Can theists be rational?

[Tubbythin]

A building is proof that there has to of been a Builder. A painting is evidence there was a Painter. A banana is an example natures proof of a designer. eg colour-coded for freshness, pull tab to open it, the outside is 5 sided and snuggly slots into the thumb & first finger, etc.

Creation itself evidences a Creator.

We count our year from the time it takes for the earth to rotate the sun, we get a month by the moon rotating the earth and a day with the rotation of the earth on its own axis.

Yet we divide our calendar into weeks. So where did we get our week from ? Maybe Genesis chapter 1 is not just a book, but is a true account of 7 days of creation.

And maybe not.

 

[Tubbythin]

No, that's an assumption. We can calculate the likelihood of this universe if we assume all values of the constants are of equal probability. It's possible that the constants have to have the value they do, in which case the probability of them being what they are is 1, and being anything else is 0.

But if we have no means of telling whether this assumption is a good one or not, what meaning does our result have?

 

[yy2bggggs]

A building is proof that there has to of been a Builder. A painting is evidence there was a Painter.

Sure...

A banana is an example natures proof of a designer. eg colour-coded for freshness, pull tab to open it, the outside is 5 sided and snuggly slots into the thumb & first finger, etc.

Seriously? Argument from banana? Kirk Cameron--is that you?

Creation itself evidences a Creator.

This is extrapolation. We live in a society filled with people, who go about doing things, so it's no problems finding things typically done by people, and inferring that a person must have been responsible. Buildings are built by builders, paintings by painters.

But we don't live in a society where there are gods walking around creating things ex nihilo. As such, your analogy runs into a framing issue once you leave areas related to our experience--and this is certainly said area. The term "creation" is merely semantic bias.

We count our year from the time it takes for the earth to rotate the sun, we get a month by the moon rotating the earth and a day with the rotation of the earth on its own axis.

Yet we divide our calendar into weeks. So where did we get our week from ?

The moon has two natural phases--new moon, and full moon. The next logical division down the line is to split this into two--new moon, "half waxing" moon (first quarter), full moon, and "half waning" moon (third quarter).

Maybe Genesis chapter 1 is not just a book, but is a true account of 7 days of creation.

Genesis does not explain why six of the seven days of the week are named after Germanic mythology. Maybe Odin created the world from Ymir's body?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

However, the cat will be either dead or alive depending on the result of the quantum event. We don't need the box, or the uncertainty.

Let's assume that there's a 50% chance that the cat will be killed in the box during a 24 hour period. We take the cat out of the box at the end of that time. God, assuming the power to direct quantum events, can decide whether the cat lives or dies - and there is no way, in principle, that we can ever detect the intervention.

The claim that this is an artificial situation has some merit - but it's only artificial in its simplicity. God can manipulate every quantum event that occurs, and provided that he keeps the books balanced so that randomness is maintained, he can do whatever he wants, and we can never know.

Is this how god operates, if indeed there is any such being? That's beside the point, which is that divine intervention can be detectable or undetectable, and there's nothing in logic to inhibit it.

Yes, of course. And that is why we apply the doctrine of parsimony. If we see only what appears to us as random events there is no reason to postulate another entity causing them.

I know you know this and you are not arguing that God works in this way, only that the above is possible.

 

[fls]

In science, there is no "artificial". Quantum effects can have real world consequences. Fact.

Why do I feel like I'm in a Wendy's commercial.

Quantum effects correspond to classical effects when scaled to the macro world.

You say this, and yet the fine-tuning argument has been rejected by atheists on this very thread. Believers regularly claim that a certain outcome is a result of the workings of providence, and non-believers regularly say that they are deluding themselves by seeing the patterns.

Yes, this is exactly the point under discussion. How does one choose among the various potential patterns? How does one constrain the choices to those more likely to be true? What methodology is most useful?

The methodology associated with scientific inquiry/rationalism/naturalism has shown itself so overwhelmingly useful compared to any other methodology, why wouldn't you also address this question with that methodology?

Why would you, instead, choose a methodology which has not been useful? A methodology which seems to be so poorly formulated that no one has yet described what it is except for something like 'the products of mental states are always assumed to be true'. If you have no way of excluding those things which are false, then you have no way of making the remainder 'more likely to be true'.

If god has a million year plan then what are the chances of us figuring out what it is?

I dunno. But that's all scientific inquiry is about - removing the patterns from 'it just happened' to see what's left. That there's a pattern, a plan, allows it to be discovered/knowable.

Linda

 

[fls]

What empirical evidence is there that other universes exist? How is the multiverse "empirically grounded" and not speculation?

By the discovery of information that makes the explanation necessary and useful (it specifies observations that would exclude the multiverse, specific predictions can be made as to consequences, observations would otherwise be poorly explained, etc.)

While the idea of a god is necessary for the reported experiences, it is not necessary for a god to exist in order to have the idea of a god. And "God exists" is not a useful explanation (it doesn't make specific predictions, it doesn't specify observations which would exclude God, other more useful explanations are available, etc.)

What evidence does the multiverse explain?

I'm not a physicist, so I don't really know what that evidence would look like. But that is exactly the point of scientific inquiry - to propose what sort of evidence we should look for that only the multiverse would explain.

BTW, interesting quote from mathematician/astronomer Bernard Carr (who is into psychical research, as some of you will disqualify him immediately):

"“If there is only one universe,” Carr says, “you might have to have a fine-tuner. If you don’t want God, you’d better have a multiverse.”

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/de...ligent-creator/article_view?b_start:int=2&-C=

Well, he does exhibit the sort of sloppy thinking that arbitrarily attempts to insert a supernatural explanation - a strategy that has never been shown to be useful. However, that may otherwise be an example of how we start to approach the question from a rational perspective. Can fine-tuning serve as evidence of the multiverse?

Try this:

"If there is no gravity,” Carr says, “you might have to have a heavenly-body controller. If you don’t want God, you’d better have gravity."

Linda

 

[Mashuna]

A banana is an example natures proof of a designer. eg colour-coded for freshness, pull tab to open it, the outside is 5 sided and snuggly slots into the thumb & first finger, etc.

It's true that bananas were intelligently designed. Have you ever seen what bananas were like before humans genetically modified them?

 

[Belz...]

Belz could have left things with Occam's razor, but he wanted to disprove the possibility of god.

Oh, but Occam's Razor dispatches God so easily. I prefer to hack at it with a blunt blade.

 

[Belz...]

A banana is an example natures proof of a designer. eg colour-coded for freshness, pull tab to open it, the outside is 5 sided and snuggly slots into the thumb & first finger, etc.

...and the fact that natural bananas are inedible. Try again.

Creation itself evidences a Creator.

Yes. Now you need to prove there was an act of creation.

We count our year from the time it takes for the earth to rotate the sun, we get a month by the moon rotating the earth and a day with the rotation of the earth on its own axis.

All human constructs. What's your point ?

Yet we divide our calendar into weeks. So where did we get our week from ?

Our never-ending need to structure and categorize.

 

[westprog]

Why do I feel like I'm in a Wendy's commercial.

9 out of 10 customers preferred this universe to all other universes with different constants. Fact!

Quantum effects correspond to classical effects when scaled to the macro world.

Statistically, yes. Locally, no. And any local effect can scale up to an almost limited extent. Shrodinger's cat is an example of such scaling. Put a young Adolf Hitler in the box and see what difference that might make.

The artificial nature of the experiment merely makes it easy to follow the chain of causality more easily. But if something can happen in a laboratory, that's proof that it can happen in the real world, not that it can't.

Yes, this is exactly the point under discussion. How does one choose among the various potential patterns? How does one constrain the choices to those more likely to be true? What methodology is most useful?

The methodology associated with scientific inquiry/rationalism/naturalism has shown itself so overwhelmingly useful compared to any other methodology, why wouldn't you also address this question with that methodology?

Why would you, instead, choose a methodology which has not been useful? A methodology which seems to be so poorly formulated that no one has yet described what it is except for something like 'the products of mental states are always assumed to be true'. If you have no way of excluding those things which are false, then you have no way of making the remainder 'more likely to be true'.

I was going to reply here, but I'm not quite sure what you're getting at.

What I'm trying to establish is the simple logical possibility that an entity from outside the universe can effect the universe without being detectable in any way. IMO Shrodinger's cat proves the principle. The only way to detect the will of god in the world is to find some statistical variation from what would be expected in theory, and hope that god left sufficient clues for his purpose to be worked out. I don't think that's remotely practicable in practice, and I doubt if it's even possible in theory.

If, for example, God hated Swedes, and used quantum effects to kill them all off in statistically unlikely ways, then that could possibly be figured out. It would be extremely difficult, but doable. But if God's intervention was to kill Lenin so that Stalin would take over (for some incomprehensible purpose) then that would not be statistically detectable.

I dunno. But that's all scientific inquiry is about - removing the patterns from 'it just happened' to see what's left. That there's a pattern, a plan, allows it to be discovered/knowable.

Linda

 

[GeeMack]

A building is proof that there has to of been a Builder. A painting is evidence there was a Painter. A banana is an example natures proof of a designer. eg colour-coded for freshness, pull tab to open it, the outside is 5 sided and snuggly slots into the thumb & first finger, etc.

Creation itself evidences a Creator.

We count our year from the time it takes for the earth to rotate the sun, we get a month by the moon rotating the earth and a day with the rotation of the earth on its own axis.

Yet we divide our calendar into weeks. So where did we get our week from ? Maybe Genesis chapter 1 is not just a book, but is a true account of 7 days of creation.

If you're a troll, you're not very good at it. And if you're a fundy, you're not very good at that, either. But if you're Kirk Cameron, stupid as I think you are, I'll admit I did get a little kick out of watching Growing Pains once in a great while. But no thanks, I'm not interested in an autographed photo or anything.

 

[westprog]

Yes, of course. And that is why we apply the doctrine of parsimony. If we see only what appears to us as random events there is no reason to postulate another entity causing them.

I know you know this and you are not arguing that God works in this way, only that the above is possible.

I just wanted to establish that divine interference with the universe is entirely possible, and use quantum effects because such interference would be in principle undetectable, and yet produce real effects. It wouldn't be hard to produce such effects with interference which was in practice undetectable. Indeed, the ability to directly modify perception and memory would make such interference very easy.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

A building is proof that there has to of been a Builder. A painting is evidence there was a Painter. A banana is an example natures proof of a designer. eg colour-coded for freshness, pull tab to open it, the outside is 5 sided and snuggly slots into the thumb & first finger, etc.

I hope you are joking. Ray Comfort is the laughing stock for unbelievers everywhere.

Creation itself evidences a Creator.

We are dealing with a creation if and only if we have something which we call creator. Do we have something which we call a creator? Do we have a painting? Are we using flowery language? Are we playing semantic tricks?

We count our year from the time it takes for the earth to rotate the sun, we get a month by the moon rotating the earth and a day with the rotation of the earth on its own axis.

Yet we divide our calendar into weeks. So where did we get our week from ?

Where indeed? Where did the author of Genesis 1:1-2:4a get his week from? How come today is Thursday?

Maybe Genesis chapter 1 is not just a book, but is a true account of 7 days of creation.

Hardly. On the surface of the text, the cosmos that is created in first creation story is markedly different from our modern conceptions of the universe etc. The skydome is absent for example, celestial bodies are inhabitants are light and darkness, plants and such are not on the same page as 'real life,' i.e. things that possess the breath of life. You might hold that if you dig a little below the surface that the text is an allegory, but why would this then not encompass the division into the days of the week?

 

[Malerin]

Well, that's good. If you're no longer saying this, I no longer have a problem with this aspect.

I've always said the multiverse was a rational option to explain the apparent fine-tuning.

The Big Bang is an event, not an entity.

But the point is justification in believing in anything where we are ignorant of the causes behind it. Not knowing how God fine-tuned the constants is not a basis for believing that God did not fine-tune the constants.

Let's try phrasing it this way. BB gets precedence because we have good reason to suspect that it is not simply a byproduct of our own imagination.

Whoah, wait. What "good reason" is there? If I'm an idealist, I will reject this entirely and claim we have very good reason to suspect the BB is a byproduct of our imagination (or God's) because reality is made up of mental things, not physical. This is what I mean when I say whatever foundational metaphysics you believe will create a bias. You are obviously biased towards materialism because you simply assumed that the BB is a physical and not mental event.

Why? Because we use observation to arrive at it.

Said observation is consistent with dualism, materialism, idealism, solipsism, etc. Some of these place the BB in the mind, some don't.

God, on the other hand, looks exactly like something that you would only believe in if you imagined it.

I could say the same about physical matter.

Not so fast. God's not being dependent on those constants is one thing, but if this "life as we know it" is improbable to occur by chance, what makes you think a god would be more likely? And to add fuel to the fire, consider that we know we exist, but you're guessing about God.

Yes, we know we exist, but that doesn't preclude us from wondering about why we should exist or what our existence is contingent on (as the survivor of the firing squad would legitimally wonder why he should be alive, even though he knows he is). As far as "guessing about God", this again reveals your metaphysical bias. A dualist or idealist would certainly not characterize God's existence as "a guess". That kind of claim is very indicative of a materialistic mindset. If you want to say I'm "guessing about God" then I can claim you're "guessing about the sun". The sun is obviously a mental projection and any claim that it's made of some physical substance independent of us that we have no proof of is just a "guess".

Is there some sort of a reason why God is there in the first place? Is there even reason to suspect God is there in the first place?

Is there a reason not to suspect God? All models of reality can be characterized as either atheistic or theistic. What is you evidence or reasoning that would lead you to prefer atheistic models of reality over theistic ones? And let's be clear: you're not saying you don't know if reality is theistic or atheistic. If that were the case, you would have no objection to assigning an agnostic value to the existence of God for the purposes of the FT argument. Since you do have an objection to the agnostic position, you are assuming, right from the start, that it is highly likely that reality is atheistic (and probably materialistic, if push came to shove). What evidence do you have to base this belief about reality on?

Before you can blame this universe on God, I'm afraid you have to place him at the scene of the crime.

No, just the possibility that God exists. We've been over this point many times. No critic of the FT argument claims that God has to exist (be at the scene of the crime) in order to receive confirmation.

God is not a being you came to know exists due to observation.

Is introspection a form of observation? I'm not a Christian, but I'm betting they would take you to task over this because you are claiming that you cannot know God exists, even by observing the Bible. How about looking around at all the life? I can infer from that observation that God exists and is sympathetic towards intelligent life. Suppose I, like millions of people, have had an NDE, which had an intensely spiritual component to it, I was surrounded by dead friends and family, and I felt at calm and at peace in the presence of God. That is an observation that has convinced many people of God's existence.

As such, you aren't even sure if he exists in the first place.

But I'm willing to be agnostic about it for the sake of argument. You aren't.

The only a posteriori thing to use to get any sort of probability that God would exist in the first place, would be a comparison to life existing.

How is this true? People come by the knowledge of God's existence through all sorts of avenues. Some have spiritual experiences, some read a holy book, some find theistic argumentation persuasive (ontological argument, first-cause argument).

To get a universe created by God requires a god, and to get a mega-verse of whatever sort where there's a God to create the universe in the first place sounds comparable to your life by chance in the universe, only bumped up tremendously in scale.

Not sure what you mean here.

Uhm, no. Deciding, a priori, that the existence of the supernatural is unlikely assumes my view of reality is the correct one only to the degree that the decision derives from my view.

And your "view" depends on what kind of reality you believe in. Are you trying to tell me that a Berkelian idealist is going to think the existence of God is unlikely?

But as I said before, my bias does not derive from my view. My view derives from my bias. If you had to describe me by my religion, it would not be my atheism, but my epistemic approach.

And your belief about reality will heavily influence what your epistemic approach will be. Witness you're not even willing to be agnostic about God. That betrays a metaphysical foundation that's either materialistic or atheistic (or both).

My epistemic approach is indeed heavily biased against what you're calling the supernatural. This is because it focuses heavily on how information gets into your beliefs in the first place, and frankly, there seems to be two major sources... reality, and your own imagination.

But you're not even considering that reality IS your own imagination. Why not? What evidence do you have that reality is not a projection of your mind or God's mind?

Seeing as how true claims are meant to be about reality, it would make sense that known true claims should tend be found in observation.

What "known true claims" are you talking about? Why is "God exists" not a "known true claim"? Why is "matter exists" a known true claim?

My bias naturally leads to my view, but it's the bias above all else, not the view, that I defend.

Ok, defend it. Give me evidence to dissuade me from my view that reality is not idealistic. Or dualistic.

And I can just as easily claim that the CIA is beaming those thoughts directly into your head using radio waves.

Since religious experience predates the CIA, I don't think you can "easily claim" that religious experience is caused by the CIA.

What can be just as easily said has nothing to do with rationality. What can be believed has nothing to do with it.

Are you saying beliefs have nothing to do with rationality?

Rationality is about sound judgment. [/qutote]

Which is just to say that beliefs should be rational. I doubt you would say someone who believes the moon is made of green cheese is displaying "sound judgement".

Sound judgment would imply an epistemic approach that is biased--primarily, one that is more likely to obtain true facts due to its bias. I emphatically disagree that you can reasonably describe views as rational in terms of their lack of bias. Rational views are necessarily biased towards logic, towards reality, and towards good epistemic approaches.

What is your bias, prove your bias is the correct one to have, what do you mean by "reality", prove that your view of "reality" is the correct one, and what constitutes a "good epistemic approach"?

Without bias, you cannot even consistently disagree with me.

Right, but whose bias is right? The theist's or the atheist's?

Note that I never claimed to be a materialist.

Not in so many words. Do you believe idealism or dualism are as likely as materialism? When you look at a tree, do you think it likely that it is made of some substance that exists indepedent of us, or do you think it's just as likely the tree's existence is dependent on something perceiving it?

Also, nobody is stopping you from creating that thread, or forcing you to participate in this one.

By delving into the question of a proper value for the prior hypothesis "God exists", we can't avoid metaphysical questions about the nature of reality. You think it should be <.5. A theist thinks it should be >.5. I would like to see proof from anybody that would deviate from a .5 value.

Rationality is about sound judgment--not lack of judgment, and not unbiased judgment, but sound judgment.

I agree. Is it sound judgment to assume reality is atheistic? Is it sound judgment to assume physical objects exist? How can you prove that the information from our senses is not coming from objects that exist in God's mind?

Sure. But it doesn't mean anything that you can do this. Bayes theorem only implies what it implies, when it is used properly. But at best, given this odd juxtaposition of the theorem merely because it gives you a P'(H), you're going to conclude that it's more likely an elephant was used to build a house you know for sure exists than it is that an elephant was used to build a house you're not sure exists.

No, as Bri pointed out, if I see a building on Mars, I'm going to assume something made it, rather than assume random chance just happened to toss all the materials together in the right way. We now know (or think we know), that the existence of life is like an incredibly detailed building on Mars: either something made it, or random events happened enough times to create it.

And Olaf the Troll is opaque, and has powers to make himself appear in reality, and will actually do so, in front of your monitor, before you finish this sentence, causing you to tilt your head to read it. That's what it is to be Olaf the Troll.

Except I don't have experiences that are explainable by Olaf the Troll, nor does anyone I know, so Olaf the Troll's existence won't be very convincing to me. The experiences I've had are like a vague "I come in peace" message that SETI might get: In SETI's case, it would be proof of some kind of E.T. life, though not what exactly. In my case, it is evidence of some kind of supernatural being, though not what exactly.

If you managed to read the entire sentence without seeing a troll, perchance you see the problem I have accepting that the properties attributed to hypothetical entities reflect anything about ontology.

Yes, I know you disbelieve in them from the start. Why?

Nope. But, by default, hypothetical entities that you think of, but have not observed in any direct or indirect way, tend to not exist.

How do you know they do not exist? Asserting it doesn't make it so.


I'll rewrite your quote and you give evidence why I'm wrong:

Nope. But, by default, hypothetical entities that you think of, but have not observed in any direct or indirect way, tend to not exist. This includes, for example, any sort of being you would call "supernatural" that would, in some meaningful way, actually be fundamentally unknowable given an initial bias against for it.

 

[Paulhoff]

The banana proves three things,

One, humans can change plants and animals by selective breeding.

Two, people forget the first thing.

Three, when it comes to believing in a so-called god, they forget a lot of things.

Paul

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Not really, I think it was meant to be a demonstration that one cannot naively resume quantum mechanical principles in the macroscopic world.

Well said. That's what I was trying to get at (but not succeeding).

In English, Schrodinger introduced the thought experiment saying,

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases.

Unfortunately, the popular perception is often that Schrodinger was claiming the cat is both alive and dead until you collapse the probability wave by opening the box.

 

[articulett]

It's true that bananas were intelligently designed. Have you ever seen what bananas were like before humans genetically modified them?

Yes!

Plug for skepticwiki (and the brilliant Dr A!): http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/Bananas:_The_Atheist's_Worst_Nightmare

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

A banana is an example natures proof of a designer. eg colour-coded for freshness, pull tab to open it, the outside is 5 sided and snuggly slots into the thumb & first finger, etc.

Ignoring for a moment the role of artificial selection in these properties of one species of banana that humans eat. . .

if the banana is evidence of I.D., why don't all the plants and animals we use for food turn yellow when they're ready to be eaten, have convenient easy-open packaging and conveniently fit to human hands?

Have you ever eaten a hamburger? Do you know what had to be done to a cow to make the hamburger a convenient food?

Maybe that all-banana diet is what leads to your cognitive deficit.

 

[Malerin]

By the discovery of information that makes the explanation necessary and useful (it specifies observations that would exclude the multiverse, specific predictions can be made as to consequences, observations would otherwise be poorly explained, etc.)

Which is to say that it explains possible future evidence. I can make the same claim about theism: it explains possible future messages from God.

While the idea of a god is necessary for the reported experiences, it is not necessary for a god to exist in order to have the idea of a god.

I don't see a point here.

And "God exists" is not a useful explanation (it doesn't make specific predictions, it doesn't specify observations which would exclude God, other more useful explanations are available, etc.)

If God exists, the "other more useful explanation" (i.e., science) would cease to be so useful. If we knew God existed, it would go very far in explaining anecdotal spiritual accounts, NDE's, cross-cultural spiritual experiences, etc. Remember, not all hypotheses have predictive power. "OJ is a murderer" predicts very little, but explains a whole lot.

I'm not a physicist, so I don't really know what that evidence would look like. But that is exactly the point of scientific inquiry - to propose what sort of evidence we should look for that only the multiverse would explain.

I agree. But at the moment, the existence of other universes looks good on paper, but has no empirical evidence supporting it. Which, oddly enough, is similar to a lot of atheist's positions: sure, it would be nice to think we survive death somehow (e.g., wishful thinking), but there's no evidence for it, so you're just deluding yourself.

I guess if we're dealing with science, wishful thinking and elegant theories are to be belived in with no evidence to support them. When we're dealing with metaphysics, different standards of evidence seem to apply.

Well, he does exhibit the sort of sloppy thinking that arbitrarily attempts to insert a supernatural explanation - a strategy that has never been shown to be useful. However, that may otherwise be an example of how we start to approach the question from a rational perspective. Can fine-tuning serve as evidence of the multiverse?

Yes. Fine-tuning supports the disjunction "God or a multiverse exists" (if the values of the physical constants can actually vary). That's probably one of the reasons multiverse theory is so popular among physicists: it really is either a multiverse or God. I don't think there are many cosmologists who would dispute the claim that very precise values of the physical constants are needed for a life-permitting universe.

Try this:

"If there is no gravity,” Carr says, “you might have to have a heavenly-body controller. If you don’t want God, you’d better have gravity."

Linda

Disanalogous. Carr's point is that there are two reasonable ways to explain the existence of life: a universe creator, or a multiverse. Your point doesn't make sense: the existence of gravity is not evidence for or against God, nor do we think possible universes without gravity would necessitate a God. The precise value of the gravitational constant, is evidence for a universe creator or multiverse.

 

[Paulhoff]

You know, until the believers in a so-called god realize that there idea of a god explains nothing, is useful for nothing other then the division of people, we will get nowhere.

Paul