Can theists be rational?

[articulett]

Great post Linda!

 

[ponderingturtle]

Saying "god exists" is as rational a claim as saying "magic is real", isn't it?

It all depends on the exact nature of the specific claims. Either can be just as testable or untestable as the other.

 

[cj.23]

Re-read cj's "proof" and see if it makes sense that way. You're changing the word "possible" into a non zero value, then multiplying it by a really large number to turn any "possibility" into something "highly probably". That's absurd.

Please note the Bayesian analysis is not my proof - it's Forsters and MArsdens - I think I cited it correctly? I don't actually hold it to be meaningful. Nonetheless the discussion of how it may or may not be flawed has made me think of a really interesting issue in philosophy of mathematics - I'll explain after dinner - just got in from being out investigating alleged haunting all night - as usual no sppoks materilaised. I really think train spotting would be a better hobby - at least trains turn up eventually.

cj x

 

[ponderingturtle]

Please note the Bayesian analysis is not my proof - it's Forsters and MArsdens - I think I cited it correctly? I don't actually hold it to be meaningful. Nonetheless the discussion of how it may or may not be flawed has made me think of a really interesting issue in philosophy of mathematics - I'll explain after dinner - just got in from being out investigating alleged haunting all night - as usual no sppoks materilaised. I really think train spotting would be a better hobby - at least trains turn up eventually.

cj x

The thing is that as an example of a valid argument for god, we have shown that it is not. This is because it is a flawed argument.

 

[cj.23]

I guess it's more like Gould's NOMA stuff. One set of rules applies to certain topics, but a different set applies to another set. Again, I run headlong into my bafflement--how do they draw the line and decide what goes where? (I utterly reject NOMA, by the way.)

I'm just quickly skimming the thread to catch up, but actually that can be so. We are all familiar with reductionism, and the idea of physics as a fundamental science i'm sure. It's completely sound to my understanding - physics underlies all our other laws of nature. Yet why are biology, psychology and oceeanography not sub-disciplines of physics? There is a generally accepted answer, and it I think answers your pooint here...

Gotta dash
cj x

 

[yy2bggggs]

... So when I have to refer to the thing people believe exists that makes them theist, I'd like a more general sense of the word--something that makes Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and Thor gods, but not Satan and Moses. Merely being supernatural doesn't do the trick, nor does creating the universe.

That's all well and good but I'm afraid, IMHO, it's a lost cause. If you want to effectively communicate your ideas just be careful to pick and choose your terms and take the time to explain what it is you mean. Otherwise, when in a forum populated by folks from cultures heavily influenced by one or more of the three major monotheistic religions you really should expect the term "god" to mean Yahweh, Elohim, Christ or Allah (they're all the same btw).

I don't see how accuracy is a lost cause, nor do I buy the line of reasoning where being in a forum "populated by folks from cultures heavily influenced by one or more of three major monotheistic religions" justifies redefining theism as meaning belief in Yahweh, Elohim, Christ, or Allah.

IMHO, "effective communication" doesn't justify picking and choosing terms when a context is given that doesn't call for what you pick and choose, and in fact, calls for quite the opposite.

Then again, you could be like my uncle and bitch about the misuse of the term the way he bitches about the tides that caries away the sand from his beach house every year. It won't solve anything but you'll annoy everyone else and it will make you feel like you are accomplishing something.

...and I'm not scared to drink from poisoned wells.

Besides, I'm not even convinced that a deeper analysis hurts whatever "not lost cause" you have in mind.

 

[Bri]

It says there is one God in a million. A million whats?

If you say that the chances of a die landing on "1" is 1 in 6, do you have to ask "1 in 6 whats?" If you roll a "2" on a die in our universe, do you have to assume that other universes exist where the die lands on other numbers?

But let's use your multiple universes as a means to frame the same argument. According to premise 2, the chances are 1 in a very large number (let's call it a zillion) that a universe can support life without a god. So let's assume we have a zillion universes, and one of them supports life. Now, according to premise 1, every million of the zillion universes has a god. And according to premise 2, of the universes with gods 1 in a million support life.

Any disagreement so far is simply a rejection of the premises.

So, we have a zillion universes, one with life but without a god and every million of them (a zillion divided by a million universes) have a god and of those one in a million (a zillion divided by a million divided by a million universes -- let's call that a jillion) have a god and support life. The rest have no god and don't support life. The question is what are the chances that we live in one of the universes that has a god.

We can throw out all of the universes that don't support life, and of the universes that support life one has no god and a jillion have a god. So the conclusion is that there is a very high probability that we live in a universe with a god. It is NOT assumed in the premise.

The problem of begging the question is NOT the same issue as me rejecting a premise.

That is true. The problem is that the argument is not an example of begging the question.

-Bri

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Please note the Bayesian analysis is not my proof - it's Forsters and MArsdens - I think I cited it correctly? I don't actually hold it to be meaningful.

But you do claim that it's a rational argument for the existence of God, right?

Here's a rational argument for God

That's why I was referring to it as your argument. I guess I should have said "the argument cj posted."

Sorry about that.

I suppose something can be rational but not meaningful, but as I've pointed out this argument is not rational. Its logic is circular. It's pretty much saying that assuming God exists, God exists.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

If you say that the chances of a die landing on "1" is 1 in 6, do you have to ask "1 in 6 whats?"

It means there's one 1 and 6 total possible numbers. That is were you get the values for 1 in 6.

ETA: I mentioned this before: the probability is the ratio of number of successful outcomes (the "1" spot on the die, and there's just one of them) to the total number of possible outcomes (the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 faces of the die--a total of 6).

Just curious, where did you suppose these numbers came from? Did you think this was an unanswerable question?

If you roll a "2" on a die in our universe, do you have to assume that other universes exist where the die lands on other numbers?

No. It means you had to assume there were other numbers on the die and that one of them was a 2.

But let's use your multiple universes as a means to frame the same argument.

It's not my idea. It's implicit in the first premise in the argument.

According to premise 2, the chances are 1 in a very large number (let's call it a zillion) that a universe can support life without a god.

And this premise also assumes the existence of god and it assumes a relationship between god and universes that support life. So again, you've got the conclusion right there in the premises. It is begging the question.

Any disagreement so far is simply a rejection of the premises.

You're simply wrong. Any disagreement so far is pointing out the the argument is flawed because the conclusion is in the premises. It is a circular argument.

So, we have a zillion universes, one with life but without a god and every million of them (a zillion divided by a million universes) have a god and of those one in a million (a zillion divided by a million divided by a million universes -- let's call that a jillion) have a god and support life. The rest have no god and don't support life. The question is what are the chances that we live in one of the universes that has a god.

No. The question is does god exist. You can hide that in the question asking what the chances of something are, but you've just assumed those chances in your premises. The whole thing is completely circular.

The problem is that the argument is not an example of begging the question.

Yes it is. And you still don't understand what a probability is if you don't know what the 6 is in the probability of getting a number on the toss of a die, so I'm not sure why you are so confident in saying you know that the conclusion is not assumed in the premise. You don't even know what the premise means!

 

[cj.23]

Right, I'm going out to play D&D in a minute but I think the issue from Joe and Bri arises from the fact they are using different meanings of, or to be more exact different interpretations of probability.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-interpret/
As we have no way of knowing which is correct, the point is probably mute (see the issues with Inductive reasoning in one of my earlier posts.) We usually think we understand probability - but I'm afraid we don't - how it works is very much still a live issue.

cj x

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I don't want to imply that the mere presence of a well-formed definition makes the idea underlying that definition valid. That God of the Gaps will ultimately prove to be untenable is well-recognized (there don't yet seem to be any limits on that ever shrinking space).

Yeah--I'm not so sure. I think they can always make a more and more vague non-definition of God.

I'm pretty sure Gould's NOMA separated the magisteria by claiming religion has the realm of values and morals. (I'd quarrel with that!)

Is it rational to cling to the unknown? It doesn't look that way to me because I'm uninterested in finding a space for God to reside in because I'm ultimately uninterested in its existence. But if someone is interested in God's existence, I can't deny that there are places for it to reside.

Or "hide out"! Such a strange God who once sent floods and so on, but is now curiously shy.

But it looks like it can be made to do so. Part of that depends upon what the definition is to be used for.

This is what I still don't get. How? I still don't see how it excludes stuff that is obviously not what they mean when they use the term "God". It would be like defining a "dog" as a "mammal". That's just not sufficient. There are plenty of concepts that could provide an unlawful force--including the Tooth Fairy and (as yy2bggggs astutely pointed out) other supernatural non-god figures like Moses, Satan, archangels, sprites, elves, etc.--not to mention a singularity and other more esoteric physics stuff.

I have lately been involved in some protracted discussions about whether it is rational to say that gods don't exist because we could yet discover something that is a god. The definition is necessary and sufficient to deal with that situation, since it would allow us a way to determine whether or not this was a realistic concern. Any discovery that had those characteristics could be a god. Any discovery without those characteristics would not.

I remember reading Jean Auel's cave man books. Someone was explaining how a woman gets pregnant. It was something about the man's spirit fighting with the woman's spirit and finally joining together. People could say there was some truth to this if you substituted "haploid cell" for "spirit". The point is, it's still wrong, and leads to that dead place where people stop asking the question because it's been answered with certitude.

So do Deists actually believe that a singularity is what they're calling God? If it were proven for sure to be the cause of the universe, would they still be Deists or would they become atheists?

Approaching this from the other direction - as a way to capture the variety of gods upon which religions have been built - it does not seem to exclude anything that has been considered a god. And it requires only fine-tuning (if anything) to exclude those things that are not considered gods.

But how? How do you exclude Satan or Mohammed or the Buddha or Gandalf? What characteristic does God have that these guys don't have? Is it Perfect Compassion? Omniscience? Omnipotence?

ETA: And I still haven't gotten past the problem with "unlawful"--how can we know something is unlawful when we simply don't know all the laws?

With the former, one waits for "evidence commensurate with the claim". With the latter, one gathers up the unknowns and pretends that they are meaningful until proven otherwise.

Very well said! I make the same point but with a helluva lot more words!

I also like to think of it as a sort of courtroom burden of proof question. I don't have to disprove the existence of God to be an atheist. (I still maintain I have not heard of a proper formal definition of the term God that people actually believe in that I can't show is internally inconsistent or flagrantly inconsistent with the empirical world.)

 

[Bri]

It means there's one 1 and 6 total possible numbers. That is were you get the values for 1 in 6.

ETA: I mentioned this before: the probability is the ratio of number of successful outcomes (the "1" spot on the die, and there's just one of them) to the total number of possible outcomes (the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 faces of the die--a total of 6).

Just curious, where did you suppose these numbers came from? Did you think this was an unanswerable question?

What in the world are you talking about? I know all that.

You're simply wrong. Any disagreement so far is pointing out the the argument is flawed because the conclusion is in the premises. It is a circular argument.

I'm sorry, but "so far" indicates that I haven't (yet) written a conclusion, so to say that the argument so far is flawed because the conclusion is in the premises is just silly.

You don't seem to be demonstrating any intention of actually reading what I've written, instead apparently opting to assume that you cannot be wrong. There's not much point continuing the discussion unless you're going to actually read and comment on what I've written rather than jumping ahead to your own preconceived ideas of what my conclusion is going to be.

If you disagree so far, you disagree with the premises. If you think that no universe can possibly have a god in it, then you're setting the probability in premise 1 to 0% instead of to 0.0001%.

No. The question is does god exist. You can hide that in the question asking what the chances of something are, but you've just assumed those chances in your premises. The whole thing is completely circular.

No, in my reformulation the question is NOT whether a god exists. The premise is that a god exists in one in a million universes. Read what I wrote. The question is whether we live in one of the universes that has a god. You can reject the premises by saying that no universe has a god, but the argument is still valid.

And you still don't understand what a probability is if you don't know what the 6 is in the probability of getting a number on the toss of a die...

No idea what you're going on about here. Of course I know what the 6 is in the probability of getting a number on the toss of a die. Your claiming that I don't understand probability is a straw man, and it doesn't make the argument in question any less valid.

-Bri

 

[Bri]

Right, I'm going out to play D&D in a minute but I think the issue from Joe and Bri arises from the fact they are using different meanings of, or to be more exact different interpretations of probability.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-interpret/

I think the problem may be that Joe is assuming multiple universes, which changes the meaning of the conclusion (that there is a high probability that a god exists). In the multiple universes scenario, it is assumed in the premises that a god exists in one out of every million universes, and the conclusion changes to a high probability that we live in one of the universes in which a god exists.

-Bri

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

What in the world are you talking about? I know all that.

Then why did you answer my question about what the million refers to in the first premise with the question about the 6?

I'll quote you again because you seem to have forgotten that you wrote this:

It says there is one God in a million. A million whats?

If you say that the chances of a die landing on "1" is 1 in 6, do you have to ask "1 in 6 whats?" If you roll a "2" on a die in our universe, do you have to assume that other universes exist where the die lands on other numbers?

So I answered by telling you what the 6 means. Now you act like I'm irrationally assuming you don't understand what a numerical probability means?

C'mon!

I'm sorry, but "so far" indicates that I haven't (yet) written a conclusion, so to say that the argument so far is flawed because the conclusion is in the premises is absurd.

You're completely wrong. Go back to cj's post. The first thing he said is that this is a rational argument for the existence of God. The first premise assumes the existence of God. It is circular.

You don't seem to be demonstrating any intention of actually reading what I've written, instead apparently opting to assume that you cannot be wrong.

No. It's you who seems to fail to read what I've written.

For example, in this, your most recent post you say:

If you think that no universe can possibly have a god in it, then you're setting the probability in premise 1 to 0% instead of to 0.0001%.

Yet in this thread I have written (quoted with attribution "me" to separate them from the rest of this post):

It would also be begging the question if I said the probability is 0 and arrived at the conclusion that God does not exist.

My point is that assigning any probability to the existence of God makes an assumption about the existence of God. That assumption is either that God does not exist if the probability is zero or that God exists if the probability assigned is anything but zero.

With coins and cards--but making the same point:

If there's no evidence that those cards exist in the deck, then you can't make the statement that there is any probability for getting that hand.

ETA: If the question is "does 'tails' exist" and my first premise is that tossing this coin has a 1:2 probability of getting "tails", the argument is circular. I am assuming the existence of "tails". It might be a double headed coin (that is a tail-less coin), so assuming ANY probability of getting "tails" assumes the existence of "tails".

If you make ANY premise about the probability of getting a "1" on a die, you are making assumptions about the existence of the 1 on the die.

So it's obvious that you haven't been reading my posts with any care at all.

No, in my reformulation the question is NOT whether a god exists.

Your "reformulation only changes it to an argument that assumes god exists, assumes probabilities for god related to universes with life in them, and then concludes god exists in a universe with life in it. It is completely circular.

No idea what you're going on about here. Of course I know what the 6 is in the probability of getting a number on the toss of a die. Your claiming that I don't understand probability is a straw man, and it doesn't make the argument in question any less valid.

I call shenanigans. Read the first paragraph of this very post. You're being disingenuous and evasive. You're not engaging in a legitimate conversation.

This post has evidence to support what I have just said. It is not baseless name-calling; I don't do that.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I think the problem may be that Joe is assuming multiple universes, which changes the meaning of the conclusion (that there is a high probability that a god exists).

I'm making no such assumption. The idea of a universe with life and without life, the idea of the probability of God's existence being 1 in a million assumes multiple universes.

Or are you ready to say that the "million" refers to something else?

Maybe it's 1 in a million churches?

The same problem exists with the premise about the probability of a universe with or without life in it. If there's only one universe then the probability is 1 in 1--which is (as Randfan pointed out) 1.

What's the probability of Earth with life on it? (If you say anything other than 1 you are assuming other Earths--those without life.)

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

This is from my second post in this thread:

I disagree. First, this is all poorly defined. One in a million whats? Universes, I guess?

I don't know.

So if you don't know what the "million" means, how do you know what the premise means?

Again, if I did it the opposite way and started an argument with the premise that there is a zero percent chance that God exists and concluded that God does not exist, it would be equally circular.

Do you understand why? You can't place ANY probability on the existence of something without making a statement about the existence of that thing. Zero means I'm assuming the non-existence of God. Anything greater than zero assumes the existence of God.

It is circular to come to a conclusion regarding the existence of God when you start with a premise that makes a statement assuming that God exists or does not exist.

I am not making the argument that starts with zero and concludes God does not exist. That is a flawed argument. I reject it as well.

I don't have to make that argument to reject the one cj posted.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I'll try a different answer to this one:

If you say that the chances of a die landing on "1" is 1 in 6, do you have to ask "1 in 6 whats?"

You most definitely, absolutely certainly, without any doubt MUST know what the 6 means.

If you roll a "2" on a die in our universe, do you have to assume that other universes exist where the die lands on other numbers?

No. The only reason I can think you'd say that is if you don't know what the 6 means.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I think the problem may be that Joe is assuming multiple universes, which changes the meaning of the conclusion (that there is a high probability that a god exists). In the multiple universes scenario, it is assumed in the premises that a god exists in one out of every million universes, and the conclusion changes to a high probability that we live in one of the universes in which a god exists.

-Bri

You need at the very least multiple possible universes or probabilities become meaningless. Just like with a die it needs to have multiple possible throws.

This argument is very like the idea that because if you reran evolution you would likely get things entirely different.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

You need at the very least multiple possible universes or probabilities become meaningless.

Yes.

Just like with a die it needs to have multiple possible throws.

Not quite.

The 6 does not come from the number of throws, but from the number of total possible successful outcomes (that is the 6 faces of the die).

I thought maybe Bri was thinking of it this way--since we use probabilities predictively based on the number of trials (throws or re-running everything from the Big Bang, or whatever). The 1:6 probability tells us we can expect to get one success in 6 tosses of the die, but that's not where it comes from.

Here's the reason why:

You say the probability of getting a 3 is 1:6, and you throw the die 6 times but don't get a three, is the probability now 0:6? Of course not.

In fact, statistics predicts that you'll get streaks of no 3 coming up 6 times in a row if you toss the die often enough.

The 1:6 probability means that there is one possible successful outcome (the 3) and 6 total possible outcomes. You know this before any tosses by counting the number of possible successful outcomes and the total number of possible outcomes.

 

[Bri]

You need at the very least multiple possible universes or probabilities become meaningless. Just like with a die it needs to have multiple possible throws.

Agreed, multiple possible universes. The problem is that Joe is confusing a possible universe with the actual existing universe and saying that if a god exists in one of the possible universes, then it exists. If you're assuming that all possible universes actually exist, then you're changing the meaning from "exists" to "exists in our universe."

But I don't know how to explain that to Joe, I suspect mainly because he believes so much that he's right that he's not reading what I'm writing.

Joe: I bet that die is going to land on a "3".
Bri: You're on.
(Joe rolls the die and it lands on a "4").
Joe: See, I told you it would land on a "3".
Bri: No, it's a "4".
Joe: No, in another possible universe it landed on a "3".
Bri: Those other universes aren't real though. They only represent possibilities.
Joe: No, they're all real.
Bri: In that case, the question was whether we actually live in a universe in which the die landed on a "3".
Joe: You don't understand probability.

-Bri