Karl Popper
footnote numbers taken over from part 1.
Not Facts but Verisimilitude:
Karl Popper (1902-1994) is one of the most renewed and highly respected figures in the philosophy of science. Popper was from Vienna, of Jewish origin, maintained a youthful flirtation with Marxism, and left his native land due to the rise of Nazism in the late thirties. He is considered to be among the ranks of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Popper is highly respected by scientists in a way that most philosophers of science are not.[15]
He was also a social and political philosopher of considerable stature, a self-professed ‘critical-rationalist’, a dedicated opponent of all forms of scepticism, conventionalism, and relativism in science and in human affairs generally, a committed advocate and staunch defender of the ‘Open Society’, and an implacable critic of totalitarianism in all of its forms. One of the many remarkable features of Popper's thought is the scope of his intellectual influence. In the modern technological and highly-specialised world scientists are rarely aware of the work of philosophers; it is virtually unprecedented to find them queuing up, as they have done in Popper's case, to testify to the enormously practical beneficial impact which that philosophical work has had upon their own. But notwithstanding the fact that he wrote on even the most technical matters with consummate clarity, the scope of Popper's work is such that it is commonplace by now to find that commentators tend to deal with the epistemological, scientific and social elements of his thought as if they were quite disparate and unconnected, and thus the fundamental unity of his philosophical vision and method has to a large degree been dissipated.[16]
Unfortunately for our purposes we will only be able to skim the surface of Popper’s thoughts on the most crucial aspect of this theory of science, that science is not about proving things but about falsifying them.
Above we see that Dawkins, Stenger and company place their faith in the probability engineered by scientific facts. The problem is probability is not the basis upon which one chooses one theory over another, at least according to Popper. This insight forms the basis of this notion that science can give us verisimilitude not “facts.” Popper never uses the phrase “fortress of facts,” we could add that, science is not a fortress of facts. Science is not giving us “truth,” its’ giving something in place of truth, “verisimilitude.” The term verisimilar means “having the appearance of truth, or probable.” Or it can also mean “depicting realism” as in art or literature.”[17] According to Popper in choosing between two theories one more probable than the other, if one is interested I the informative content of the theory, one should choose the less probable. This is paradoxical but the reason is that probability and informative content very inversely. The higher informative content of a theory is more predictive since the more information contained in a statement the greater the number of ways the statement will turn out to fail or be proved wrong. At that rate mystical experience should be the most scientific view point. If this dictum were applied to a choice between Stenger’s atheism and belief in God mystical God belief would be more predictive and have less likelihood of being wrong because it’s based upon not speaking much about what one experiences as truth. We will see latter that this is actually the case in terms of certain kinds of religious experiences. I am not really suggesting that the two can be compared. They are two different kinds of knowledge. Even though mystical experience per se can be falsified (which will be seen in subsequent chapters) belief in God over all can’t be. The real point is that arguing that God is less probable is not a scientifically valid approach.
Thus the statements which are of special interest to the scientist are those with a high informative content and (consequentially) a low probability, which nevertheless come close to the truth. Informative content, which is in inverse proportion to probability, is in direct proportion to testability. Consequently the severity of the test to which a theory can be subjected, and by means of which it is falsified or corroborated, is all-important.[18]
Scientific criticism of theories must be piecemeal. We can’t question every aspect of a theory at once. For this reason one must accept a certain amount of background knowledge. We can’t have absolute certainty. Science is not about absolute certainty, thus rather than speak of “truth” we speak of “verisimilitude.” No single observation can be taken to falsify a theory. There is always the possibility that the observation is mistaken, or that the assumed background knowledge is faulty.[19] Uneasy with speaking of “true” theories or ideas, or that a corroborated theory is “true,” Popper asserted that a falsified theory is known to be false. He was impressed by Tarski’s 1963 reformulation of the corresponded theory of truth. That is when Popper reformulated his way of speaking to frame the concept of “truth-likeness” or “verisimilitude,” according to Thronton.[20] I wont go into all the ramifications of verisimilitude, but Popper has an extensive theory to cover the notion. Popper’s notions of verisimilitude were critixized by thinkers in the 70’s such as Miller, Tichy’(grave over the y) and Grunbaum (umlaut over the first u) brought out problems with the concept. In an attempt to repair the theory Popper backed off claims to being able to access the numerical levels of verisimilitude between two theories.[21] The resolution of this problem has not diminished the admiration for Popper or his acceptance in the world of philosophy of science. Nor is the solution settled in the direction of acceptance for the fortress of facts. Science is not closer to the fact making business just because there are problems with verisimilitude.
Science doesn’t prove but Falsifies
The aspect of Popper’s theory for which he is best known is probably the idea of falsification. In 1959 He published the Logic of Scientific Discovery in which he rigorously and painstakingly demonstrated why science can’t prove but can only disprove, or falsify. Popper begins by observing that science uses inductive methods and thus is thought to be marked and defined by this approach. By the use of the inductive approach science moves from “particular statements,” such as the result of an experiment, to universal statements such as an hypothesis or theories. Yet, Popper observes, the fallacy of this kind of reasoning has always been known. Regardless of how many times we observe white swans “this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.”[22] He points out this is the problem of universal statements, which can’t be grounded in experience because experience is not universal, at least not human experience. One might observe this is also a problem of empirical observation. Some argue that we can know universal statements to be true by experience; this is only true if the experiences are universal as well. Such experience can only be a singular statement. This puts it in the same category with the original problem so it can’t do any better.[23] The only way to resolve the problem of induction, Popper argues, is to establish a principle of induction. Such a principle would be a statement by which we could put inductive inferences into logically acceptable form. He tells us that upholders of the need for such a principle would say that without science can’t provide truth or falsehood of its theories.[24]
The principle can’t be a purely logical statement such as tautology or a prori reasoning, if it could there would be no problem of induction. This means it must be a synthetic statement, empirically derived. Then he asked “how can we justify statement on rational grounds?” [25] After all he’s just demonstrated that an empirical statement can’t be the basis of a universal principle. Then to conclude that there must be a universal principle of logic that justifies induction knowing that it ahs to be an empirical statement, just opens up the problem again. He points out that Reichenbach[26] would point that such the principle of induction is accepted by all of science.[27] Against Reinchenback he sties Hume.[28] Popper glosses over Kant’s attempt at a prori justification of syetnic a priori statements.[29] In the end Popper disparages finding a solution and determines that induction is not the hallmark of science. Popper argues that truth alludes science since it’s only real ability is to produce probability. Probability and not truth is what science can produce. “…but scientific statements can only attain continuous degrees of probability whose unattainable upper and lower limits are truth and falsity’.”[30] He goes on to argue against probability as a measure of inductive logic.[31] Then he’s going to argue for an approach he calls “deductive method of testing.. In this case he argues that an hypothesis can only be empirically tested and only after it has been advanced. [32]
What has been established so far is enough to destroy the fortress of facts of idea. The defeat of a principle of induction as a means of understanding truth is primary defeat for the idea that science is going about establishing a big pile of facts. What all of this is driving at of course is the idea that science is not so much the process of fact discovery as it is the process of elimination of bad idea taken as fact. Science doesn’t prove facts it disproves hypotheses.. Falsifying theories is the real business of science. It’s the comparison to theory in terms of what is left after falsification has been done that makes for a seeming ‘truth-likeness,’ or verisimilitude. Falsification is a branch of what Popper calls “Demarcation.” This issue refers to the domain or the territory of the scientists work. Induction does not mark out the proper demarcation. The criticism he is answering in discussing demarcation is that removing induction removes for science it’s most important distinction from metaphysical speculation. He states that this is precisely his reason for rejecting induction because “it does not provide a suitable distinguishing mark of the empirical non metaphysical character of a theoretical system,”[33] this is what he calls “demarcation.”
Popper writes with reference to positivistic philosophers as the sort of umpires of scientific mythology. He was a philosopher and the project of the positivists was to “clear away the clutter” (in the words of A.J. Ayer) for science so it could get on with it’s work. Positivistic philosophers were the janitors of science. Positivists had developed the credo that “meaningful statements” (statements of empirical science) must be statements that are “fully decided.” That is to say, they had to be both falsifiable and verifiable. The requirement for verifiable is really a requirement similar to the notion of proving facts, or truth. Verifiability is not the same thing as facticiy or proof it’s easy to see how psychologically it reinforces th sense that science is about proving things. He quotes several positivists in reinforcing this idea: Thus Schlick says: “. . . a genuine statement must be capable of conclusive verification” Waismann says, “If there is no possible way to determine whether a statement is true then that statement has no meaning whatsoever. For the meaning of a statement is the method of its verification.”[34] Yet Popper disagrees with them. He writes that there is no such thing as induction. He discusses particular statements which are verified by experience just opens up the same issues he launched in the beginning one cannot derive universal statements from experience. “Therefore, theories are never theories are never empirically verifiable. He argues that the only way to deal with the demarcation problem is to admit statements that are not empirically verified.[35]
But I shall certainly admit a system as empirical or scientific only if it
is capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest
that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a
criterion of demarcation. In other words: I shall not require of a
Scientific system that it shall be capable of being singled out, once and
for all, in a positive sense; but I shall require that its logical form shall
be such that it can be singled out, by means of empirical tests, in a
negative sense: it must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience.[36]
What this means in relation to the “fortress of facts” idea is that it transgresses upon the domain of science. Compiling a fortress of facts is beyond the scope of science and also denudes science of it’s domain.
He deals with the objection that science is supposed to give us positive knowledge and to reduce it to a system of falsification only negates its major purpose. He deals with this by saying this criticism carries little weight since the amount of positive information is greater the more likely it is to clash. The reason being laws of nature get more done the more they act as a limit on possibility, in other words, he puts it, “not for nothing do we call the laws of nature laws. They more they prohibit the more they say.”[37]
[15] Steven Thornton, “Karl Popper,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Winter 2011 edition Edward N. Zalta Editor, URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/popper/ vested 2/6/2012
[16] ibid
[17] Miriam-Webster. M-W.com On line version of Webster’s dictionary. URL: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/verisimilar?show=0&t=1328626983 visited 2/7/2012
[18] Thornton, ibid.
[19] ibid
[20] ibid
[21] ibid
[22] Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London, New York:Routledge Classics, original English publication 1959 by Hutchison and co. by Routldege 1992. On line copy URL: http://www.cosmopolitanuniversity.ac/library/LogicofScientificDiscoveryPopper1959.pdf digital copy by Cosmo oedu visited 2/6/2012, p4
[23] ibid
[24] ibid
[25] ibid, 5
[26] Hans Reinchenbach (1891-1953) German philosopher, attended Einstein’s lectures and contributed to work on Quantum Mechanics. He fled Germany to escape Hitler wound up teaching at UCLA.
[27] Popper, ibid, referece to , H. Reichenbach, Erkenntnis 1, 1930, p. 186 (cf. also pp. 64 f.). Cf. the penultimate paragraph of Russell’s chapter xii, on Hume, in his History of Western Philosophy, 1946,
p. 699.
[28] ibid, Popper, 5
[29] ibid, 6
[30] ibid 6
[31] ibid, 7
[32] ibid
[33] ibid 11
[34] ibid, 17, references to Schlick, Naturwissenschaften 19, 1931, p. 150. and Waismann, Erkenntnis 1, 1903, p. 229.
[35] Ibid 18
[36] ibid
[37] ibid, 19 the quotation about laws is found on p 19 but the over all argument is developed over sections 31-46 spanning pages 95-133.
God.Science, and ideology, by Joseph Hinman, is a great book. Ot argues that positions which teach the superiority of science over religion in such a way as to negate the truth content of the religious is not a scientific position but an ideological one. The books takes down such atheist greats as Dawkins and discusses the strongest God arguments.
This is an important book that spans an immense literature in a balanced and very readable form. For anyone interested in why some believe and others do not, this book will inform you of the entire range of literature in which not only can the proper questions be asked, but the reader can evaluate the often hidden ideological nature in which answers are proposed
Ralph W. Hood, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology and LeRoy A. Martin Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies
"Hinman is highly stimulating, brilliant in places. It is rare to find a book so exuberant yet still rational."
--Lantz Fleming Miller, Ashoka University
https://www.amazon.com/God-Science-Ideology-examining-religious-scientific/dp/0982408765
27 comments:
Popper never uses the phrase “fortress of facts,” we could add that, science is not a fortress of facts. Science is not giving us “truth,” its’ giving something in place of truth, “verisimilitude.”
- I have never heard any scientist (including Dawkins and Stenger) or philosopher of science use the phrase "fortress of facts". This raises the question: Where do you get this from? Isn't it true that you are inventing some kind of stereotype with negative connotations that you can use as a means of disparaging people who rely on factual information in formulating their theories and beliefs?
"Popper disparages finding a solution and determines that induction is not the hallmark of science."
- I fear that you are not digging deep enough to get the full meaning of Popper. Is he saying that induction is bad? No. Is he saying that induction is not a valid part of scientific reasoning? No. Science has always relied on observation and inductive reasoning to to formulate hypotheses. But we shouldn't regard the hypothesis as the final truth. In fact, if there is a "hallmark of science", it is the understanding that any hypothesis or theory is subject to disproof, or to being replaced by a better hypothesis.
"According to Popper in choosing between two theories one more probable than the other, if one is interested I the informative content of the theory, one should choose the less probable."
- I think you are on the verge of committing a serious error here. You appear to be undercutting the real meaning of "informative content", and using "less probable" as a simplistic way of substituting something that is also improbable, but lacks real informative content. To be clear, Popper would never agree that any improbable hypothesis is to be preferred over the more probable one. It is the informative content that makes it less probable - the number and precision of predictions that the hypothesis makes, along with the understanding that these predictions are fully subject to scientific verification and falsification.
"At that rate mystical experience should be the most scientific view point. If this dictum were applied to a choice between Stenger’s atheism and belief in God mystical God belief would be more predictive and have less likelihood of being wrong because it’s based upon not speaking much about what one experiences as truth."
- Now you have gone off the rails. First of all neither atheism nor belief in God is a scientific hypothesis. A hypothesis should be a statement fact. If you want to create an actual hypothesis that can be regarded as scientific, it needs to 1) be consistent with observed reality, and 2) have implications that produce falsifiable predictions. So what Stenger does is to start with a statement of fact as a hypothesis: "the Judaeo-Christian God exists", along with a set of assumptions about how that should produce observable consequences. He then makes numerous predictions that are subject to scientific verification or falsification. Now, if you want to present an alternative hypothesis, it is not sufficient to merely say that mystical God belief if less probable and therefore the preferred hypothesis. In accordance with Popper, you have to start with some statement of fact as the hypothesis, and then produce predictions that follow from that hypothesis, that are consistent with observed reality, and that are falsifiable. And by the way, you can't ignore other hypotheses that could result in the same predictions that your hypothesis makes, because that other hypothesis might well prove to have more informative content that yours does.
The bottom line, Joe, is that if you want to play the game of making scientific hypotheses, then you can't just dip one toe into the pool. You have to dive in, and become fully immersed in scientific exploration. You have to look at ALL the evidence, you have to have a view of the broader body of scientific knowledge and take that into account, and you have to be open to alternative hypotheses that might actually work better than yours.
I made up fortress of facts. It's totally accurate in it's discretion of how atheists use scientific data. I have documented everthing and foot noted where in Popper's work it came from. why don't you do thye same?
Skep you act like I am trying to get away with something by saying fortress of fact and you, in your brilliance, realized no one calls it that. I said that in the body of my article.
Stenger was not an important scientist. I took him apart at the seems in GSI.
skep you don't understand my article, you want the reader to believe I don't know anything you are teaching me to make an hypothesis that is not what's going on in that article. It reflects Popper very accurately and well documented. For Popper science is not about proving things about disproving hypothesis. My criteria for hypooyhesis testing were right out of Popper.
So as I understand it, your "fortress of facts" is not something that applies to scientists, but to atheists. But Stenger and Dawkins are both scientists. Are you saying that they are not following the best philosophical principles of science? How so? And if you want to disparage atheists for not adhering to the philosophical principles of science, why shouldn't I disparage Christians who don't adhere to sophisticated philosophical principles in theism? Is it worth my time and effort to argue with Ken Ham? Why don't you concentrate on the best scientific arguments against belief in God, and forget about unsophisticated atheists?
Stenger and Dawkins are both scientists but of a mediocre sort, they are atheist apologists. Still It's not they are making the fortress of facts although as atheist apologist they do argue we have the facts and religious people don't have facts. I am more interested in the regualr atheists who are looking to Dawkins and Stenger to bolster that idea.
"why shouldn't I disparage Christians who don't adhere to sophisticated philosophical principles in theism? Is it worth my time and effort to argue with Ken Ham? Why don't you concentrate on the best scientific arguments against belief in God, and forget about unsophisticated atheists?" The best scientific arguments are not being made om message boards. Disputing about God is not a job for science, Science is only about empirical things not philosophy or theology. Moreover you don't qualify your stuff to Ken Ham or his ilk you include all theology most atheists have no ides there's a higher of theological thought, they don't know what it is when they hear about it they ridicule it like everything else.
Joe: Not Facts but Verisimilitude
This is the grest strength of science. It recognises that we cannot know this stuff for certain. It is tentative, it admits it might be wrong.
I contrast, religion offers what it claims are facts, but ultimately has precious little evidence they are true.
We can have a very high certainty that the laws of thermodynamics are true, but science recognises the slight possibility that they are not.
We have very little certainty that the claims of Christiuanity are true, but Christians nevertheless will assert the claims are facts.
Joe: Above we see that Dawkins, Stenger and company place their faith in the probability engineered by scientific facts. The problem is probability is not the basis upon which one chooses one theory over another, at least according to Popper.
If that is what Popper says, then Popper is wrong. If one claim is 90% likely to be true, and the counter-claim is 10% truer, then of course we should believe the former is (probably) true. That is tautologically true!
Joe: According to Popper in choosing between two theories one more probable than the other, if one is interested I the informative content of the theory, one should choose the less probable.
By less probably, he meant the one that is more easily falsied. This is from Wiki:
Among his contributions to philosophy is his claim to have solved the philosophical problem of induction. He states that while there is no way to prove that the sun will rise, it is possible to formulate the theory that every day the sun will rise; if it does not rise on some particular day, the theory will be falsified and will have to be replaced by a different one. Until that day, there is no need to reject the assumption that the theory is true. Nor is it rational according to Popper to make instead the more complex assumption that the sun will rise until a given day, but will stop doing so the day after, or similar statements with additional conditions. Such a theory would be true with higher probability because it cannot be attacked so easily:
to falsify the first one, it is sufficient to find that the sun has stopped rising;
to falsify the second one, one additionally needs the assumption that the given day has not yet been reached.
Popper held that it is the least likely, or most easily falsifiable, or simplest theory (attributes which he identified as all the same thing) that explains known facts that one should rationally prefer.
To say we should think a theory is more likely to be true if the theory is less likely to be true is clearly contradictory!
From Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
With this in mind, he goes on argue that scientific theories are distinguished from non-scientific theories by a second sort of boldness: they make testable claims that future observations might reveal to be false. This boldness thus amounts to a willingness to take a risk of being wrong. On Popper’s view, scientists investigating a theory make repeated, honest attempts to falsify the theory, whereas adherents of pseudoscientific or metaphysical theories routinely take measures to make the observed reality fit the predictions of the theory.
https://iep.utm.edu/pop-sci/
Joe: At that rate mystical experience should be the most scientific view point. If this dictum were applied to a choice between Stenger’s atheism and belief in God mystical God belief would be more predictive and have less likelihood of being wrong because it’s based upon not speaking much about what one experiences as truth.
Quite the reverse. The claim God exists (or the claim God is behind mystical experiences) is impossible to falsify. In Popper's view, that makes it not science.
Pix
of course religious belief is not scientific. No reason why it should be. Science and religion are not competing for anything. One can do both at the same time. You ignore the fact and trth tht religion provides. Fr example Christianity promises emotional healing, peace of mind and heart and healing. All of that is provided by religious experience and that proven by numerous studies. You don't to accept it so you ignore it.
Joe: of course religious belief is not scientific.
And yet in your post you said "At that rate mystical experience should be the most scientific view point."
Joe: No reason why it should be. Science and religion are not competing for anything. One can do both at the same time. You ignore the fact and trth tht religion provides. Fr example Christianity promises emotional healing, peace of mind and heart and healing. All of that is provided by religious experience and that proven by numerous studies. You don't to accept it so you ignore it.
At the end of theday, what I am interested in is whether a claim is true or not. Religion may well promote empotional healing, but that is of no use to me unless I think it is true. And the emotional healing can be explained without God, so of itself is not evidence the religion is true.
Science and religion are competing as approaches to determining the truth.
Science gives us an assurance it is true - or probably true at least. The nature of the scientific method gives us a high confidence it is true.
Religion is quite unlike that. All it has is assertions, and of course different religions make different assertions that contradict each other. Indeed, many religions made claims that contradict their own claims.
If we go with Popper, then the fact that religion cannot be falsified is good reason to reject it.
Pix
Pix religion does not have to be science, science is not the only truth, Religion and science do not compete. you can do both. WE have plenty of facts in religion, the religious experience studies show factually such experience does many things for one and makes life better, you ignore the truth in front of your face.
"the religious experience studies show factually such experience does many things for one and makes life better, you ignore the truth in front of your face."
- Studies show that a class of subjective experience (properly called "peak experience") is correlated with positive outcomes. That class of experiences includes both religious and non-religious, as even your studies often acknowledge. These are the facts. Despite the fact that many people who have this kind of experience think they are feeling the presence of God, there is not a single shred of objective evidence that anything supernatural is involved. There are genuine scientific hypotheses about the underlying psychology that results in positive outcomes. This is where real science is leading us - not to the foregone religionist conclusion: "God did it".
And please don't try to claim that there is no competition between science and religion. If that was true, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
'''Sure you can do both. But you cannot get the truth from both. Religion only offers unsupported opinions." That is just ideological clap trap, I have roughly 200 studies supporting my hypothesis on RE and you have 0. But I have the supported opinion. Your ideological sloganizing you preach and don't think through,
WE have plenty of facts in religion, the religious experience studies show factually such experience does many things for one and makes life better, you ignore the truth in front of your face.
"You are very much at the fringe of religion there."
That's just an excuse to selectively ignore what contradicts your sloganizing,
"Most religions claim there is a god, and they present that claim as fact. Where is the evidence to support that? There is preciius little, and certainly not enough to warrant the certainty that theists claim.
In order create the illision the fortress offacts. that's all you are doiimng, illustraiting my pointm force relgion to accept the bar at empirical data. To keep ip spiritual realoty must prove itself by empirical standards. It's just a trick
Pix
Joe: That is just ideological clap trap, I have roughly 200 studies supporting my hypothesis on RE and you have 0. But I have the supported opinion. Your ideological sloganizing you preach and don't think through,
But what exactly is your hypothesis, Joe?
If you are claiming people have peak experiences, then yes, you have good evidence of that. But you are going further than that. You are claiming these experiences come from God.
Seems to me you are sliding between the two as and when convenient.
Peak experience do not support the claim that God exists. We know that because there is no way to falsify your hypothesis. You even said this in your post: "Even though mystical experience per se can be falsified (which will be seen in subsequent chapters) belief in God over all can’t be."
Remember Popper. He is basically saying that the easier it is to falsify a theory, the less probable it is at first blush, and hence, if we subsequently fail to falsify it, the more certain we can be that it is true.
Religion is impossible to falsify, so for Popper is very unlikely to be true.
Joe: WE have plenty of facts in religion, the religious experience studies show factually such experience does many things for one and makes life better, you ignore the truth in front of your face.
But that is very much at the fringe of religion. It is not a core tenet of Christianity. It is not part of any creed, it is not in the Bible. If you look up Christian beliefs on Google, you will not find 'religious experiences make life better' on any list.
Joe: In order create the illision the fortress offacts. that's all you are doiimng, illustraiting my pointm force relgion to accept the bar at empirical data. To keep ip spiritual realoty must prove itself by empirical standards. It's just a trick
It is not a trick. It is a fact that scientific claims can and have been verified. And as per Popper part of that verification process is attempting to falsify them.
That does not happen with religion.
Theists object to demands for empirical data specifically because they know they have none. Religious claims - and I mean claims about God, not claims about how religion makes you feel - cannot be tested, are not subject to falsification.
Religious claims are presented as facts. Religion has its own fortress of facts. However:
Science admits it could be wrong; religion does not
Science is supported by evidence; religion is not
Science is falsifiable; religion is not
Pix
If God wants an act of faith, then he can't give us religious experiences with no questions and perfect docs showing exactly what they are. There has to be a level of ambiguity. That can only be overridden by faith. It's wrong to think that there are no facts connected to religious belief. The facts of religion are producing verisimilitude, and they are not all objective but some are intersubjective. They are also existential which means they are matters of proof only for the individual and his/her private sense of truth.
"Faith is the evidence of things unseen."
The church has always valued faith above empirical evidence. This made clear in the Catholic catechism. But why should that be the case? Could it be an admission that evidence is lacking? You need to have something to justify your belief. From an epistemological point of view, faith is not good justification. But you can claim to know the mind of God - and God says faith is what counts. One thing we can say for sure: faith is what the church wants.
It is really hard for you to get the idea that there are people who don't think scientifically. There are people who don't equate science with truth. So for them faith is not hiding the fact that they lack scientific proof, they don't give a shit about scientific proof.
Joe: It is really hard for you to get the idea that there are people who don't think scientifically. There are people who don't equate science with truth. So for them faith is not hiding the fact that they lack scientific proof, they don't give a shit about scientific proof.
And the technical term for these people is "wrong"
Pix.
"It is really hard for you to get the idea that there are people who don't think scientifically."
- No, I get it. There are people who believe what they want to believe - not necessarily what is true. I think we all do that to some degree. It is psychologically comforting. And it may not be easy to adhere to a course of real epistemic justification when faith offers the promise of great rewards. You just have to wait until you die to find out if you really will reap those rewards. So you suffer through the trials and tribulations of life, patiently waiting for that great reward that has been promised to you. And you deny the evidence of reality, because reality doesn't make such grand promises.
They are wrong not care about science but science is not the only from of truth. Faith is not hiding lack of science. You can have both and science, because tells us nothing about spiritual truth.
There is only one kind of truth: that which is true. The best way of learning the truth is by observing the evidence.
you limit reality to just the material. Your statement is loaded, ideological, and propagandistic.
"loaded, ideological, and propagandistic"
- I am a student of epistemology - the philosophy of knowledge. It tells us that knowledge is belief that is both justified and true. So the goals of epistemology are to establish what constitutes justification for belief and guidelines for determining what is true. At base, there is no ideology in this pursuit. Ideology comes into play when belief precedes justification. When you believe in God, and then seek to find justification for that belief. Given that you will never change what you believe, no matter what you learn, no matter what you observe, it becomes inevitable that the ideology of God belief will lead to use of propaganda to coerce the thinking process. And so we see religious efforts to subvert non-ideological epistemology, to re-define what knowledge is, and declare that justification is no longer based on objective evidence. Propaganda is the tool of religious ideology. It coerces belief with the carrot-and-stick approach, telling you that your choice is to suffer in hell or bask in the glory of God's presence for all of eternity. It plays on your feelings of conscience and empathy by telling you that Jesus suffered and died for for your sins and you better feel guilty for that.
The epistemology of empiricism rejects the ideology and propaganda of religion in favor of a philosophically sound approach to gaining knowledge. It is easy to see that you are engaging in projection.
I am a student of epistemology - the philosophy of knowledge.
I don't buy that definition. I prefer to think of it as the study of how we know...that may be same or maybe not.
It tells us that knowledge is belief that is both justified and true. So the goals of epistemology are to establish what constitutes justification for belief and guidelines for determining what is true. At base, there is no ideology in this pursuit.
That does not mean that all truth will be transparent there will beno gray areas.
Ideology comes into play when belief precedes justification.
wrong. It's when we think idea answers everything. Like thinking science is the only valid knowledge.
When you believe in God, and then seek to find justification for that belief. Given that you will never change what you believe, no matter what you learn, no matter what you observe, it becomes inevitable that the ideology of God belief will lead to use of propaganda to coerce the thinking process.
The same can be said of scientism and reductionism. Don't confuse the distention between seeking to justify a belief you already hold (implying one had no reason for believing it) and seeking to find ways to demonstrate veracity of truths only amenable existentially
And so we see religious efforts to subvert non-ideological epistemology, to re-define what knowledge is, and declare that justification is no longer based on objective evidence.
Existential truth is not always based upon objective fact, sometimes it is inter--subjective.
Propaganda is the tool of religious ideology.
Religious people were the only one's to use propaganda? So Stalin, Mao, and uncle Ho were religious?
It coerces belief with the carrot-and-stick approach, telling you that your choice is to suffer in hell or bask in the glory of God's presence for all of eternity. It plays on your feelings of conscience and empathy by telling you that Jesus suffered and died for for your sins and you better feel guilty for that.
Is that what you think Christianity is? Or are you just speaking of the fundamentalist sect? If the former I would say you need to read some real Theologians such as Tillich and Bultmann.
The epistemology of empiricism rejects the ideology and propaganda of religion in favor of a philosophically sound approach to gaining knowledge. It is easy to see that you are engaging in projection.
empiricism is an ideology. It has it;s own propaganda.
"That does not mean that all truth will be transparent there will beno gray areas."
- Of course. We acknowledge that truth cannot be known with absolute certainty.
"The same can be said of scientism and reductionism."
- Neither of those things is equivalent to non-ideological empiricism. And your straw man doesn't apply to me (or most scientists).
"Don't confuse the distention between seeking to justify a belief you already hold (implying one had no reason for believing it) and seeking to find ways to demonstrate veracity of truths only amenable existentially"
- The mark of religion is resistance to any knowledge that would refute what you believe.
"Existential truth is not always based upon objective fact, sometimes it is inter--subjective."
- Please define what you mean be "existential truth".
"Religious people were the only one's to use propaganda? So Stalin, Mao, and uncle Ho were religious?"
- They established their own religion. It wasn't about God, but they had their own ideology.
"Is that what you think Christianity is? Or are you just speaking of the fundamentalist sect?"
- All forms of Christianity teach that Jesus died for your sins. All forms promise eternal life as a reward for belief, and the punishment of rejecting belief.
"empiricism is an ideology. It has it;s own propaganda. "
- What does this supposed ideology claim, other than the idea that belief should be based on evidence? Perhaps you should learn some philosophy.
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