Can theists be rational?

[fls]

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that because we observe gravity we can know the mechanism that causes it?

-Bri

Yes. That's how we learn about things using scientific inquiry.

Linda

 

[Belz...]

I didn't say that something that is supernatural controls nature. I said that something that controls nature is supernatural.

Ok. My mistake.

You may certainly assume anything you wish.

Certainly I can, especially based on evidence or complete lack thereof. I'm under no obligation to maintain faith in something just because there's a bare possibility of it being true, which as far as the Christian god is concerned, is of course not the case.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Well, there's no point in having the same discussion in two threads. Read my answer there.

Yeah--sorry about that. I really should have only posted it here, since this is where Bri lives.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Can you post a link? I have lost touch with the thread, but I have vbeen surveying statisticians, and so far have found none who think the use of Bayesian Stats is actually flawed - it does what any Bayesian analysis does, as Bri keeps saying. If I can find a definite argument or attempted refutation I can check it out, and maybe learn enough to argue if it is correct or not?

The forum has been terribly sluggish, so I'd rather not hunt for it. It's a few pages back in this very thread. In short, the argument depends on two different values for the probability of the proposition "The universe is inhabitable". One that is nearly zero, and the one that we know by our own presence (that it is 1). The argument depends simultaneously on both values.

No you can't. God is here defined as "entitiy setting 'dials' to allow stable universe etc, etc' and the relevant figure is the calculations on the likelihood of those setting arising by chance. If you put 'pixies' in the argument is meaningless.

Nowhere in the argument that you posted as a "rational argument for God" is the term God defined in any way. You mentioned that this came out of the fine-tuner argument, but in fact, in the argument itself as presented, and as has been pointed out repeatedly in this thread, God is not defined, and you could put any other term in the premises and get the same conclusion about the existence of that thing. It is therefore a validating argument.

And logically you can make a rational argument for pixies; you can laos make an irrational argument for pixies. As I keep saying, rationality has to be a property of an argument not a conclusion.

We've gone over this. You're using a different meaning of "rational" than most of us--and clearly a different meaning than the one in the question in the OP. You're arguing that logical possibility is sufficient for belief in something to be rational. The rest of us say that logical possibility is necessary but not sufficient.

Again, if not, you must conclude that it's rational to believe in every Nigerian scam e-mail you get.

Please read the thread title. It clearly is asking if the person (theist) defined as someone holding a particular belief or conclusion (theism) can be rational. There's no way that question can be construed to mean that the person can be rational but still maintain that "rationality has to be a property of an argument not a conclusion".

 

[GStan]

Guilty as charged. Look, whenever someone says "there's no evidence" then they typically mean no compelling evidence. There's evidence that God exists, but no compelling evidence, so people often say "there's no evidence that God exists."



Is it compelling evidence? Should I go back and see if you've made the same mistake?



I'm not hostile at all, but feel free to treat me that way if you like. I'm starting to get used to it by now.



Evidence in its broadest sense includes everything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion.

Compelling evidence would be "strong" evidence, or evidence that clearly points to the truth of an assertion.

Uncompelling evidence would be "weak" evidence, or evidence that does not clearly point to the truth of an assertion.

A lack of compelling evidence would be a lack of evidence clearly pointing to the truth of an assertion (which sometimes occurs if there is similar evidence of an opposing assertion).

Note that I have added a words in bold to your list, because I've already admitted to being guilty of using the word "evidence" when I really meant "compelling evidence."

• We have compelling evidence that the sun will rise tomorrow.
• There is no compelling evidence that there is intelligent life elsewhere.
• There is evidence that the probability of there being intelligent life elsewhere is near 0

Again, I apologize for the confusion. I've tried to be careful about adding the word "compelling" when I meant "compelling evidence" but obviously I have not succeeded in that regard on multiple occasions.

-Bri

I think science should try to avoid the use of adjectives and adverbs as much as possible. Do you think "compelling" vs. "not compelling" is really the best way to categorize evidence?

Everything is evidence to some extent. Categorizing it is specific to the hypothesis that is being tested. IMHO, evidence can fall into one of four categories:

A. Evidence that supports the hypothesis
B. Evidence that is consistent with the hypothesis but not demontrated to be supportive
C. Evidence that contradicts the hypothesis
D. Evidence that provides no information relevant to the hypothesis

For the hypothesis that "there is a god" and any variations thereof, I think pretty much all of the known universe would fall into category D, and theists are very careful to never give any definition of god that would allow for evidence to fall into category C. The definition of god will just be changed to have that evidence moved to category D. Is there category B evidence for any God hypothesis? RandFan has given alot of evidence for life in the universe earlier in this thread. As a non-scientist, it is hard for me to pick between A and B for those pieces of evidence, but it sure is easy to see the difference between the evidence for life in the universe and the evidence for god.

 

[fls]

This article was referenced in the wikipedia article that cj referenced. It's an interesting (though long) read that happens to hit upon a number of the ideas that I have (attempted to) brought up.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/barbara_forrest/naturalism.html

"Abstract: In response to the charge that methodological naturalism in science logically requires the a priori adoption of a naturalistic metaphysics, I examine the question whether methodological naturalism entails philosophical (ontological or metaphysical) naturalism. I conclude that the relationship between methodological and philosophical naturalism, while not one of logical entailment, is the only reasonable metaphysical conclusion given (1) the demonstrated success of methodological naturalism, combined with (2) the massive amount of knowledge gained by it, (3) the lack of a method or epistemology for knowing the supernatural, and (4) the subsequent lack of evidence for the supernatural. The above factors together provide solid grounding for philosophical naturalism, while supernaturalism remains little more than a logical possibility."

"Neither the one [philosophical naturalism] nor the other [science] asserts that only what can be observed exists, for many things may be legitimately inferred to exist (electrons, the expanding universe, the past, the other side of the moon) from what is observed; but both hold that there is no evidence for the assertion of anything which does not rest upon some observed effects."

Linda

 

[Herzblut]

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that because we observe gravity we can know the mechanism that causes it?

-Bri

We don't observe gravity. We observe that we are falling down when jumping from the roof.

 

[fls]

We don't observe gravity. We observe that we are falling down when jumping from the roof.

Or rather, we observe that we are accelerating.

Linda

 

[Bri]

As I mentioned earlier, they can target their searches at sun-like stars, for example.

I don't know whether that is technically possible. Is it?

It is reasonable to refer to arguments about the path one follows using the rules of inference, like mathematical proofs, as logical arguments. But to claim that any statement is a logical argument makes the phrase meaningless. In that case, there is no distinction to be made between cj's argument and any other scientific endeavour (your original reason for bringing up the term), since they are both concerned with looking for information that speaks to the truth value of their premises.

My only point in drawing the comparison was that actually physically looking for something for which there is no compelling evidence and you don't believe exists seems more than a little weird to me. Even people who believe in gods don't usually go looking for them, and if they do they don't pretend there's anything scientific about it.

You can make logical arguments for either one, and the validity of the conclusion is as valid as the premises. In the case of aliens and gods, such arguments don't result in compelling evidence because there isn't enough compelling evidence to support the premises. People who make logical arguments might claim that there is scientific evidence to support at least some of the premises (and in the case of gods and aliens, they'd be correct) but they don't usually claim that logical arguments are compelling scientific evidence unless they have compelling scientific evidence for all of the premises (which is rarely the case with logical arguments).

Then why do you think scientist believers brought it up to begin with?

They didn't bring it up. Fine-tuning has been known about and discussed by scientists long before it was ever used as evidence to support a premise for a logical argument for a god. In and of itself, fine-tuning is considered to be a scientific problem and has little to do with gods.

Right, as I said earlier, it's the process of asking a question that is answerable only by assuming as proven the premises under discussion.

No, I'm sorry, that's not what begging the question means. But now I understand why you thought what I said was an example of begging the question.

Are those characteristics in bold characteristics of 'not science'?

By themselves, not necessarily. Together, yes.

And if they aren't, why bring them up? And if they are, are you not assuming that they are the characteristics of the search for aliens, especially since you specifically state that?

Yes, they are characteristics of the search for aliens.

A theory of aliens would be premature. A hypothesis of 'aliens exist' would look for specific observations (in this case, patterned electromagnetic radiation). I hope you're not confusing the hypothesis with the results of testing that hypothesis.

• The hypothesis "aliens exist" is unfalsifiable.
• The hypothesis does not explain any observation.
• There is currently no compelling evidence that aliens exist.

The search for aliens is an endeavor to prove an unfalsifiable hypothesis for which there is currently no compelling evidence and does not explain any observation.

It would be intended to explain electromagnetic transmissions from other planets/solar systems that contain information. It would be necessary to explain them.

But you do understand that no such transmission has ever been observed, right? Why would you try to explain something that has never been observed and for which there is no compelling evidence? Would you consider it a scientific endeavor to search for teapots orbiting Jupiter without any compelling evidence of them?

Right, but that's not relevant when you are in the process of testing a hypothesis, since the purpose of testing is to collect those observations that have to be explained by aliens.

So you're saying that any conjecture about anything that I might pull out of thin air would be a valid scientific hypothesis, worthy of devoting time and money to prove even if it could never be disproved?

We agreed that that was merely a matter of practicality.

No we didn't. Searching every location in a possibly infinite universe for aliens would not be possible. Even if it were theoretically possible, it's still practically impossible.

We know the conditions under which intelligent life was formed here.

Really? What are they?

We don't know which are necessary and whether we have identified all that are sufficient, but it's a start. It is possible to know whether suns and planets are present elsewhere, for example.

Oh, so we don't know the conditions under which intelligent life formed here.

We have a decent idea of how many stars there are. We have a much less clear idea of the average number of planets for each star. We have almost no idea whether the same combination of conditions and events that gave rise to intelligent life on this planet also occurred on one or more of those other planets.

I said a useful explanation. Something that explains everything isn't useful. 'Useful' (which encompasses falsifiability) is a critical component of scientific inquiry.

Oh, really? So how useful is the inquiry about aliens then, which explains NO observations. That hypothesis is both useless and unfalsifiable. If either are "critical components of scientific inquiry" then it's certainly not scientific inquiry by your standards.

The lack of a decent explanation for one component doesn't mean that it's useful to erase all our explanations, though.

Nobody's erasing any other explanations. The argument simply says that any other explanations are less likely, but of course it's possible that there is a perfectly reasonable explanation that nobody has thought of. But it isn't irrational to argue that perhaps aliens is the most likely explanation for a building on Jupiter even though other explanations might be possible.

'Adjusting the rules' doesn't require supernaturality.

I disagree. Considering that the constants are called "constants" because they don't change, it would not be unreasonable to assume that a being that could set the constants of the natural universe wouldn't be governed by the rules imposed by those constants.

-Bri

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

We don't observe gravity. We observe that we are falling down when jumping from the roof.

Are you suggesting that blind people can't sense gravity?

The vestibular system is, in part, an acceleration sensor. You can also certainly sense the orientation of your head wrt the center of mass of the Earth. What is that if not directly sensing gravity?

ETA: Sorry--I'm just interjecting into a line of discussion I haven't been following. Something just struck me odd about the assertion that we can't observe gravity but only that we are falling.

 

[Bri]

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that because we observe gravity we can know the mechanism that causes it?

-Bri

Yes. That's how we learn about things using scientific inquiry.

So if we were to observe a god interacting with our world, then we can know the mechanism by which it occurs. So to say that we cannot possibly know the mechanism would be untrue.

-Bri

 

[Herzblut]

Or rather, we observe that we are accelerating.

Linda

But only for a few moments.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I'm completely willing to let this slide, but you did not define "magic" as "the unexplainable interaction between two realms." You defined it in a much more general way. See for yourself:

​

And again here:

​

Oops, my mistake. I should have included the idea of an organizing or organized force behind it. I thought that I had,but I obviously didn't. That is certainly the way that I meant it to be expressed.

A magic wishing well would be magic, wouldn't it? How about a magic rabbit's foot? Or a magic pot of gold?

There is always some organizing force behind such "things" even in the common conception of them.

The word "magic" has a specific connotation, which I suspect you knew when you redefined it. Otherwise, why not just use the word "unexplainable" instead? You were using the word "magic" in order to support the notion that belief in something "magic" is clearly irrational. But the way you defined it was either special pleading or can be used to describe things that you consider rational.

Well, I did mean it to be controversial. Did it work?

Why not use the word 'unexplainable' -- because there is more to it, specifically that a discussion of dualism includes the idea that the unexplainable involves some sort of organization and that organization interacts with the world through unexplainable means. In daily life, when we see organization we think -- must be some organizing force. That organizing force can be natural/causal or it can be intelligent (which is really just a special example of natural/causal, but that's a much longer discussion). Dualism postulates a mental realm that interacts with the physical realm through unexplainable mechanisms. While that interaction is logically possible, it seems to violate the laws of physics (it certainly violates the law of conservation of energy). The only way out of that dilemma is to suggest that we do not live within a closed system, or that humans are not a closed system for the mind-body problem. But that still leaves a huge unexplainable gap.

To repeat, if we can find a mechanism for how such a thing would work, then we are not discussing actual dualism, since mechanism is defined as a causal account for how things occur. If there is a causal accout, then it's materialism.

I am not special pleading. I simply left out part of the description initially.

You can ask the same questions about any two things. What makes a car entirely different from a tree if both are ultimately the same substance?

The point is that we can describe a mechanism for differences that arise for material objects. When we invoke the word 'mechanism' that is what we mean -- that we can provide a causal account (based in observation and repeatable through scientific investigation). We may not have all the details, but at least a causal account is possible. Where is the causal account for dualism, whatever the flavor?

There isn't one. If there were a causal account, then it wouldn't be dualism.

Why can't there be a mechanism concerning the immaterial?

See above. I've answered this several times in several other posts. Mechanism means 'causal account'; causality is largely what we mean by materialism (though there is obviously more to it).

I've yet to see another source that claims that we cannot possibly know the mechanism by which the supernatural can interact with the natural. Can you please cite a source?

Don't know, I'd have to hunt around, but why would that make any difference? The idea flows from the definitions of the words.

By the way, I'm not saying that we can know the mechanism, I'm just not sure the proposition that we can know the mechanism is impossible. Even if it is impossible (even if we cannot know the mechanism), I'm not sure why that matters. It may be impossible for us to know the mechanism that produces gravity or uncaused causes, but that doesn't make the ideas irrational.

By definition we cannot know the cause/mechanism of uncaused causes -- that is one of my points.

The point is that for organized occurrences, it is irrational to believe them if a rational mechanism cannot be provided (note I said 'cannot' and not 'has not yet been'). One of the many meanings of rational is "reasonable to believe" or "having reason". If we cannot reason to a cause, why is it rational to accept the offered 'explanation', which is no explanation of something like 'well, the mind controls the body but we can't explain it'? Reasonable to believe rests on justification. Good justification -- reasonable to believe. Justification depends on observable evidence and coherence of the concepts/logical analysis.

By virtually all definitions, God is logically possible. We cannot speak of God's physical possibility because that is a category mistake. To believe in the existence of a personal God (I restrict the definitions to God as a person because we are discussing theism and theists view God as a person; other views of God are not affected by this analysis; certainly God as the ground of all being is a pretty unassailable definition issue), we must ask for extraordinary evidence. For a personal God we must also admit that some form of dualism comes into play (either substance or property dualism). And since dualisms involve an unexplainable interaction, they are more suspect -- we simply don't have good ways to investigate their truth.

Belief in God is not in the same category as belief in something more mundane, like the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe (something that is both logically and physically possible), for which the burden of evidence is not as high (we are always more inclined to believe the logically and physically possible if we have decent enough evidence). So, the leap to believe in God (again, God as a person) is not rational. There is a gap in the explanatory process because of dualism; and the burden of proof is higher because we only know that God is logically possible. We do not have much evidence for the existence of God. The only evidence supplied so far in this and some of the other threads is mystical experience. I don't think that constitutes evidence for a personal God. I am certainly not aware of the general consensus of mystics experiencing God as a person. Most accounts I've seen report a feeling of oneness.

The reason that we have been trying to make these distinctions, in part, is because different categories of existence require different types of evidence. For the physically possible, circumstantial evidence is often good enough to move us from non-belief to "that is probable" (where there are variations in degree of probability). If I tell you that Heidi Klum is my mistress you'd be right to call BS. But if you hear a report from someone else -- "Hey I saw that Icky guy with Heidi Klum yesterday" -- you'd be much more inclined to believe my earlier statement.

When it comes to God, however, the burden of proof is much higher. If the same person told you that they had also talked to God yesterday, you'd most likely conclude not only that they most likely did not talk to God but they are probably lying or somehow mistaken about the Heidi Klum sighting. Few people take personal reports as definitive evidence, but that relatively weak evidence is more likely to move us if the event under discussion is physically possible than if it is just logically possible (but not physically impossible, which is where I think God fits, as opposed to faeries or Santa Claus where the burden of proof is even higher).

My whole point in discussing the dualism issue was to highlight this difference -- the cateogry differences. This isn't just an evidence issue. There are more fudamental issues at play that influence the burden of proof.

 

[Bri]

I think science should try to avoid the use of adjectives and adverbs as much as possible. Do you think "compelling" vs. "not compelling" is really the best way to categorize evidence?

You're trying to turn it into something objective, which I would be all for except that it's not possible.

Everything is evidence to some extent. Categorizing it is specific to the hypothesis that is being tested. IMHO, evidence can fall into one of four categories:

A. Evidence that supports the hypothesis
B. Evidence that is consistent with the hypothesis but not demontrated to be supportive
C. Evidence that contradicts the hypothesis
D. Evidence that provides no information relevant to the hypothesis

I have no problem with your categories really. The problem is that any evidence that goers into category A or C must still be evaluated in some way to determine the quantity and quality of the evidence for or against a particular hypothesis.

Category B seems superfluous to me (nothing would ever go there). If evidence is inconsistent with the hypothesis, then it would be in category C. If it's not supportive and it isn't inconsistent, then I'm not sure it can provide information relevant to the hypothesis and would fit into category D (maybe you can come up with a counter-example of something that would be appropriate for category B but not for C or D).

For the hypothesis that "there is a god" and any variations thereof, I think pretty much all of the known universe would fall into category D, and theists are very careful to never give any definition of god that would allow for evidence to fall into category C.

Arguably, there is weak (i.e. uncompelling) evidence for gods that would fall into category A. See below.

The definition of god will just be changed to have that evidence moved to category D. Is there category B evidence for any God hypothesis? RandFan has given alot of evidence for life in the universe earlier in this thread.

The nature of the evidence RandFan presented (such as the number of stars) would probably fit into category A, but it wouldn't be very compelling without the missing pieces of the puzzle (the conditions and events by which intelligent life emerged here, and the probability of those conditions and events occurring elsewhere).

Note that the evidence of fine-tuning in support of a god-hypothesis was similar in nature to the evidence RandFan presented. It would go into category A, but wouldn't be particularly compelling without knowing other pieces of the puzzle.

As a non-scientist, it is hard for me to pick between A and B for those pieces of evidence, but it sure is easy to see the difference between the evidence for life in the universe and the evidence for god.

Can you expound on that? What do you see are the key differences between, say, evidence that there are a lot of stars as it relates to the alien-hypothesis and evidence of fine-tuning as it relates to the god-hypothesis?

-Bri

 

[Bri]

We don't observe gravity. We observe that we are falling down when jumping from the roof.

Sure, we observe the affects of gravity. If observing the affects of something is enough to conclude that we can know the mechanism by which it operates, then if we were to observe the affects of a god then we could know the mechanism by which it operates.

-Bri

 

[Bri]

Are you suggesting that blind people can't sense gravity?

Observation in this context isn't limited to sight.

-Bri

 

[Herzblut]

ETA: Sorry--I'm just interjecting into a line of discussion I haven't been following. Something just struck me odd about the assertion that we can't observe gravity but only that we are falling.

We observe that masses fall towards each other, unless prevented by counteracting forces.

We might call this phenomenon gravity, Fritz or Fratz or whatever, but assigning a name to an observed phenomenon doesn't explain anything about the underlying mechanism, in contrast to fls' opinion. (I might misunderstand her though, admittedly)

That's how I tried to answer Bri's question.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Sure, we observe the affects of gravity. If observing the affects of something is enough to conclude that we can know the mechanism by which it operates, then if we were to observe the affects of a god then we could know the mechanism by which it operates.

See my recent post. We most definitely can directly sense the acceleration due to gravity. I'm not sure how it means anything to say we don't sense gravity. Similarly, I can't directly "see" anything in my environment, but only sense the photons bounced off of those objects and entering my eyes. I also can't "hear" your voice except insofar as I can sense differences in air pressure.

(As an aside, "effects" is the noun you're after. "Affects" is a verb. "Affect" when meant as a noun is pronounced differently and has to do with expression of emotion, and I think it's a non-count noun since I've never heard it used in the plural.)

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

We observe that masses fall towards each other, unless prevented by counteracting forces.

So do you deny that blind people can sense gravity?

By the way, when I tip my head sideways and hold it perfectly still wrt the center of mass of the Earth, I can still sense that mass even without any objects falling toward one another. My vestibular system can tell me which way a large mass is relative to my head even if there is no relative motion between the two objects.

Also, if you deny that we can sense gravity, then do you also deny that we see objects as I mentioned above?

At some level, following this sort of reduction, you could argue that all we have are action potentials in neurons and no direct sensation of anything.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Observation in this context isn't limited to sight.

OK--so we have no observation of gravity except when we are falling? What are the other sensory modes of observing falling (and why do you reject the direct sensation of acceleration and orientation relative to large masses due to gravity that we get from the vestibular system)?