening I listened to the latest Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast. Dr. Michio Kaku, one of the leading string theorists in the field, was interviewed on the Jan. 15th podcast, and he was discussing with the SGU Rogues these very topics.

Among other things, Dr. Kaku discussed a number of ways in which string theory can be tested, including implications for possibly replicating the big bang in a particle accelerator. In addition, he discusses possible ways to test out new pre-big bang physical theories.

CJ, as you recover from your bout with pneumonia, I suggest you give it a listen (the interview with Dr. Kaku starts about halfway through). Here's the URL...

http://theskepticsguide.org

Feel better, CJ.

Cheers - MM

 

[PixyMisa]

Ah, for me it's as stated above - logically coherent and internally consistent, as in Rationalist (as opposed to Empirical) -- same use as in this link --
http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/religion/blrel_theism_irrational.htm

Okay, yes, looks like we are using a different definition of "rational".

For a statement relating to the real world to be rational, internal consistency is necessary but not sufficient. It must also fit the evidence.

If you come to a hypothesis based on limited information, that hypothesis can be rational even if it's wrong. If you then select what evidence you accept based on that hypothesis, though, it's no longer rational.

Last Tuesdayism is irrational the same way. Not only is there no evidence that the Universe was created last Tuesday already 13 billion years old, but there can (by definition) be no such evidence. It is internally consistent; it is not a rational statement about the world.

If your God is to be purely imaginary, then internal consistency suffices. Of course, you fail even at that.

 

[PixyMisa]

Interestingly, just this evening I listened to the latest Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast. Dr. Michio Kaku, one of the leading string theorists in the field, was interviewed on the Jan. 15th podcast, and he was discussing with the SGU Rogues these very topics.

Among other things, Dr. Kaku discussed a number of ways in which string theory can be tested, including implications for possibly replicating the big bang in a particle accelerator. In addition, he discusses possible ways to test out new pre-big bang physical theories.

Yep. The Skeptic's Guide is always worth a listen, and this week's episode is particularly apropos.

 

[cj.23]

Remember what I said about "it's what you know for sure that just ain't so"?

General Relativity is not controversial at all. It simply isn't, and hasn't been for several decades. It's been confirmed over and over. The Michelson-Morley experiment (which itself has been confirmed over and over) is just one tiny part of the evidence confirming it.

Like GPS, for example.

You seem, again, to be very selective with what you consider as evidence. You can't pick and choose, CJ. You can't take one experiment that claims a result (when that result is below statistical noise) and ignore the null results from everyone else.

Er, you what? Did I suggest that General Relativity was controversial now?
I said, to quote "That was why General Relativity remained controversial so long..." but as I was referring to C Dayton Miller & his contemporaries I thought it was clear i was talking about the 1920's and 30's. I think GR had won almost everyone over by 1930 -- but as late as 1929 textbooks still referred to it as a controversial and highly theoretical. How is this wrong?

I'd be interested to know what you think is the "much simpler" explanation. Simpler than experimental error? Really?

No, I think it was experimenter error as well - I just don't think we need to invoke Shanklands someone what circuitous explanation of atmospheric interference, which hardly constitutes experimenter error, and misreading the data points. Have you read the 1955 paper?

cj x

 

[cj.23]

CJ, as you recover from your bout with pneumonia, I suggest you give it a listen (the interview with Dr. Kaku starts about halfway through). Here's the URL...

http://theskepticsguide.org

Feel better, CJ.

Cheers - MM

Cool, I enjoy Dr. Michio Kaku's books - Parallel Worlds is a great book, but I had a few minor reservations about some of the history, just little factual quibbles, but it's highly readable and positively exciting - a much better read than Dawkins, and i enjoy Dawkins. You might want to check out his website as well -- http://mkaku.org/

I'll have a listen later. Anything I'm supposed to be looking out for? I know full well we can theoretically confirm predictions that would support the hypotheses - but that si not the same thing as confirming the hypotheses, as I keep pointing out. Where is Athon when you need him?

cj x

 

[PixyMisa]

Er, you what? Did I suggest that General Relativity was controversial now?
I said, to quote "That was why General Relativity remained controversial so long..." but as I was referring to C Dayton Miller & his contemporaries I thought it was clear i was talking about the 1920's and 30's. I think GR had won almost everyone over by 1930 -- but as late as 1929 textbooks still referred to it as a controversial and highly theoretical. How is this wrong?

Okay. If by "remained controversial for so long" you mean "there were still some remaining doubts until 1930", that seems reasonable.

No, I think it was experimenter error as well - I just don't think we need to invoke Shanklands someone what circuitous explanation of atmospheric interference, which hardly constitutes experimenter error

It's an error in the design of the experiment.

and misreading the data points. Have you read the 1955 paper?

No, I haven't.

But I really want to know why you said Miller's results were "never successfully explained"..

 

[cj.23]

I don't see it as irrelevant. You're an Anglican. Why?

Because as i think I have said several times in this thread, tediously and at length, I do not think my Anglicanism or any other theistic system held by any human represents a perfect match to the ultimate reality, just as I don't think say a chemical equation perfectly equates the reality of the chemicals actually mixing.

Yes. We have a mountain of objective evidence that has allowed us to determine that Darwin was right and Lamarck was wrong.

Actually we have a mountain of objective evidence which shows us Lamarck was wrong and Darwin was wrong. Neither actually got the mechanics of inheritance correct did they? And this is my point - the fact that Lamack, Buffon, Chambers, Darwin, Russel Wallace, hell who ever's evolutionary model you choose to go for was wrong in no way invalidates the evoolutionary hypothesis, any more than problems in regious models invalidate the theistic one. I thought this was a pretty direct and explicit analogy, but I sometimes perhaps expect too much.

Okay, first up: It's not a hypothesis. It's not even internally consistent.

Yes it is a hypothesis. It may not be a scientific hypothesis in whatever weird ass form of scientific subculture you were educated in - but it's a a hypothesis. IN fact I would also like to point out that trying to constrain the use of theory is also a painful neologism, and while it may be useful in science and I rather like it, it is in fact not accepted by most working scientists who don't even understand the difference. JUst thought I'd clarify that!!!

Second: You have no objective evidence.

Ah but I do! And besides you did not challenge me ot produce objective evidence, but direct evidence - and people who have God spoke to them have direct evidence after all. Sorry PixyMisa!

Third: Your subjective evidence - which you have pointed out is second-hand at best - is subject to as many interpretations as there are sources, is readily explicable without invoking your God, and is indistinguishable from a thousand other beliefs in nonexistent things.

Except none of this is true. You have not actually so far asked that I discuss the phenomenology of mystical experience, and as you said you had put me on ignore I did not bother, but I sure as heck will if you are still reading, juts so you can understand your misunderstanding. It is always a pleasure to educate, though I do wish you'd pick up a good book on philosophy of science or even sociology of science, as that would dispel these tedious myths of scientism you seem to espouse... Might I recommend Susan Haack, Defending Science Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism, Prometheus Books, 2003. Or look Scientism up in a big encylopedia of science?

Again, you try to construct an equivalence between actual science and your post-hoc rationalisations. The equivalence is false.

No again, I point out you strip science from its philosophical cultural and historical roots and stress justification over history of discovery with a joy that would make a Logical Positivist blush, apparently blithely ignorant of everything that has happened in the world since before Kuhn first published. You appear intent on reducing all ways of knowing to experimental science, and resist all evidence that shows science is a far wider and broader discourse than that, with many different methodological approaches. You equate the observational/empirical with experimental, saying "it's just a form of it" - but never tell me how you have controlled variables in an observation? Yet you also seem to assume the rational investigative methods, of deduction and mathematics, extensively employed in physics and mathematics, are really just part of the experimental method? Hell, what do you make of psychology, history, literature, economics and drama? Are they not ways of knowing? Are they sciences???



Anyway, to bed. Chat tomorrow...
cj x

 

[PixyMisa]

I know full well we can theoretically confirm predictions that would support the hypotheses - but that si not the same thing as confirming the hypotheses, as I keep pointing out.

Yeah.

Why do you keep doing that?

We know. We have explicitly stated that scientific hypotheses cannot be proven. So who are you talking to?

 

[cj.23]

Okay. If by "remained controversial for so long" you mean "there were still some remaining doubts until 1930", that seems reasonable.

It's an error in the design of the experiment.

No, I haven't.

But I really want to know why you said Miller's results were "never successfully explained"..

Because Shankland's explanation makes no sense. It applied to a large number of replications which did not have the same problem (though there were other failed replications as we might expect in an experiment requiring such precision) and Miller worked with others, and still got the same results when they were party to his experiment. Now Shankland as I recall, and i have not read it for a long while suggests the data was distorted by atmospheric effects ,and because of how the data was then analysed by Miller he saw a negative where one could have seen a positive - it was the analysis that was flawed not the experiment. So I guess that like Blondlot, who saw his N Rays because he expected to, Miller's only real problem was he became fixarted on seeing the result, and somehow that led him ot constantly fail. I'll have a look in the morning at the paper - but I think the answer has to be in Miller's psychology, and a sort of reverse confirmation bias, not in the atmospherics. Thats sounds like a sop to the memory of a good scientist by Shankland to me...

Incidentally I'm going from memory but I think Martin Gardner dedicates a sizable part of a chapter of Fads & Fallacies in the Name of Science (updated 1980's edition anyway) to this affair? Have a look if oyu have a copy to hand...

cj x
cj x

 

[PixyMisa]

Because as i think I have said several times in this thread, tediously and at length, I do not think my Anglicanism or any other theistic system held by any human represents a perfect match to the ultimate reality, just as I don't think say a chemical equation perfectly equates the reality of the chemicals actually mixing.

So you think Anglicanism is wrong.

So why are you an anglican?

Actually we have a mountain of objective evidence which shows us Lamarck was wrong and Darwin was wrong.

No we don't.

Neither actually got the mechanics of inheritance correct did they?

Darwin didn't make any claim to the mechanics. He made a statement about the process. He was correct.

And this is my point - the fact that Lamack, Buffon, Chambers, Darwin, Russel Wallace, hell who ever's evolutionary model you choose to go for was wrong in no way invalidates the evoolutionary hypothesis, any more than problems in regious models invalidate the theistic one.

Except that evolution happens - it's a fact - and there is no evidence for any God of any kind.

All you have is interpretations of subjective experiences, and said interpretations vary wildly. So the problems with religious models do indeed invalidate much of your argument.

I thought this was a pretty direct and explicit analogy, but I sometimes perhaps expect too much.

The two are not comparable.

Yes it is a hypothesis.

It's not logically coherent. It's not internally consistent. It doesn't relate to the real world. It doesn't explain anything. It doesn't predict anything.

Yeah, apart from all that, it's just dandy.

It may not be a scientific hypothesis in whatever weird ass form of scientific subculture you were educated in

Ad hominem.

but it's a a hypothesis.

Nope.

IN fact I would also like to point out that trying to constrain the use of theory is also a painful neologism, and while it may be useful in science and I rather like it, it is in fact not accepted by most working scientists who don't even understand the difference.

Argumentum ad pulling stuff out of your butt.

JUst thought I'd clarify that!!!

Me too.

Ah but I do! And besides you did not challenge me ot produce objective evidence, but direct evidence - and people who have God spoke to them have direct evidence after all. Sorry PixyMisa!

Nope. Fail again.

First, you don't have direct evidence.

Second, no-one has direct evidence of God. They have direct evidence of an experience. They have interpreted that experience within their cultural upbringing. You have then selected some reports of some interpretations of some of these experiences, and proffer them as evidence for the existence of God.

They're not.

Except none of this is true. You have not actually so far asked that I discuss the phenomenology of mystical experience, and as you said you had put me on ignore I did not bother, but I sure as heck will if you are still reading, juts so you can understand your misunderstanding. It is always a pleasure to educate, though I do wish you'd pick up a good book on philosophy of science or even sociology of science, as that would dispel these tedious myths of scientism you seem to espouse...

What myths?

Name them.

Might I recommend Susan Haack, Defending Science Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism, Prometheus Books, 2003. Or look Scientism up in a big encylopedia of science?

Why?

No again, I point out you strip science from its philosophical cultural and historical roots and stress justification over history of discovery with a joy that would make a Logical Positivist blush, apparently blithely ignorant of everything that has happened in the world since before Kuhn first published.

Kuhn was wrong. He mistook mere sociology for essential insight.

Popper grasped what was important. Not the philosophical, cultural, or historical roots of science - they might be interesting, and worth studying, but they don't change what science is.

You appear intent on reducing all ways of knowing to experimental science, and resist all evidence that shows science is a far wider and broader discourse than that, with many different methodological approaches.

Evidence that you have so far been utterly unable to produce.

You equate the observational/empirical with experimental, saying "it's just a form of it" - but never tell me how you have controlled variables in an observation?

The variables in an observation are controlled. They are what they are. You can't repeat the same obsevation, so the variables cannot vary.

Yet you also seem to assume the rational investigative methods, of deduction and mathematics, extensively employed in physics and mathematics, are really just part of the experimental method?

Yep.

Deduction and mathematics, in and of themselves, tell us nothing about the world. You have to test your ideas against the facts.

Hell, what do you make of psychology, history, literature, economics and drama? Are they not ways of knowing? Are they sciences???

Psychology is science. Economics is science. History is science when it is any good. The study of literature and drama can be science, though literature and drama themselves are not.

 

[cj.23]

Psychology is science. Economics is science. History is science when it is any good. The study of literature and drama can be science, though literature and drama themselves are not.

OK, I don't have time to respond just yet, but I wish to apologize for imparting to you a belief you clearly do not have. I was misled by your posts in to believing you only believed that experimental science constituted science, and that you privileged the physical sciences over all others. Your extension of science to include the humanities and liberal arts and social sciences clarifies to me this is not your contention - you clearly believe there are non-experimental ways of knowing. SO I am slightly confused now as to what we are arguing about, but I'll doubtless remember when I get round to responding to the rest of your post. IF however I accused you of the fallacy of Scientism unfairly, as I now suspect, I retract completely and apologize though.

cj x

 

[shadron]

What I meant was that morphologists have not often predicted a structure that has subsequently been discovered in the fossil evidence to the best of my knowledge, but that in no way renders morphology a non-predictive science. It is, and a fascinating one.

I'd like to pursue this a bit. One of the debates that occupied anthropologists from Darwin up to relatively recently was the question of what change in man occurred that set him apart from the rest of apes? Was it the ability to use tools, manage fire, walk upright, language? What morphology, if you will, set man apart in the first instance? This could not be answered theoretically, as morphology, at least at this level, is not predictive; the answer could only come from fossils. Piltdown man answered the question one way: that the expanded brain came first. This satisfied Victorian scientists (as did the fact that Piltdown is in England; hoorah for nationalism), but as fossil remains started popping up in Africa, Piltdown became more and more a "one off" oddball, as it was obvious that these fossils show other characteristics coming before the expanded cranium, and of course, the problem was finally erased when the forgery was proven.

As it turns out, the fossil record shows that the first characteristic that separates man from ape is the ability to walk on two legs. Lucy the Australopithecine (literally "southern ape") had it, those before her, indistinguishable from ape ancesors, didn't.

But this shows the dilemma of trying to force predictions from morphology without actual fossil evidence. One cannot predict evolution's path from one fossil to another where many possible paths exist; that is, where more than one characteristic changes.

Other examples, or counter-examples? BTW, this debate was described historically in the History channel's ""Ape to Man" program.

 

[shadron]

dup; ignore.

 

[PixyMisa]

OK, I don't have time to respond just yet, but I wish to apologize for imparting to you a belief you clearly do not have. I was misled by your posts in to believing you only believed that experimental science constituted science, and that you privileged the physical sciences over all others. Your extension of science to include the humanities and liberal arts and social sciences clarifies to me this is not your contention - you clearly believe there are non-experimental ways of knowing.

What I'm really saying is that there's no essential difference between experiment and observation. Some things are easier to observe as they are in nature than to experiment with - for example, distant galaxies and dinosaur bones. Other things are more convenient to experiment with than to wait until you notice them in nature - such as mutations in fruit flies and high-energy particle collisions.

But we do observe mutations in fruit flies and high-energy particle collisions in nature. And we do carry out experiments on sedimentation and mineralisation rates, and to check our baselines for radiometric dating or spectroscopic analysis.

And there are many instances where the line between experiment and observation is blurred - solar neutrino and cosmic ray detectors, for example. Was Tiktaalik an experiment or an observation? We had a prediction, we carried out a test, the prediction was confirmed. Sounds like an experiment to me - but what we did was dig up some fish bones.

Psychology is definitely an experimental science, perhaps not in its earliest days (though it was something of a pseudo-science then), but certainly since, say, Skinner. Properly controlled experiments in economics are difficult on a large scale, but large scale experiments are carried out nonetheless - look at the New Deal, for instance, or Soviet Russia, or post-WWI Germany or post-WWII Hungary, or to pick a current example, Zimbabwe. That the results are depressing doesn't in itself invalidate the experimental data.

Our understanding of history has been transformed by carbon dating and chemical and genetic analysis of materials left behind by people of past ages. When I analyse the ink on a purported historical document, am I doing experimental or observational science? Does it matter?