True Skeptics Cannot be Religious

[Beth]

Perhaps not, but the one you described would be. The person could simply write down their dreams in detail, submit them to a third party who dates them and places them in a safe place. Then compare what actually occurs with what is in the dreams. If someone had the ability, their dreams should come true much more often than not. If not, then this is evidence (not necessarily proof, but evidence) that they had no special ability.

What, if only 49% of your dreams come true, it doesn't count as a psychic ability? I don't think we need to claim that dreams later happening must occur much more often than not to provide evidence of psychic abilities. The people I've known that have claimed to have such dreams only had them rarely; the people I find believable only claim to have them once in great while, not on a nightly basis which is what you're implying by "much more often than not". How often could you have such dreams before you found it convincing evidence even if you couldn't prove it to anyone else? Once? Twice? A dozen?

Keeping such a dream log wouldn't necessarily constitute scientific caliber evidence nor even be particularly convincing to others. For example, lets say you keep a dream journal and have it safely put away by some other party. You write down in your dream journal about meeting a man with brown hair and glasses on a bus. Sometime later, perhaps a few days or a few weeks, while riding a bus you meet the person you saw in your dream.

While you know, because you had the dream, the person you met was a perfect match to the person you saw in your dream, you cannot prove it to anyone else, not even the person keeping your dream journal in a safe place. There is no way that anyone but you can know how closely your dream vision matched the reality. You find it compelling because you remember your dream and you know that in addition to the hair color and the glasses, the skin tone, the shape of the nose and the lips and cheekbones were all a match to your dream. Perhaps even details about the surroundings, such as where he sat on the bus, matched up with your dream. But you cannot write down all such details in your journal nor can you take a photograph of your dream. I suppose if you happen to be a talented artist with adequate time to sketch out all your dream scenes, you could include those in your dream journal, but unless you also take a photograph of the stranger on the bus to compare with the sketch, it still doesn't constitute evidence for other people.

Now, assume it wasn't your dream, but someone else's. Would you believe someone who described such an experience was prescient, even if they produced a written record of their dream certified as having been written prior to the actual reality? Would you consider it evidence - not proof, but evidence of psychic abilities?

If these anecdotal experiences were compelling enough to give a person a valid reason for believing, then even a skeptic might believe if there is no evidence to the contrary. I would argue that there would likely be evidence to the contrary.

Evidence to the contrary all comes from people who have attempted to produce such things on demand. If you cannot produce your prescience dreams on demand, then the evidence you have available would tell you that such psychic powers exist but are not amenable to testing.

Beth

 

[luchog]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fluffy The One Navel Of Goodness

Asimov said it best: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Actually, that was Arthur C. Clarke, and is known as Clarke's Law.

 

[jmercer]

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Actually, that was Arthur C. Clarke, and is known as Clarke's Law.

Yep - thanks, you're right, of course.

 

[CaptainManacles]

No sarcasm intended, but I'd still love to hear someone define a reasonable way to verify God's existence

If, after inventing the plane, we discovered that at every lightning storm, there was Thor, above the clouds, shooting down lighting bolts. That would be pretty good evidence for Thor's existence.

God is no more difficult to verify than any other phenominon. He is only difficult to verify in the sense that he doesn't exist. Regardless of all the evidence of this, somehow people still continue to believe or remain neutral on the issue.

 

[Bri]

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It would sure go a long way toward that goal... but I can point to a potential example of apparently creating something out of nothing.

So-called "imaginary" particle pairs bubble up out of quantum foam and then cancel each other out. (One's a "posi-particle" and the other one is an "anti-particle". This happens constantly, and -literally - everywhere.

A "particle pair" isn't a rubber ducky. What if God made a rubber ducky appear on request inside of a jar filled with nothing (a vacuum) under completely controlled conditions? Better yet, what if you could request what object would appear?

What if God agreed to perform any such miracle upon request, in completely controlled environments? Sure some of them might be reproducable by trickery of some sort under certain circumstances, but there would certainly be a point where this sort of evidence for the existance of God would far outweigh the evidence against it.

Not to mention that God could just make us all believe in his existance. But that would be cheating -- or would it?

I have to say that in the last few days the quality of the posts and the value of the ideas exchanged in this thread have gone way up.

I agree!

-Bri

 

[jmercer]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fluffy The One Navel Of Goodn

A "particle pair" isn't a rubber ducky. What if God made a rubber ducky appear on request inside of a jar filled with nothing (a vacuum) under completely controlled conditions? Better yet, what if you could request what object would appear?

What if God agreed to perform any such miracle upon request, in completely controlled environments? Sure some of them might be reproducable by trickery of some sort under certain circumstances, but there would certainly be a point where this sort of evidence for the existance of God would far outweigh the evidence against it.

Not to mention that God could just make us all believe in his existance. But that would be cheating -- or would it?

-Bri [/B]

But even if God performed any given task - how would we discern the difference between the feats that a "supreme being" could perform and a member of a "merely" highly advanced race?

Take one of today's illusionists or magicians; stick them back in time, say... 10,000 years ago. How would they be perceived? (For that matter, how was Pizarro and his men perceived by the Incans?

My problem with miracles is that a miracle should violate physics. But until we know all there is to know about physics, how could we possibly tell if an event truly violated physics? What may appear miraculous might simply be the exploitation of physical laws that we aren't aware of via sufficiently advanced technology.

 

[jmercer]

If, after inventing the plane, we discovered that at every lightning storm, there was Thor, above the clouds, shooting down lighting bolts. That would be pretty good evidence for Thor's existence.

Fair enough. Or it could simply be evidence that the people who drew Thor on those Saturday morning cartoons got it all wrong. Alternatively, the original worshipers of Thor may also have gotten it all wrong, too.

God is no more difficult to verify than any other phenominon. He is only difficult to verify in the sense that he doesn't exist. Regardless of all the evidence of this, somehow people still continue to believe or remain neutral on the issue.

Ok... since you've said "Regardless of all the evidence", then please show me all the evidence demonstrating God doesn't exist. In the meantime, I'll be happy to point you to all the evidence lying around stating that He does exist. Mind you, it's pretty poor evidence by scientific and/or skeptical standards... but there's a whole lot of it to look at.

 

[Anders W. Bonde]

jmercer,

I'm game - I would love for you to point out just some piece of evidence for the existence of an entity that by broad consent may be termed a god!

I think part of the difficulty in discussing these matters is one of definition. Whatever evidence presented needs to be consistent with the definition of the particular 'god' the evidence is intended to support or reject.

But then again, why propose any 'god' concept in the first place? What would the existence of 'god', other than as a philosphical construct, explain better or more coherently than a worldview where the concept of 'god' is not included?

I may be - nay, I am - thickheaded, but I simply cannot understand why anyone finds the 'god' concept (depending on definition, of course, but let's take the Abrahamistic tradition as an example) necessary at all? What difference does the concept of 'god' make? As far as I can tell its totally unnecessary - it doesn't make me understand the World, me or my relationship to it any better than a worldview where no concepts of 'god' exist - that again depending on definition of 'god', of course!

 

[Bri]

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But even if God performed any given task - how would we discern the difference between the feats that a "supreme being" could perform and a member of a "merely" highly advanced race?

If someone has made such a leap in technology that they have violated modern physics (and won the million dollar challenge), then they deserve to be called a god.

For all intents and purposes, if it violates all known physics, it would be a supernatural being and we'd have a lot of rethinking to do regardless. If science figures out how a "true" god works, would it cease to be a god? If this "advanced being" claims to be a god and can unquestionably perform miracles, then...well if it quacks like a god, then it's a god.

Sure, if we figure out how those miracles are done, they cease to be miracles, at which point we can stop calling him a god if we want to, and then question whether a real gods exist ("I mean, making rubber duckies appear out of thin air is SO, like, last melinnium!").

Take one of today's illusionists or magicians; stick them back in time, say... 10,000 years ago. How would they be perceived? (For that matter, how was Pizarro and his men perceived by the Incans?

So far I don't see any magicians from the future walking around the earth (except, of course, for Mr. Randi). If they are, then they have a compelling reason not to make themselves known to us, and are likely inconsequential to us.

My problem with miracles is that a miracle should violate physics. But until we know all there is to know about physics, how could we possibly tell if an event truly violated physics? What may appear miraculous might simply be the exploitation of physical laws that we aren't aware of via sufficiently advanced technology.

Well, by definition nothing can violate physics. If something does, then our understanding of physics is wrong. A true god might actually violate physics, but then again that would simply mean that our understanding of physics (which doesn't currently allow for the existance of gods) is wrong.

Perhaps the only way for science to truly recognize a god is for him to bring into existance an exact replica of the universe from nothing. Then there would be little doubt that he would be at least equal to any notion of a god that includes that god creating the universe.

-Bri

 

[Robin]

You could justifiably accuse me of being vague in my definition of "God". Without a definition, how can one argue for or against existence? Sorry. I'm Unitarian, I'm comfortable with that (no this does not contradict my earlier statement that I'm a self-labelled Christian). I've often said that I would have been burned at the stake in most periods of Christian history for my "Christian" beliefs.

I have no problem with your position. There is a certain commonality of religious belief in the world and this may be a shared psychological trait or it may be some external principle that everybody is responding to and interpreting according to their own culture. In either case then it might make sense for somebody to respond to this according to the traditions of their own culture if it were perceived to be beneficial.

I can see no way in which this hypothesis might be tested by science but that does not mean that it could not be tested by science. If it was something external to each individual that was the principle guiding religious behaviour then it could be potentially tested by science.

 

[Robin]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fluffy The One Navel Of Goodness

No sarcasm intended, but I'd still love to hear someone define a reasonable way to verify God's existence.

That is the easy part, as long as God wanted it to happen and we understand that verification of a hypothesis works the same way with God as it does with science. We should not expect any lower or higher level of evidence for God. So for example if double blind studies of prayer showed significant effects then this can be counted as evidence for God. It does not mean that there is no more room for skepticism but in this case it is no different from most scientific research. If prayers were only efficacious when directed to a certain deity then this can be counted as evidence for that deity. If faith healing passed the same scrutiny that drug therapies undergo this can be added.

If appeals to God were shown to correlate significantly to massive changes in the DNA of bacteria under laboratory conditions this can also count as evidence for. If more spectacular examples were required we could have pulsars that suddenly started producing scripture in morse code, or passages from the Upanishads encoded into ancient DNA.

Built up this way you could certainly verify the existence of an intelligent power capable of doing all the things attributed to God. In other words you have verified the existence of God (even if you still don't really know what God is).

I don't confuse the question of God with religion because they're not the same.

But religion does serve the purpose of fixing a definition.

That's a good question; the issue is that I have no idea why God (if He exists) does anything at all, especially why he would spend time with a bunch of silly apes like us

I presume that if there is a God then he knows best what sort of soil is best for growing souls - maybe the mind of a silly ape is just perfect.

That question has bothered me for a while, and it's one of the things that pushed me toward agnosticism; but it's not evidence of anything. It just raises doubts. (Or should, at any rate.) [/B]

I didn't intend it as evidence, just illustration.

 

[jmercer]

jmercer,

I'm game - I would love for you to point out just some piece of evidence for the existence of an entity that by broad consent may be termed a god!

My pleasure. Weak, anecdotal - but evidence.

I think part of the difficulty in discussing these matters is one of definition. Whatever evidence presented needs to be consistent with the definition of the particular 'god' the evidence is intended to support or reject.

While I tend to agree with this, I also ask that we keep in mind that any definition of a particular God comes not from the God, but from humans. There's no guarantee that any definition from humans will even come close to matching a real deity's characteristics; we do anthropomorphize things, especially those things greater than us that we don't really understand.

But then again, why propose any 'god' concept in the first place? What would the existence of 'god', other than as a philosphical construct, explain better or more coherently than a worldview where the concept of 'god' is not included?

Oh, it doesn't, not at all. In fact, it's another reason I have doubts about the existence of God. The existence of God is simply a different construct, and one that doesn't seem better suited to the job of explaining the universe. That doesn't mean it's not true, of course... just inelegant. And it wouldn't be the first time that my preferred explanation was the wrong one.

I may be - nay, I am - thickheaded, but I simply cannot understand why anyone finds the 'god' concept (depending on definition, of course, but let's take the Abrahamistic tradition as an example) necessary at all? What difference does the concept of 'god' make? As far as I can tell its totally unnecessary - it doesn't make me understand the World, me or my relationship to it any better than a worldview where no concepts of 'god' exist - that again depending on definition of 'god', of course!

I think the question of necessity is an interesting one, and a strong argument against the existence of God. On the other hand, I don't really see dreams as particularly necessary either - but I accept that they happen.

The concept of God (for many) provides them with a comforting sense of purpose to the universe, a sense of structure and intention. "God's in charge, so there's a reason for everything" as opposed to the idea that the world is a chaotic place... and the only purpose to it is whatever purpose we, as humans, embrace. Then there's the afterlife; comforting thought... "when we die, we don't end." Let's face it - the idea of dying is terrifying for most people, and believing that they'll continue to exist after death is a comfort for many of them.

I don't have a problem with the universe either way; vast, uncaring and chaotic or vast, uncaring and driven by God's choices. From my perspective, I'm still limited in my ability to respond to things no matter what the source.

 

[jmercer]

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That is the easy part, as long as God wanted it to happen and we understand that verification of a hypothesis works the same way with God as it does with science. We should not expect any lower or higher level of evidence for God. So for example if double blind studies of prayer showed significant effects then this can be counted as evidence for God. It does not mean that there is no more room for skepticism but in this case it is no different from most scientific research. If prayers were only efficacious when directed to a certain deity then this can be counted as evidence for that deity. If faith healing passed the same scrutiny that drug therapies undergo this can be added.

If appeals to God were shown to correlate significantly to massive changes in the DNA of bacteria under laboratory conditions this can also count as evidence for. If more spectacular examples were required we could have pulsars that suddenly started producing scripture in morse code, or passages from the Upanishads encoded into ancient DNA.

Built up this way you could certainly verify the existence of an intelligent power capable of doing all the things attributed to God. In other words you have verified the existence of God (even if you still don't really know what God is).

Always assuming a cooperative God... and the lack of another explanation, such as massed prayer affecting reality. (Paranormal activity, etc.)

But religion does serve the purpose of fixing a definition.

I presume that if there is a God then he knows best what sort of soil is best for growing souls - maybe the mind of a silly ape is just perfect.

I didn't intend it as evidence, just illustration.

It's a good illustration. And I agree with your statement about religion serving that particular purpose; however, it wouldn't shock me one iota to find out that it screwed up even that.

 

[Bri]

Oh, it doesn't, not at all. In fact, it's another reason I have doubts about the existence of God. The existence of God is simply a different construct, and one that doesn't seem better suited to the job of explaining the universe. That doesn't mean it's not true, of course... just inelegant. And it wouldn't be the first time that my preferred explanation was the wrong one.

Now, I can see why people believe in God. There are plenty of reasons, some more valid than others, some of which we've discussed already. To opportunity for free will, having a solid system of ethics, being important in the universe, and being part of a strong social group are some of them. Not to get into a discussion of free will, but that's probably a biggie for a lot of people (science says we can't have free will, but God allows for it). I, for one, can fully understand how some find it extremely tempting to believe in a god if it means that we are more than just robots.

There are also many things that God can explain that science cannot. Name me something that science cannot explain and I'll give you an example.

The concept of God (for many) provides them with a comforting sense of purpose to the universe, a sense of structure and intention. "God's in charge, so there's a reason for everything" as opposed to the idea that the world is a chaotic place... and the only purpose to it is whatever purpose we, as humans, embrace. Then there's the afterlife; comforting thought... "when we die, we don't end." Let's face it - the idea of dying is terrifying for most people, and believing that they'll continue to exist after death is a comfort for many of them.

There you go -- more reasons to believe in God.

I don't have a problem with the universe either way; vast, uncaring and chaotic or vast, uncaring and driven by God's choices. From my perspective, I'm still limited in my ability to respond to things no matter what the source.

Science would indicate that we don't have the ability to "respond" to anything in a meaningful way since we're essentially just robots. Every response you make, every choice you make, everything you do, was actually determined for you millions of years before you were born. I find the idea of someone else making my choices for me at least as disturbing as the existance of a god.

-Bri

 

[Robin]

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Always assuming a cooperative God... and the lack of another explanation, such as massed prayer affecting reality. (Paranormal activity, etc.)

No problem with the second point - just ensure the people praying are technically unsophisticated. That will show that there is some intelligence between them and the result.

The first point is a little harder to get around.

 

[Bri]

What, if only 49% of your dreams come true, it doesn't count as a psychic ability?

You would probably need to do controls with people who didn't claim any psychic ability and compare the results of the psychics to those of the common folk. If there is a statistically signficiant increase in "hits" from the psychics, you might have a basis for belief.

I don't think we need to claim that dreams later happening must occur much more often than not to provide evidence of psychic abilities.

Isn't the whole point that the psychic has an ability that a non-psychic doesn't? If we all have the ability, then the ability isn't special. If the ability isn't useful in any way, then it's also not particularly special. In order for something to be believed, one should first examine the evidence, then examine whether there are any reasons to believe. I see no reason to believe in a psychic ability that has no use.

The people I've known that have claimed to have such dreams only had them rarely; the people I find believable only claim to have them once in great while, not on a nightly basis which is what you're implying by "much more often than not". How often could you have such dreams before you found it convincing evidence even if you couldn't prove it to anyone else? Once? Twice? A dozen?

Many "psychics" actually only recognize that a dream predicted a future event after that event already occurred. Of course, they forget or ignore all of the dreams that didn't come true. This is not a phychic ability at all since it is true of all people (every once in a while a dream will come true).

Unless the psychic's dreams came true a very large percentage of the time so that they could be used to predict the future with a useful amount of accuracy, or unless the psychic could "tell" which dreams are going to come true and which aren't, the psychic's abilities are pretty useless.

But let's say that a psychic "knows" when a dream they've had is going to come true. Simply comparing the psychic's selected dreams against random dreams of a large number of people who don't claim any psychic abilities would determine whether the psychic's dreams were more useful at predicting the future than the average person's. If the psychic consistently performed significantly better (statistically speaking) than the non-psychics this would indicate that the psychic might have a useful ability, at least moreso than the average person.

Keeping such a dream log wouldn't necessarily constitute scientific caliber evidence nor even be particularly convincing to others. For example, lets say you keep a dream journal and have it safely put away by some other party. You write down in your dream journal about meeting a man with brown hair and glasses on a bus. Sometime later, perhaps a few days or a few weeks, while riding a bus you meet the person you saw in your dream.

Of course you would not want the person being tested to keep their own journal or make determinations about how closely dreams matched reality. There would also have to be some third-party documentation of events that the psychic claims to be a "match," which might be difficult. Difficult, but not impossible. In your example above, the psychic could carry around a camera and take pictures of things that were predicted in the dream journal. Things become even easier if the psychic is willing to make very specific predictions that could later be validated (this would also demonstrate a more useful kind of psychic ability). Psychics are tested all the time (and always fail at what they themselves claim to believe they can do).

Evidence to the contrary all comes from people who have attempted to produce such things on demand. If you cannot produce your prescience dreams on demand, then the evidence you have available would tell you that such psychic powers exist but are not amenable to testing.

Your example isn't a very good one because it's testable (most claims of that type are testable).

It might be possible to come up with an example that somehow isn't testable, and then I would probably say that if you have valid reasons for believing in it, then you can still be a skeptic and believe in it. That doesn't mean that I would also believe it. I might not find your reasons to be compelling enough to believe in it, or I might have my own reasons for not choosing to believe in it, but the very nature of something being untestable is that it might actually be true.

-Bri

 

[CaptainManacles]

Fair enough. Or it could simply be evidence that the people who drew Thor on those Saturday morning cartoons got it all wrong. Alternatively, the original worshipers of Thor may also have gotten it all wrong, too.

I'm confused at your points about Thor. Your contentions seem senseless. I don't mean that as an attack on your points, I honestly simply do not understand what you are saying in that first paragraph.

Ok... since you've said "Regardless of all the evidence", then please show me all the evidence demonstrating God doesn't exist. In the meantime, I'll be happy to point you to all the evidence lying around stating that He does exist. Mind you, it's pretty poor evidence by scientific and/or skeptical standards... but there's a whole lot of it to look at.

No consistant observable phenominon that could be, within reason, possibly attributed to god, such as answered prayer, miracles, communication, or physical presence. If god comes down to earth, says hello, explains how he created the universe, his explination matches the data perfectly and continues to explain new data and create new scientific horizons, he fires off a couple miracles, answers some of my prayers. Then yes, I would be a "believer". Seem unreasonable? Only if you can't see through your theistic culture. Imagine the same arguements for god applied to any other area of someone's life, and you'll see how silly it is.

 

[Robin]

Your example isn't a very good one because it's testable (most claims of that type are testable).

It might be possible to come up with an example that somehow isn't testable, and then I would probably say that if you have valid reasons for believing in it, then you can still be a skeptic and believe in it. That doesn't mean that I would also believe it. I might not find your reasons to be compelling enough to believe in it, or I might have my own reasons for not choosing to believe in it, but the very nature of something being untestable is that it might actually be true.

-Bri

Well psi isn't testable since most people who claim such abilities usually claim that skepticism creates an environment hostile to demonstrating the ability.

Since the very act of testing the ability implies skepticism and will nullify the ability then it is absolutely untestable.

So psi is untestable, but people believe it on the evidence they have seen, for example a psychic says to an audience "I'm getting an 'S' that has something to do with the leisure industry" and sure enough someone has an Uncle Sam that ran a water skiing company, and this is convincing because how could he have known that beforehand?

But test the ability and suddenly you have created a hostile environment and the ability goes away.

So is Van Praagh's astonished audience member a skeptic?

Is the person who says that they believe Van Praagh doesn't have psychic powers being irrational, since it is impossible to prove that he doesn't?

 

[jmercer]

I'm confused at your points about Thor. Your contentions seem senseless. I don't mean that as an attack on your points, I honestly simply do not understand what you are saying in that first paragraph.

Sorry - I didn't mean to be unclear. What I'm saying is that religions are probably not a very good source for an accurate description of any given God(s). There are many reasons for that, but the fundamental one is that religions are created by people about entities that are supposedly so far beyond human that there's no real comparison.

Using religion to disprove God is as fallacious as using religion to prove the existence of God.

No consistant observable phenominon that could be, within reason, possibly attributed to god, such as answered prayer, miracles, communication, or physical presence. If god comes down to earth, says hello, explains how he created the universe, his explination matches the data perfectly and continues to explain new data and create new scientific horizons, he fires off a couple miracles, answers some of my prayers. Then yes, I would be a "believer". Seem unreasonable? Only if you can't see through your theistic culture. Imagine the same arguements for god applied to any other area of someone's life, and you'll see how silly it is.

Hey, you asked for evidence. You didn't specify scientific evidence - and the bible (and personal testimonies) are indeed evidence. Weak, anecdotal evidence, but evidence nonetheless.

 

[Donn]

Originally posted by Donn
Like the agnostic, the agnostic psychic admits that s/he doesn't know for certain whether psi exists or not, but simply states a belief that psi does exist. This is a perfectly reasonable belief -- even for a skeptic -- if s/he has valid reasons for believing it, especially without evidence to the contrary.

Yes. That seems quite rational and reasonable to me. Beth

I guess this is where I don't grok it:
Valid reasons = Evidence
Valid reasons != Lack of evidence

Without evidence, what reason could be valid?

PS - Please put me out of my misery and link me to a larger image of your avatar! I just can't make head or tails of it