Hi Pixy, sorry been a delay in responding-- and I will eventually respond to everyone...
Even beyond all those problems - which are substantial - there's a more fundamental issue that CJ is trampling on the definition of "evidence" just as he does on the definition of "rational".
OK....
The fact that people claim direct experience of God is not, a priori, evidence for anything. It's just data. I guess you can say it's evidence that people make claims, or some such tautology, but that's doesn't signify.
On the contrary. It is not direct evidence of a God. It is evidence. Look back over the thread, and see my examples I have offerred...
i) The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is eviudence for the Big Bang
ii) The Fossil Record is evidence for Evolution
let's add a few more
iii)
The Gallic Wars is evidence for Caesar's campaigns
iv) The bending of light recorded in the Michelson-Morley experiments is evidence for Relativity
v) The presence of the bacterium
heliobacter pylori in patients with stomach ulcers is evidence for a link.
These are off the top of my head. If you want I will simply open a dozen science journals and show you the term evidence employed in the same context.
By your reckoning none of these would be evidence - the only admissible evidence for something would be the thing-in-itself, as any secondary data relevant to the construction of a hypothesis is not evidence. Now, any of those things I just listed in i)-v) above could fit other hypotheses too. They remain evidence for the hypotheses I associated with each - quite obviously so...
Data becomes evidence only with respect to an hypothesis.
Sure, I still don't get the real difference between dat and hypothesis you propose, but then as in each case above the data of mystical experiences becomes evidence whein invoked as part of the God hypothesis. So it is still evidence for that hypothesis. Wher eis the difference? The fossil record data only becomes evidence for the evolution hyposesis when invoked as part of the evolution hypothesis. So as I keep saying, evidence exists -- and i am not the one mangling how evidence is defined.
A properly formed scientific hypothesis says If X, then Y. If you do X, you always get Y. This is falsifiable: If we do X, and don't get Y, the hypothesis is false. If we do X a hundred times and get Y every time, the hypothesis is supported, but never proven.
Hypotheses are never proven in Science, and your definition of science fails because it renders say Evolution non-scientific, and Big Bang cosmology, and pretty much all observational science. Take Global Warming. How does if x then y apply? You are trying to claim a tiny amount of experimental science is somehow descriptive of all scientific methodology. It's not. It's a subset of science, and a subset of scientific methodologies.
Regardless of this crucuial flaw in your reasoning, there is another problem. We have already noted that methodological naturalism excludes supernatural causality, and hence effectively removes our subject matter from consideration.(Reply to MM to follow). This is not really an issue, because science is not our only way of knowing. Itt is again a single subset of ways of knowing - History, Philosophy, direct obervation, all apply just as well.
Imagine your great great grandfather. Imagine i assert he was a baker in Middlesborough. How can this knowledge be tested by your "
If X, then Y" experimental formulation? Ditto the problem of wheter extraterrestrial life exists, or the problem of if your aunt sings the blues? All of these are legitimate questions, all fail the test you have set. All are based in concrete realities.
More loosely, we might conjecture that Y tends to follow X. This is a much weaker statement; it can't be falsified, and it can't be proven, but it can be supported or disputed by repeated obervations, and may lead us to formulate a more robust hypothesis. So it's not useless.
Sure, I know Hempdel's covering law. on symmetry of explanation. I may not be especially bright, in fact I know I'm not, but I read quite a bit. I agree it's weaker, and in fact we can easily provide examples where it does not follow. I can't see the relevance here???
CJ, you don't even have that. You ascribe properties to God ad hoc and post hoc at your convenience so as to fit in with the data.
Not really - ascribe properties to God that are derived from centuries of theology. I don't think I have postulated a single attribute of god that can not be found in the Church Fathers, and even the Pre-Nicene Church Fathers. Even if I did, so what? Grounded theory derives rearch questions from the data, and argues from the bottom up - and I regard it often as a more useful method than the often top down logic of the hypothetico-deductive method, which is often employed in theology and almost standard in some science. Still, my method is in fact entirely consistent with either model -- I'll explain why if you want...
You don't even do this very well. Your "God" is nothing more than an nth order curve fit through n data points. It's a point of mathematics that there are an infinite number of such curves.
Yes, see underdertemination problem repeatedly referenced above. This applies to almost any hypothesis. The question is whether the model explains the data well. Nothing more, nothing less. For any hypothesis N alternative hypoteses which fit the data can be constructed -- outside of pure mathematics.
Your God is not a hypothesis but an infinite set of hypotheses. Its explanatory power is zero; its utility likewise. It admits of no contradictory evidence, and so logically, it can have no confirming evidence either, since there is no one hypothesis for the evidence to confirm.
Only because you have not asked me to define the nature of the god I postulate. In fact I have already given a number of constraints, which prevent this applying. And in response to your critique, you know what? The same is true of persons generally. Attempt to apply your critique to say Britney Spears.
As I said, it's all special pleading, and nothing but special pleading:
The rules of logic and evidence don't apply to me, because I say so. And that's not special pleading, because I say so.
No speciila pleading, and your definition of evidence and misapplied logic remain a nonsense unless you can answer my objections.
I look forward to your response.
Sorry... doesn't wash. Or to put it more simply, FAIL.
I'm afraid so, but perhaps your failure can still be saved if you can demonstrate my errors in my critique? This is fun! Your move...
cj x
