Science

Causal Linkage in my God Arguments*NEW*

Atheists reduce knowledge to science*important*
One of the best articles I've ever written; in 3
parts all linked

The limits of Science in The search for God *NEW*

____part 2

____part 3

Is Science one gene away from defeating religion? *NEW*


Scientistic Counter AttackNew

g whiz I used to be smart*NEW*
contra defense of IQ as a measure of  intelligence

Philosophy Still Owns Science


Are All Cosmologists atheists? My Answer to Sean Carroll*New*

.......part 1

.......Part 2

Naturalism: Method vs Metaphysics, Answering John Loftus

Quantum Particles do Not prove Universe From Nothing

Mind is Not Reducible to Brain part 1

Mind not Reducible to Brain part 2 

Mind and Emergent Properties

Science and supernatural: Atheist misconception about fortress of facts

Can Science Disprove the Soul?

Can Science Really Prove the Basis of Modern Physics?

Modern Science's Rejection of God is Ideological

Atheists Hide In The Gaps

 


I started this thread on CARM. (remember CARM therads are backwards so go to the last page to see the beginning). The atheist responses have been predictable if not furious and angry, but the  funny thing is not a one of them has actually addressed the issue. The concept is simple, there's always a gap in knowledge, there's always a need for a leap of faith. The only question is how wide is the gap, can we narrow it with conventional forms of knowledge (logic, science, reason, yada yada yada)? The punch line is the atheists assume as long as there is a gap there's a reason not to believe. Yet, there is always a gap, so they are hiding in the gap because they not only have o intention of bridging it, but they actually against the attempt.

I always use the concept of a diving board for the leap of faith. Its' an amusing metaphor based upon real life childhood experiences of going up the high dive ladder with good intentions and brave heart, and coming back down the high dive ladder having decided that more manly aspect of leaping is not leaping. This always came after a long period of deliberation about the nature of faith and the lack of necessity of leaping, conducted at the end of the high dive board, shivering and shaking from fear with a long line of agitated older kids behind me going "come on and jump!" That's when I became an existentialist, that moment. I decided it was much more important to understand and deal with the angst of being a kid stuck on a high dive than to jump! I use this metaphor to represent my arguments. No argument will eliminate the need to make the leap but perhaps come can get us out there further on so we narrow the gap.

There's always a gap where one must make a leap of faith. You can reduce the gap or it can grow wide, but there is always a gap. Even in what atheists take to be rock solid proved scientific facts there is a gap. If you look in the right place, usually do some epistemology, every source of knowledge and every rock solid fact has a gap where we don't know and we have we must bridge the gap with a leap of faith.

We solve most gaps with a make-piece system of accepting what works and moving on. That's part of Heidegger notion of "ready to hand" in the discussion of the nature of being. What that means is bridging the gap with what works and making the leap of faith are so much a part of what we take for granted about life we don't even know we do it.

Atheists use the gap as an excuse to shun belief in God. We see this being done now in the thread about certainty. The atheist wont to pretend his world view is based upon "fact" and faith is some stupid thing only fools resort to. When we use answers that work, which fit the common criteria by which we judge reality, the atheist balks and demands absolute proof a standard even scinece doesn't pretend to.

you are hiding in the gap. you are using the fact of a gap to pretend that faith is somehow sub standard and that doubt is some kind of answer to truth.

The early responses just asserted the all sufficiency of scientific outlook to tell us what's what, really this amounts to gap denial.  From "Big Thinker" (contrasting his name to that of my friend Tiny Thinker, Tiny is one of the most Brilliant people I know, and their names are the inverse of their abilities).

Typically, the atheist's position is based on fact, its based on what is known. This contrasts with the believer's position that is founded on faith. The believer's position is based on possibility and speculation. The believer's gap is HUGE, their conclusion are unfounded and (ironically) unwavering. The atheist who's position is based on known facts is not emotionally committed to any particular idea but rather to an honest and critical assessment of the existing facts.

This is the same guy who said my 200 studies can't be any good because no academic would ever make a study showing that religious experience was good for you because it clearly isn't. when I pointed out that these were published in academic journals and done by real academics, not theologians and not religious publications he asserted that none of them were double blind. When I put down a link to a textbook written by the major researcher, Ralph Hood Jr. Of University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, the definitive article on the "M" scale which is the control mechanism for knowing if religious experience is valid, this stalwart defender of scinece refused to read the article, he would not click on a link and asserted that it wasn't scientific. He has no knowledge of the body of work, he has not read one word about what the field says of Hood or his M scale (I've talked to enough shrinks of religion to know that they regard him highly). When push comes to shove this guy has no regard for scinece, and no faith in scinece at all, no understanding what is and what is not scinece. All he's doing is working on prejudices and stereotypes.

In fact what he's doing is a perfect example of hiding in the gap. Almost all atheist arguments are argument from incredulity "I refuse to ever believe no matter what the evidence, therefore, it can't be true because if it was true I would believe." It's a form of circular reasoning.  In asserting this sort of sceitnism he's actually illustrating hiding in the gaps.  He's really saying "if there's a gap it's an excuse not to make the leap becuase there's a gap and I'm opposed to leaps of faith of any kind." Of course, his alternative is a selective pretense that only regards that which backs his view as "real scinece."

Super Genyus says (see link above):

There's no such thing as a "rock solid proved scientific fact." All scientific knowledge is tentative and conditional. Why you would need faith to say, "There is strong and copious amounts of evidence to suggest X being an accurate representation of reality," is beyond me.

Of cousre there's not "rock solid proof" that's my whole point. There is always a gap and always a leap of faith no matter what the issue. Even scientific hypothesis requires some leap of faith, however small it may be. Why we need faith to say something is reality is precisely because of what he said, all hypothesis are tenuous. What he's doing is to say first there is no such thing as solid proof, secondly, we can take evidence as solid proof if it's strong enough. That's fine, but what's strong evidence. It's apparently evidence that supports their view and not mine. If it supports mine it's not scientific and suddenly bad evidence. Look at the hypocrisy of this answer in relation to the next two issues that come up. The issue is no rock solid proof in scinece but we can accept strong evidence in place of proof (which is exactly what I say in m rational warrant argument--God is not proved but belief in God is rationally warranted).

the very next statement he makes:

This is generally not the case. We, generally speaking in terms of your most common arguments, just don't see how an explanation "working" to improve one's well-being relates to "working" as an explanation of reality. They are two separate criteria.

He's talking about 200 empirical studies that all basically say religious experience is real good for you and will transform you life (change dramatically for the better).  Not only do they not have one study but they refused to look at the text book chapter explaining all about the studies. In two years of putting that link up time after after time (well over a hundred) one of them has actually claimed to look at at it and I'm certain he did not read the whole chapter because he still doesn't know what the M scale is. He asserts just being good for you isn't evidence but why wouldn't it be? The claim is that God wants to save you, to renovate your life and make your life better. We find that experiencing God's presence actually does that. That seems pretty much like validation for the number one claim religion makes to be true, so why would that not be a rational warrant for belief? Strong evidence is warrant when ti backs atheism. Not when it backs God belief?

Is 200 studies strong evdience? Air Bags were deemed proven by four studies. Naturally the quality of the studies matter but 200 is a heck of a lot of studies, and none of them have managed in two years to dig up a valid methodological problem. This is proof of what I say that the atheist admiration for science is totally selective and ideologically driven. Also note the contradiction, one says the atheist position is "fact" (even though they can't find a single "fact" that disproves the existence of God) the other one says there are no rock solid proofs in scinece, it's all tentative. Yet, despite this contradiction they both take the very same position with regard to counter evidence that challenges their world view. They are both hiding in the gap. When the gap is in terms of their view it's trivial and can be traversed easily or it's just not there at all, when it's in terms of belief in God then it's a huge chasm that can never be bridged.

The poster Crockoduck (that's his screen name) get's into it:

So miracles actually remove the need for faith. True? In the Bible, God went around demonstrating his power all the time even when it wasn't necessary. Like when God took pot shots at the defeated and fleeing Amorite army:
Joshua 10:10 The LORD threw them into confusion before Israel, who defeated them in a great victory at Gibeon. Israel pursued them along the road going up to Beth Horon and cut them down all the way to Azekah and Makkedah. 11 As they fled before Israel on the road down from Beth Horon to Azekah, the LORD hurled large hailstones down on them from the sky, and more of them died from the hailstones than were killed by the swords of the Israelites. [emphasis his]
So why can't he do some miracles today?

I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove. It's begging the question on miracles, assuming there are none without consulting the evidence. It looks more like a gratuitous opportunity to throw rocks at the Bible. A lot of atheists have been conditioned by fundamentalism to think that if there's anything wrong with the Bible then God id disproved. I think most atheists see through that but not all. Still it introduced the issue of miracles into the thread which became a huge argument and joke. Joke because the poster "Paradoxical" (that's his screen name, I guess "Metacrock"Is not one to make fun of screen names) continued to assert the same untruths against the shrine at Lourdes as though extraneous issues disprove miracles. I talk about Lourdes, that it has strict rules and doctors on the committee. Paradoxical talks about people spend their life savings to go to Lourdes, how cruel of God to lure people to that one place, take their life savings, then not heal but a tiny handful. I document with sources such as the Marion Newsletter that this is simply not the case. No one has ever claimed that God will only heal at Lourdes, that is not the deal. If one can't make it to Lourdes the water can be brought to them.

Then of course he cuts lose on the committee. They are all lackeys who work for the Vatican. The RCC has taken lots of measures to assure the autonomy of the committee. They are not paid, that is not their job. It's true that many of them loyal Catholics but they also use skeptics on the committee. He continually asserts these things over and over again as though I said nothing, and I'm quoting sources. Of course he also asserts other prayer studies have proved inconclusive so in his mind that is a complete disproof of God or miracles. That is an incredibly illogical conclusion. All that can really prove is that the study itself was inconclusive or that the double blind type of study is bad for prayer because outside prayer can't be controlled for. For example no one was healed in the experimental group above natural cure rate (even with the control group). Does that mean there's no God, or that God didn't want to heal anyone that time? How do we know no one outside the study prayed and that's why they weren't healed. So that's still an issue of control group. We can't control for outside prayer. I used to argue for those studies there 14 of them which are good and show results, but this one was suppossed to be the best.

Yet the Lourdes evidence is quite different. That is empirical evidence. the Xray shows the lung grew back over night. That is not remission, nothing grows back over night, lungs never grow back. Lungs that far gone (in the case of Charles Ann was not really a  Lourde's case but a saint making miracle) do not remit. That statistically never happens. That it did happen make it automatically a candidate for miraclehood. That's totally different than the controlled double blind study which just relays upon statistical averages. Yet Pradoxical seems to think these externalizes issues about how the shrine is run and allegiance of the doctors are germane to the evidence, and he doesn't even consider the xrays. Such concern with scientific fact!

What's really going on is he's hiding in the gaps too in a way. They are all saying "there's some kind of  gap in knowledge of the God element and as long as there is belief is totally unreliable. Yet their view, which they contrast as "factual" also has gaps but those gaps they write off as trivial, based upon selective evidence that just excludes anything that disproves their views. That's what I call "hiding in the gap!"

Faith: not a replacement for proof

....On CARM I tried to get across a point about the difference between not having "proof" and faith not being belief without reasons. faith is not the opposite of proof and its' not believing things for no reason. It's a replacement for proof. Real proof is hard to come by, and there's no reason to spend your whole life waiting for it when belief can be warranted without having to be actually proved. Faith is trust in a hypothesis and there can be many reasons for placing trust in a hypothesis. But the atheists lost distinction immediately and tired to turn it into a rant about the weakness of faith.

Originally Posted by Vangelis View Post

When there is mathematical or physical proof for a god, I will be the strongest believer!
But I know that will only happen when the mythical hell freezes over. why demand certainty from the big oceanic questions? they are not meant to be answered with certainty. It's not science its' a different kid of thing. It makes no sense to appraoch such issues demanding the kind of catatonia we can only get form empirical matters.

....There's a huge difference in the kind of question that religion asks the kind science asks. what is the meaning of life is not going have the kind of answer you get with questions about the sodium content of graham crackers or "string theory." I've already indicated why God wants us to do the search, so we internalize the values of the good. The problem with being human is in the heart. the solution to that problem is in the heart. why should we expect that proof to be on paper? the proof is oblivious going to be when see that God is real and his way works. You not going to see that without direct first hand experience. with 200 empirical studies indicating the nature of religious experience, it's informative effects there's no real excuse for arguing the way you guys do. That's a huge reason to that we can trust the vanity of religoius preeminence: It fits the criteria we use to determine the validity of experiences that means should be able to trust it as valid..
 ....I said this to another poster on another thread but I'm not going to include that because I don't want that person to think I'm putting him n the spot and i don't want the issue of that thread ot overshadow this. This is really the whole crux of the matter. Faith is not the replacement for proof. First of all the term "faith" does not mean "decisions without reaosn" or "belief in stuff with no evidence." or anything like that. that' is propaganda.A better definition of faith would be the extension of trust beyond epistemic gaps but it does not rule out initial reasons.
....The major problem that I tried to get across in the thread on "atheist thinking makes no sense" but was subverted from it, is that the ground for decision making is wrong in Atheist terms. This is not meant to be an insult. I think it is generally true of atheism as a whole. they want to put everything on scientific grounds and make it all matter of objective facts. It just be can't be that. The issues of belief require personal orientation toward one's own existential matters (ie "in the heart") rather than objective proof of anything. There's enough logic and fact to warrant a rational placing of confidence in the God hypothesis but there never be absolute proof. the decision for God has to be made on private grounds. We don't need proof when we have warrant, which is justification for belief. Faith is not necessarily warrant. That's another topic.

(1) I have amply demonstrated rational warrant for belief.

belief is justified in the sense that there are many good rational, logical, empirically based reasons to believe. see my God argument lists form just a few of many examples.

that's not going to cut it either way because belief in God is not about objective proof.

(2) belief has to be based upon personal existential search for one's place in being.

that's where the decision has to be made, so we have to make the search. It has to be made in the heart.

(3) yes it is subjective but that doesn't mean false.


everything we observe is observed through subjective means. our perspectives are hopelessly subjective. Human objectivity is a fares. there is none. There are only varying degrees of subjectivity.

(4) It' inter-subjective.

even though it's subjective it has the force and validity of objectivity.


 Originally Posted by Harry C

Well if faith is not the replacement for proof then why do you continually replace proof with it?

 Meta:
we don't. We use it to extend beyond the point covered by the evidence. So the evidence amounts to a diving board and then you still have to make the leap. It's a question of how wide or narrow a chasm do you want to leap over? The board makes the gap smaller. But there's still going to be a gap.

 Originally Posted by Harry C

So you say, and yet I am watching you do it right here

Right. You reach the point where you have no evidence and then switch modes to faith replacing the missing proof.
It’s more on the order of how much do you honor truth

Meta:

all ideas or observations about the universe reach that point. you do not have absolute proof that materialism is a true hypothesis. There is no such proof, it's all base upon assumption.


 Originally Posted by Harry C

And when they reach that point then they have reached that point and to pretend otherwise by claiming you have faith is mere intellectual dishonesty.

 Meta:

you are just confusing two different things. I'm sure if you do it because you pruresly want to screw thing sup or you just haven't' thought about it.

when I think about the question, "do I really believe that God is real deep down inside" I do not think "I have faith." I think I know God is real in a way atheist can't ever dispute becasue my doubt was ended by meeting god face to face (so to speak). the presence of God is so real to me and changed life I know it's real I can't deny it. Even if I wanted to I could not.

A Gaint Leap for Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong 1930-2012

The first man to set foot on the moon has died, at age 82. He died of complications from heart surgery. There has been a spontaneous outpouring of mourning for him. I think he represents a moment of greatness for the whole human race. As he himself put it, "a small step for a man...a giant leap for mankind." No one heard "a man." It sounded like he said "a small step for man and giant leap for man kind." Leaving me to wonder for years what is the difference between man and mankind? This is one of those events we can all remember exactly where we were at the time. I was at my old childhood home, in sixth grade, in the upstairs bedroom (my room) watching the event on tv with my parents and brother. My mother was reading the bible for some reason. She always read the bible when important stuff happened. She read the passage covering the creation of the mood about a dozen times, out loud. That's one of those things mothers do that drives you up the wall but you love them anyway. Like how she would go to sleep in the first five minutes of mission impossible, wake up in the last five and go "what's been happening?"

The moon landing was one of those things that only means something one time, you don't think much about it from then on but it's always important. Subsequent landings just seemed passe. I felt like it was suppose to become routine. But on the day of the first landing I felt like i had just witnessed the most important event in human history. Humanity had become a space going race. We were just about to take our place amid the Klingons and Vulcans and fulfill the destiny of Rocky Jones, Flash Gorden, and all the si fi schlock I had ever watched as a kid. I fully expected at that time that we would just continue to develop and eventually as an old man I might be living in a domed city on Mars. I was in sixth grade. Latter in high school I came to realize that our own natural anonymity and selfishness as a species would corrupt our attempts to outgrow our own parochialism. I also began to feel "if we can't solve our problems here how would we solve them up there?" I think there's a certain truth to that, involving human nature.

I think everyone sensed that something major was about to happen. I went to the nursing home to see my grandmother just a month before the landing and she was crying. I found out she was afraid because she herd that man might bring back a back form the moon that we would could not cure and it would destroy the human race. She also cried when she hear about Woodstock, she figured it signaled the end of civilization. I told her there was no air on the moon so there couldn't bein any living organisms. That calmed her down. I think that brings up the point I wanted to make about it all. One thing that struck me at that time was a combination newspaper editorial where someone talked about all the ideas of what might be found on the moon. There had been hoax in the early 20th century here someone claimed to have seen a civilization on the moon. There was a lot of talk about how no one could look at the moon anymore with the kind of feelings of mystery and romance that they once had. I was reminded of some childhood experiences of my Grandmother telling me about how people use to think about the moon when she was girl, how older people saw a Rabbit in the moon rather than a man.


earth rise from moon


Even though I never again looked at the moon with the same sense of mystery it never lost it's special nature for me. I think about that time overtime I look at it. I think about how it still means something to me. It has now become a symbol not of conquest of nature or man's achievement, although I suppose one might see it that way, but something more too complex to explain in a single sentence. It's a symbol of advancement alright. I think about that moon landing and Armstrong's words, we have taken a giant step, even though we sort of retrenched after that. It could also be seen as a failure. We started something we weren't prepared to continue and have allowed earth bound ideologies and problems to distract us. We were short sighted in thinking "we are not going to conquer the moon and build domed cities on mars in the next hundred years, so just forget it." Did we trade in progress for easy comfort? We have been living trading in the future ecologically for some time now. We have an attitude "who cares what they do four generations form now?" So have we traded in the domed city on Mars for the choice of putting off hard solutions so we can have opulence just a bit longer?

That's not all the moon symbolizes for me. If that's all it was then I would only be able to think of the moon as a bench mark of human lethargy. I also think it symbolizes something about my attitude toward belief. The moon doesn't symbolize for me the fading away of old fables, such as the hoax about seeing a civilization there through telescope, or romantic drivel, or mystery, ti symbolizes the way in which our faith in God can become aware of science and still not be threatened because our theological understanding can mature. This is one one of the major things atheists can't understand. That's becuase they insist on thinking about faith as some willful act of stupidity. They think it's an agreement with yourself to be stupid. Faith is not belief in things for no reason, it's placing confidence in a hypothesis for a reason. Just as the moon is not only a symbol of unknown mysteries but also a goal to aspire to and a bench mark of our understanding and a symbol of our will to knowledge.

Realizing God

Even though I have 42 arguments for the existence of God (42 = answer to God the universe and everything) I feel that making God arguments is beneficial but not necessary. Atheists often react with chagrin when told this. But the fact is I don't ever claim to "prove the existence of God." I really do believe that God is beyond our understanding and thus, would be unnameable to objective proof. This flys in the face of the way most atheists see things. Most atheist tend to orbit around the concept of objective proof, empirical science, absolute demonstration and on. In fct most atheists use a warfare model of discussion.They don't discuss beliefs, they "attack arguments." It's all about proving and that means conquering the enemy.

I want to side step that entire attitude. God is beyond our understanding, but not beyond are experience. We can't prove objectively that God exists, this is far form meaning that it's not worth it to believe or that belief is irrational or makes you stupid if you believe. There are many beliefs atheists take for granted that can't be proved, but that doesn't even give the pause since these are essential to getting by in the world: like the concept of other minds, or the idea that the sun will come up tomorrow. That we are not brains in vats. Atheists scoff at this stuff all the time, but they rarely stop to consider what it means. It means your mockery of it due to the fact that you take it for granted. You don't have any scientific evidence that proves you exist, or that other minds exist, or that the future will be like the past and so on. all of that is obtained through the very means that people of faith use to belief. You mock their beliefs and take your own for granted. That's because that warfare model of argumentation doesn't allow for a searing self examination.

The basic model would be not to argue for the existence of God, but to realize that God is reality. It's a matter of opening your eyes to see something that is already there, that you know it there you just never bothered to understand it before.It's just that, open your eyes and realize God is there. How is this done? By expanding the categories of knowledge so that they now include the relevant information necessary to see things in a new way. Here are the categories required:

Phenomenology
existentialism
cultural constructivism
modal logic
the transcendental signifier
(and with it deconstruction and postmodernism)


these things are not augments. They the basis out of which arguments might be made, but more importantly, they are fields of thought which include both logic and data the apprehension of which will help one understand why people believe in God. Once understanding that one will see the reality of God is plain. God's reality has been masked by Western thought since philosophy and modern science has segmented our understanding, breaking up epistemology from metaphysics and ontology, make seperate categories so we can't connect globally to different categories of knowledge that make it possible to see connections.




I am not saying that if you read all this stuff you will agree with me. But to understand why belief with being able to prove it "objectively" is not irrational you have to expand your understanding of what knowledge is and what it means to have beliefs.

Belief in God is not merely adding a fact to the universe. Yesterday I did not know there is a God now I know there is one. So the universe yesterday had swizzle sticks and pop corn and tooth brushes and combs, and today it has those things and God. This is not what belief in God is. It is not just adding a fact to the universe. It's understanding the nature of being in such a way that we see the holy aspect of being.

Paul Tillich said "if you know that being has depth you cannot be an atheist." What does this mean? That's what reading this stuff is about.If you expand your knowledge categories and broader your understanding then you see that being is more than just a fact of existence, you come to realize God is reality; The ground of Being.



Please read that link there, several pages to get the idea of what I mean by saying that God is the ground of being. When you realize the nature of being you can't help but understand that God has to be. Now to explain about these knowledge categories.

Phenomenology

this is an approach to ontology (the study of being) through which one allows the sense data to suggest it's own categories.It was pioneered by Brintano in the late nineteenth century but is best known for its two major thinkers: Hulleral and Heidegger. Science, and all forms of metaphysics (in Heidegger's sense of the term) sense data is pre screened into pre selected categories. This is what the atheist is doing when he says "I want objective evidence." Hes saying I have already decide what evidence I will accept and what I want accept. Any evidence that doesn't tally with his pre set ideology is automatically discounted. What one needs to do is allow the experiences of the divine, or so we don't beg question, experiences which some might take to be the divine--the sense of the numinous to suggest their own categories.

existentialism

Philosophy made famous by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. But it has a strong Christian wing the van Guard of which was led by Kierkegaard, and brought up in its main body by Gabriel Marcel. Existentialism starts from the premiise of the individual's own understanding of the authenticity of his existence and it's meaning in the universe.

cultural constructivism

The idea that any idea that can or must be put into language is a cultural construct, that is an idea constructed by previously constructed meaning in society. These ideas are found in all language because all language is an artifact of culture. So everything we can rationally talk about is a cultural construct.

this means that science is not absolute knowledge, It' not objective, objectivity is impossible. Science is just another culturally bound language game.

modal logic

this comes much closer to real truth anything in science. but of course it depends upon pre selected premises. Yet is essential for understanding concepts about God.


the transcendental signifier
(and with it deconstruction and postmodernism)

The "TS" as I will call it is essentially God. That is to say God functions in the economy of a religious tradition as a Transcendental signifier. This is a very complex idea and requires a lot of real close reading. I have two blog spots in which I explained it pretty good.

Here's the "argument" (except now it's not an argument but it's why the TS is a connection Between the TS and God.

these are background to understand the idea of the Transcendental Signifier.

Derridian Background of the TS

TS part 2

Finally, you need to know about the vast body of scientist work surrounding mystical experiences. When all of this comes together you realize there's really point to deny the reality of God. the nature of the universe takes shape around God and you realize that concept is the center.

And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not.

Soren Kierkegaard, “The Sickness Unto Death”


The atheists have been totally incensed on this. Christians have expressed that it is a very good post that really says a lot of things they have felt they wanted to say but could not put it into words, atheist have gone ape shit over it. It's made them seethingly angry. Now in the hell can anyone be angry and misunderstand the simple idea that "I find something about the nature of existence that makes it more than just mundane, but meaningful and special." Why is that such a threat? They also have formulated many misconceptions about what I was saying:

Misconceptions:


(1) That belief makes you feel good so it's justified in and of itself.

(2) God is proven becasue I believe in him

(3) That I'm saying that we can believe things for no reason.

There are many more but this is all the gist of it, its quite stupid. I wanted a way to shut them up form their little juvenile game of saying "there's no proof for your God" so they can goad Christians into making God arguments. Then of course they will laugh and deride all those arguments. They wont listen to the evidence, they wont understand what's being said.

Mostly I was just attacked by illiterate vermin who can't think and whose only response to thought is lynch mob mentality.

Even though some Christians seem to think this post said something, I have expressed similar things before, maybe this was one of them:


Once again I am driven to examine my hobby of making God arguments. No atheist will ever admit that they prove anything. Actually that's not quite true. There have been a couple of people on message boards, although they may not have called themselves "atheists" who came to admit that my argument proved to them that there must be a God. While these two are rare, if they were willing to do that, there must be more who are toying with the idea. The problem is, God arguments really don't prove God's existence in the way that full blooded empiricists would like to have proven. We will prove the existence of bigfoot before we prove God that way. That's because God is not a "thing" in creation. God is not another item alongside light posts and swizzel sticks; God is the framework of reality, god is off scale for any sort of measurement. This would be like trying to prove the universal constant with a speedometer from a car.

God arguments are a take on reality

God arguments do something else entirely, something other than "proving" the existence of God in an absolute and undeniable way. In fact it really contradicts my theology to try and prove God in that sense. I proposed the soteriolgocial drama theory, which says that God wants us to have to make a leap of faith. Thus it would be self defeating if the kind of proof existed whereby God could be proven in such a way that it would be undeniable. God arguments offer rational warrant to believe. That means only that it is not irrational to believe in God. While this can be parled into a strong sense indicating a good probability, it is not the kind of undeniable proof the atheists are seeking. Atheists really want to be forced. They want to be dragged kicking and screaming into the kingdom of God in such a way that they are overwhelmed and forced to give up and admit God is real. Of course this will never happen because it's not what God wants.

God doesn't refuse this level of proof to be mean, or to test people, or to play games. it's a simple necessity. If that level of credulity was met and atheists were forced to admit there msut be a God, even though I don't like it, they would not like it. They would resent it. God wants free moral agetns who willingly choose the good. That means they cant' dragged into it agaisnt the their will. The only way to get that is to search. Only those who have searched out the truth in their hearts, wrestled with dobut and come to make the leap of faith, can internaltize the values and seek the good because they want the good.

Belief in God is much more than just a factual question about the existence of a particular item in the universe. Belief in God is more than just a proposition to be weighed according to evidence. Belief in God is a value, an orientation toward Being. Religion is the identification of the human problematic, and the resolution of that problematic through the mediation of an ultimate transformative experience. God is that aspect of Being which forces us to face the problematic of being human and to seek ultimate transformative experience. God is that ultimate transformative power. God is the object of our ultimate concerns which we sense in our apprehension of the numinous. Thus God arguments can't possibly provide the kind of empirical evidence most skeptics seek but neither is it fair of them to expect it. That's why God arguments are ways of forcing us to evaluate and come to understand the nature of Being and our relation to the ultimate.

The only real proofs of God are those we each find in our hearts when we seek out the nature of our lives in relation to their goals and ends, and their ultimate ends. Those are not the kinds of ideas that can be subjected to objective sorts of proof. They are phenomenological apprehensions. They are existential. God arguments are existential clearifiers. They enable us to understand our own relation to the ultimate. When we make a God argument we are saying something about the rational nature of being, the meaning of what it is to be. We are making judgments about reality as a whole when we talk about reasons to believe in God. Thus, it's not a matter of proving some argument per se, it' snot a matter of demonstrating some fact, the impossibility of naturalistic cosmology, or the need for targets in anthropic fine tuning, but an understanding of reality that superceeds any particular fact or demonstrable bit of information.

I've written many times in this blog about the nature of God arguments and the need for a phenomenologicla approach. This view point must be maintanied by a stark realism about the lmiiations of empiricial science and the socially constructed nature of a materialist outlook.If beilef in God is the expression of a value about the meaningful nature of rationality in being, then the expression of lack of God belief, and it's justification thorugh empirical science must be a cyncial statement about the limiations of our ability to come to terms rationally with our own being.



God is not subject to Empirical Proof

Atheists demand proof of God as though God were some fact in nature. God is not a thing along side other things in creation. It is not strange that we can't prove God with some empirical fact because God is not given to empirical study. As I said in another post:


"There are somethings we can say about God that make sense relative to our understanding of things. God is the foundation of all that is, so we know that God can't be compared to anything else. God is off scale for all attributes because God is the scale. Trying to measure and compare God to anything would be like trying to compare our single sun to the big bang. Even that is not apt because the BB was finite."



Traces of God


People don't come to belief in God because of arguments, and we shouldn't expect them to.
Humanity finds God in a million different places. It finds God in flowers and trees, in brooks (and in books), in grass, in each other. It finds God in storms and scary things, and in the night. It finds God in the sky and the stars in the darkness of a vast and endless expanse. It reaches out for what is there because it has been put into it to do so; not because God sat and said "I will make men and men will seek me" but because God provided for the reality of the Imago Dei to evolve and develop in whatever species reached the point where humanity has come to. God did this automatically as an aspect of self expression, as an outgrowth of consciousness. This kind of God would make a universe of the type we see around us. This type of God would also place in that universe hints so that whatever species reaches that level that God's manifestation would be waiting to show them God's solidarity with them. God would plant a thousand clues, not as a matter of deliberation like one plants Easter eggs, but as the result of being what God is--self communicating and creative. Thus we have design arguments and fine tuning arguments, and contingencies and necessities and the lot. We can find the God Pod in our heads that lights up when it hears God ideas. We can do studies and determine that our religious experiences are better for us than unbelief, because the clues are endless because the universe bears the marks of its creator.

Yet these marks are sublet for a reason. This is where the Evangelical view of God can also be a sophisticated view. The Evangelical God can also be the God of Tallish and the God of process, after all, these are all derived from the same tradition and the Evangelicals have as much right to escape anthropomorphism as anyone. The Evangelical God seeks a moral universe. This God wants believers who have internalized the values of the good. We do not internalize that which we are forced to acknowledge. Thus God knows that a search in the heart is better to internalizing values than is a rational formally logical argument, or a scientific proof. Thus we have a soteriological drama in which we can't tell if there is or is not a God just by looking at the nature of nature. That must remain neutral and must avoid us because it is not given to us to have direct and absolute knowledge of God. Knowledge of God is a privilege. We must seek it through the heart, that's where it isthmian to be found. It's a privilege but faith is a gift.


Thus we should be speaking of the technology by which we can find God. Here I use the term "technology" in the Foucaultian sense, not as a machine or hardware, but as the manipulation of a technique. My God argument work as a God finding technology, but one must know how to apply them. You can't expect an empirical demonstration. We must find the co-determinate and demonstrate the correlation between co-determinate and divine. How do we know when we find it? The Co-determinate will that thing which leads us to God.

God is accessible to all. We can each find God at an any time. What guarantee do we have that we have found God? Our lives will change. Atheist will baulck because it's not empirical proof. and it is not. But it is close enough that it leaves us into a transformation. The proof is in the pudding. We know we have found it when we find it, becasue we turn on to it, our lives change, God becomes a reality to us. The that makes God a reality to us is the co-determinate. All questions about "how do you know that's really what it is" don't amount to anything, they are not negations of the experience of transformation.


God finder Technology: Co Determinate


Co-determinate: The co-determinate is like the Derridian trace, or like a fingerprint. It's the accompanying sign that is always found with the thing itself. In other words, like trailing the invisible man in the snow. You can't see the invisible man, but you can see his footprints, and wherever he is in the snow his prints will always follow.

We cannot produce direct observation of God, but we can find the "trace" or the co-determinate, the effects of God in the world.

The only question at that point is "How do we know this is the effect, or the accompanying sign of the divine? But that should be answer in the argument below. Here let us set out some general parameters:

(1) The trace produced content with specifically religious affects

(2)The affects led one to a renewed sense of divine reality, are transformative of life goals and self actualization

(3) Cannot be accounted for by alternate causality or other means.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Argument--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1)There are real affects from Mytical experince.

(2)These affects cannot be reduced to naturalistic cause and affect, bogus mental states or epiphenomena.

(3)Since the affects of Mystical consciousness are independent of other explanations we should assume that they are genuine.

(4)Since mystical experience is usually experience of something, the Holy, the sacred some sort of greater transcendent reality we should assume that the object is real since the affects or real, or that the affects are the result of some real higher reality.

(5)The true measure of the reality of the co-determinate is the transfomrative power of the affects.


so rather than arguing about "Proofs" we should be discussing how to seek God in your heart.

Bad Reasons to Doubt God

Some guy named Andrew Zak Williams asked well known (suppossedly) atheists why they don't believe in God. This is in the NewStatesman (25, July 2011).

Someone I've never heard of (but then I'm such a fogie and so dedicated to living in the past) asked public figure atheists:

Maryam Namazie
Human rights activist:

I suppose people can go through an entire lifetime without questioning God and a religion that they were born into (out of no choice of their own), especially if it doesn't have much of a say in their lives. If you live in France or Britain, there may never be a need to renounce God actively or come out as an atheist.

But when the state sends a "Hezbollah" (the generic term for Islamist) to your school to ensure that you don't mix with your friends who are boys, stops you from swimming, forces you to be veiled, deems males and females separate and unequal, prescribes different books for you and your girlfriends from those read by boys, denies certain fields of study to you because you are female, and starts killing in­discriminately, then you have no choice but to question, discredit and confront it - all of it. And that is what I did.

Some people in some religions don't' question, some in some religions do wrong things. That's a reason not to believe in God? Why is it that religious people doing wrong things is a reason to doubt that there's a God but religious people doing good things is only an excuse to examine that person super closely and be hyper critical in an extremely petty way and go after them with a vengeance (like Christopher Hitchens went after Mother Tresa) but it's not a reason to believe in God?

Philip Pullman
Author

The main reason I don't believe in God is the missing evidence. There could logically be no evidence that he doesn't exist, so I can only go by the fact that, so far, I've discovered no evidence that he does: I have had no personal experience of being spoken to by God and I see nothing in the world around me, wherever I look in history or science or art or anywhere else, to persuade me that it was the work of God rather than
of nature.

Of course this guy hasn't looked at my list of 42 God arguments has he? When people say this is usually turns out they have never really evaluated a God closely they just go by the surface "feel" of their attitudes. When they do actually go toe to toe I can take you though point for point and show you why they don't win. The next day of course they out there saying "there's no evidence." I have been through month long knock-down-drag-out debates and wound up with atheists virtually admitting there has to be "something there" yet the next day saying the same mistaken stuff I disproved the day before. In my Internet argument career I found several atheists, maybe six, who actually addmitted they would no longer be atheists any more because of my arguments.Of cousre the much more common result is that they usually wind up saying things like "O well logic doesn't really mean anything, arguments aren't proof, proof is not proof."

Actually, in my view, the answer "I don't see the evidence stacking up to prove it" is really the only good answer to the question. I really don't mean to criticize anyone who says this. The one doesn't see it stacking up that way is understandable and acceptable as a valid answer. It's when they work overtime not to see that bothers me.

Kenan Malik
Neurobiologist, writer and broadcaster

I am an atheist because I see no need for God. Without God, it is said, we cannot explain the creation of the cosmos, anchor our moral values or infuse our lives with meaning and purpose. I disagree.

Invoking God at best highlights what we cannot yet explain about the physical universe, and at worst exploits that ignorance to mystify. Moral values do not come prepackaged from God, but have to be worked out by human beings through a combination of empathy, reasoning and dialogue.
This is true of believers, too: they, after all, have to decide for themselves which values in their holy books they accept and which ones they reject.
And it is not God that gives meaning to our lives, but our relationships with fellow human beings and the goals and obligations that derive from them. God is at best redundant, at worst an obstruction. Why do I need him?

This is a classic sort of answer based upon classic misconceptions. Belief in God is not predicated upon the need to explain things (with the one exception of sense of the numinous and other co-determinate related sensations). The areas he mentions: explain cosmos, anchor morality, give meaning, I have never seen atheists pass my challenge to produce their own systems that offer even one or all of these three things. I have yet to see an atheist advance a moral system that can get past my cirteria for a valid grounding of moral axioms. When atheists talk about meaning in life their whole its an exercise in cross purposes before form the get go they can't mean real actual universal meaning; their concepts of meaning are relative, private and discordable.

Beleif in God is not about explaining the physical universe. We don't need arguments about he inapplicability of the universe to predicate rational warrant for belief. I urge everyone to read my list of 42 reasons and pay special attention to the religious experience arguments. Yet I have never seen an atheist answer the Cosmological argument with anything but duplicity and question begging and putting the problem off through logical loops that bring up more problems than they solve (I refer to Infinite causal regression).

Take that last part:

And it is not God that gives meaning to our lives, but our relationships with fellow human beings and the goals and obligations that derive from them. God is at best redundant, at worst an obstruction. Why do I need him?

Yes it is precisely God who does that. I have not seen an atheist ever provide me with a basis for such meaning that isn't either the privatized relativist meaning that just amounts to giving yourself an award, (it means something to me, of course my life is meaningless against the backdrop of eternity but it's ok it's my little meaning--which I get form silver age DC comics). He's just begging the question with this statment then redudantly echoing "why do we need him?" Because you can't make your own meaning. That's the special Olympics startegy of meaning "You all won a gold medal just for being you." Not to put down the special Olympics. that's fine for self esteem but it's not a basis for real meaning in life.

Susan Blackmore
Psychologist and author

What reason for belief could I possibly have? To explain suffering? He doesn't. Unless, that is, you buy in to his giving us free will, which conflicts with all we know about human decision-making.

O brilliant! Free will is disproved by what we supposedly know yet I choose not to believe in God. Of course if we have no free will (human decision making is where she puts the emphasis for determinism) then what means does she use to refuse to believe in God? It's obviously not something she figured by her own intelligence because it's determined. It's cut and dried, no free will remember? We know it, it's a fact beyond dispute. you are not smart for being an atheist and you didn't choose to be one. That means also means atheists are stupid for mocking and ridiculing religious people because no one chooses remember?

In fact it is not a done deal, is not proven. There is good scientific evidence that we do have free will.

Veto Power


Glenn Miller, Christian Think Tank:

"The studies of neuronal timing by Libet has demonstrated that conscious will exerts a veto effect on action sequences initiated at an unconscious level [Journal Consciousness Studies:1.1.130; CS:TSC:342f]. In other words, an unconscious process may get a muscle ready to move, but when that readiness becomes 'visible' to the conscious mind, that conscious mind can let the action continue, or shut it down! Elsewhere [CS:TSOC:113], Libet explains the implications of this veto-power, over against those who would ASSUME that even the veto was "upwardly caused":

"It has been argued that the appearance of the conscious veto would itself require a prior period of unconscious neural development, just as for conscious intention; in such a case even this conscious control event would have an unconscious initiating process. However, conscious control of an event appears here after awareness of the impending voluntary action has developed. Conscious control is not a new awareness; it serves to impose a change on the volitional process and it may not be subject to the requirement of a preceding unconscious cerebral process found for awareness. In such a view, a potential role for free will would remain viable in the conscious control, though not in the initiation, of a voluntary act. These findings taken together have a fundamental bearing on the issues of voluntary action, free will and individual responsibility for conscious urges and actions."

In case you didn't get that--the veto cannot have antecedent unconscious processes (before it becomes aware) , since it only appears in as the initiated action has ALREADY become aware--it controls with a go/no-go decision THEN.

This is why I avoid harangues about free will vs determinism. Determinism is self defeating because if they are right there's no sense in arguing about positions you are determined by genes or whatever to defend even though without those influences you would be free to reject a position that had you not been influenced by those influences that control you would be wrong anyway. It's not as though you can convince the other side, they are determined to be against you.

Richard Dawkins
Evolutionary biologist

I don't believe in leprechauns, pixies, werewolves, jujus, Thor, Poseidon, Yahweh, Allah or the Trinity. For the same reason in every case: there is not the tiniest shred of evidence for any of them, and the burden of proof rests with those who wish to believe.

So, why don't you believe in God? This is so obviously just an attempt to slander belief by classing it among ideas we all know are false and which are discredited long ago; but then it's a just a pretense, and a stupid one, to assume that belief in God is like belief in these contingent myths that have nothing to do with God. They all fit the atheist straw man propaganda about "superantuarl." Of of cousre they have nothing to do with the Christian concept of Supernatural. For this reason I find it hard to take Dawkins seriously. This is not a serious reason to disbelieve. "I disbelieve in God because I don't believe these things that are totally different from God."

Then Dawkins goes on to give a perfect example of slippery reasoning. He illustrates exactly what we meant by "a greasy debater" back in high school and college debate.

Even given no evidence for specific gods, could we make a case for some unspecified "intelligent designer" or "prime mover" or begetter of "something rather than nothing"? By far the most appealing version of this argument is the biological one - living things do present a powerful illusion of design. But that is the very version that Darwin destroyed. Any theist who appeals to "design" of living creatures simply betrays his ignorance of biology. Go away and read a book. And any theist who appeals to biblical evidence betrays his ignorance of modern scholarship. Go away and read another book.

He starts by saying "can you make a case for a general concept of God apart from any tradition?" then his reasoning against doing that is based upon a specific God of a specific tradition. Never mind the fact that he's only using bad bits from one part of the Bible, never mind that the Bible is not the only basis for Christian concepts, he would have to deal with the real thinkers of the tradition and he stays as far away from them as he can, but the fact of it is he's doing what he said he's not going to do. In both cases, both paragraphs he's basing his reasons on things that have nothing to do with what he's supposed to be arguing about. This classic case of mis direction is exactly what we mean by "propaganda."

His assertion that Darwin destroyed any part of Christian belief is pure ignorance. It' no state secret that only the most primitive literalists are displaced by Darwin. Here's the kind of stupdity that really seals my opionoin of this clown:

And any theist who appeals to biblical evidence betrays his ignorance of modern scholarship. Go away and read another book.

That kind of backward stupid thinking that makes my job so tough. My job: explicating Christin theology to people who mock and riducle it but don't seek to understand it. The reason this is so pathetic and puerile is because the average atheist who hasn't studied logic and doesn't know about textual criticism reads that and get's the legalistic idea that one dare not refer to a book to prove that book. Of cousre atheists do that all the time. They want to prove Dawkins is right tthey look in his books and compare what it says to other things. Do that with the bible and they all go "you can't do that that's circular reasoning." This is exactly what I've been fighting for a month on message board. I show that there are eight levels of verification in the Gospels that refer to older works that the gospels draw upon and rather than example a single bit of that evidence they call "you can't prove a book with that book."

Here's what they are confusing, and Dawkins is purposely leading them in the confusion:

Fundie says: the Bible is the inerrant word of God

skepic: how do you know it is

Fundie" It says it is in verse X.

Obviously you can't prove the authority of a book by the books own statement of it's own authority. That's about the idea of having outside proofs that demonstrate the validation of the book. Obviously there could be statements in a book that refer to external touchstones that show you how to prove the books own veracity. That's why why people defend Dawkins books. The Bible can and does have the same kind of touchstones. The Bible says the walls of Jericho came tumbling down. Archaeology finds the walls they did tumble their tumbling is consistent with the Biblical account, that's an external verification mentioned din the book. The atheist fundie, the Dawkamenaltist says "no you can't do that that's a rule" (of Dawkamentalism).

The reasons for unbelief are just as shallow and silly seeming as the reasons for belief (given by many). What one should be doing rather than evaluating other people's reasons is seek for one's own. Ask yourself what you believe and why you believe it. Then ask yourself if your reasons for belief or unbelief really satisfy you. One can have total absolute assurance of God's reality but that's different from an objective reason that will convince others. The way most people reason about things it's clear that objective well argued reasons are just not important in terms of convincing others. One need only seek truth in one's own hear to find God. There's no problem with doing that. It' snot illogical it's not wrong it's not violating some secret rule of logic. The main problem is it's not satisfying, because you can't use it to convince others, but that's becuase one is concerned with the views of others. We can also have rationally warranted reasons to believe. See my God argument list.

Great Discussion on the Nature of Science and Certinty of Knowledge

On my boards right now some regular posters are having one of the best discussions I've ever seen. This is really what message boards should be about. It's Atheists vs. Christians, but no ranker, no hostility, everyone one acting friendly and engaging in discussion in good will.

Quntum Troll has returned after a long hiatus and he and Feeltmouse, while not expressing identical view, represent the atheists. The Theists are represented by Tiny Thinker, Wrodgazer and the new guy, M.D. Simposon.

sample, one post out of four pages:

QuantumTroll wrote:Wow, this thread has careened away from me completely. Sorry to all y'all who have written interesting things lately, I'm going to respond to things in order, beginning with Tiny's reply to me.

tinythinker wrote:Yet again, you don't know enough to rigourously evaluate every scientific claim. Nor do you have the time or resources. Mostly you trust others to be honest, accurate experts. Knowing a little about everything is nice but it doesn't qualify one to really be able to seriously evaluate most (and I use that word to its fullest) of what is out there in anything other than a fairly superficial way. That is, as a non-specialist. I am not unfamiliar with excellent reading comprehension or the skill of seeing the larger picture, though I am probably a bit rustier at spotting iffy stats on first glance. I am at heart a systematist/integrator of different knowledge streams. I am not suggesting you can't predict things or see flaws from your perspective which others who are "too close to the data" or a particular model cannot see from theirs. But that puzzle picture and sense of fit, again, comes from faith in the people who gave us the pieces as well as those who put that picture together.

QT
I don't understand your point.

Tiny:
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I will elaborate on my interests here. I saw that you had written, in the previous thread, "I accept scientific facts as things that are known to be true. If I believe something, and science suggests me to be wrong, then I change my mind (after evaluating the science, of course!)." I think this describes how many people in modern industrial democracies feel. Contrary to fleetmouse's misgivings, I don't think it is a poor position to take. However, as I said to him, anyone who works in science or cites scientific knowledge should be conscious of the nature of science, including its flaws and limits. In fact, this should be a concern for anyone who relies on science. Given what I recall (or think I recall) about your background, I thought it would be instructive and fruitful to engage you on the matter to see how aware you are of these boundaries and how you would react to being asked about them. I assume that those who don't work in science or who don't have much a background in it are probably less aware of these issues than those (like you) who are.

This matters to me because even someone who specializes in one area, such as structural geology, may have only had a fleeting biology course their freshman year in college. As a non-specialist, when our geologist regularly sees that someone has found "a gene" for this and "the gene" for that, he, like many laypeople, can easily get the notion that there really is "a" gene for every trait, and, not knowing how traits are defined or categorized, may imagine that there is "a gene" for being rude, or "a gene" for being religious or atheist (someone has actually tried this already!), or "a gene" for whatever. Now to be fair, one can correlate the activity of a gene with the presence of some structure or behavior and give it a shorthand like "a/the gene for". And some genes are pivotal switches for a pathway to allow or disallow the development of such traits. But the image that seems too often to be constructed in the mind of many people of how genetics works and what such discoveries do or don't mean is often a far cry from what geneticists and developmental biologists actually think is going on.

Such people may then go on to have ideas about what science does or does not claim and the implications of it all, yet may be way off base. Such misunderstandings can have serious consequences for public debates and for policy proposals. Those who least understand what science actually looks like up close, or how tenuous or open to interpretation some claims are (especially in fields where ideas and data sets have a high turnover rate), often seem to be those who are most dogmatic about their understanding of the science they are discussing. They, for example, might have a hard time truly appreciating or agreeing with what you meant when you wrote:

QT:

Science is never about absolute certainty. All aspects of life involve trust in the people around you. I don't pretend to be able to *rigorously* evaluate *every* scientific claim, and I don't need to. All I need is to be able to efficiently internalize the relevant science when I consider an open question. I take the science as far as I can go, sometimes (rarely) to the limit of science, sometimes (more often) to the limit of my patience and interest, and sometimes to the limit of my abilities.

They would also struggle with something you wrote even earlier in our conversation (emphasis added):

QT:

I think science is a valid form of knowledge... Thus far, I've discussed only science and scientific questions. Keeping the puzzle analogy, we can see science as an image of a game board, describing the rules and playing field for existence. Everything we do is done within the confines of this board, and everything that happens is a result of the rules defined by the board. What we don't get by examining the board is an answer to questions like "what should we do", "what do we want to do", "what is it like". Questions like "what can we do", which seem to be theoretically answerable by looking at the game board, can be so complex that we only get the vaguest of answers from that quarter. For these kinds of questions, we need something that isn't science.

Tiny:
Not appreciating this kind of distinction leads down a slippery slope to the realm of dogmatic scientism, wherein science is presumed to always be giving the correct, accurate and complete view of the world, and where errors introduced by human flaws and biases (as I have been laying out for review) are ignored as aberrations or redefined as resulting from inadequate data. This kind of idolization of science often starts off very subtly and can be hard to detect in just a causal conversation about science. Therefore it can go unchecked or unchallenged and lead to some pretty poor thinking and some misguided conclusions. In my view this can hurt both the integrity and the image of science in the long run if it catches on among academics as well as laypeople. It can also give aid and comfort to the people fleetmouse was concerned about, who see their views as generally antagonistic to scientific ideas, by allowing them to attack the superficiality of such an idolized, unrealistic science. Conversely, they can take the idolized form as the exemplar to which science should aspire and then mock by comparison the more grounded, messy and non-linear examples of actual science. I've seen this done plenty of times in debates over creationism. I suspected you would be cognizant of the kinds of things I am concerned about as well as articulate in discussing them. I was correct (there's a first time for everything).

Additional interests in this conversation include the fact that I love to discuss topics like this, and I wanted to demonstrate that interesting and productive dialogues on topics like the nature of knowledge, the role of science, the importance of beliefs, etc, are in fact possible on this board between reasonable people of good will.

QuantumTroll wrote:Then I have as firm a basis in "what is known" as possible.

Tiny
As a point of distinction rather than contention, I would say that I tend to agree with you except I would not limit what is possible only to that about which science is currently willing or able to speculate. I think it gives a pretty good idea of the contours of the game board, though.

QuantumTroll wrote:

tinythinker wrote:

QuantumTroll wrote:But what if a whole patch of the puzzle is wrong? What about paradigm shifts? Can I base a worldview on what is essentially an opinion that can change completely in a decade? Here, I like to bring up history of science, and the historical fact that science doesn't work the way it used to. It used to be that people believed one thing without sufficient cause, and then a scientific discovery overthrew the old paradigm. People believed Lamarckism not because they had evidence, but because they had no way of determining if it was a good theory. Ditto Hobbe's Plenism. If you examine the history of paradigm shifts, they've only occurred when ignorance is replaced with new data and a theory to explain it. We've never really overthrown a previous known, just a previously adored belief. And we're running out of those, quite frankly.

People believed Larmarckism because it fit their observations. It seemed consistent with how the world appeared to work. Darwin himself made strenuous appeals to ideas such as use/disuse even while he was introducing the idea of natural selection. He would later use it more and more as people poked holes in his early formulations of selection. I would be greatly amused to ask someone from 200 years in the future what they think of many of our paradigms. I suspect that if they were to use your conception of ignorance, knowns and beliefs that they would have to conclude that our biologists, chemists and physicists were believing things without sufficient cause, caught in the throws of ignorance and the adoration of cherished beliefs. All scientists have evidence for their models which are based on their basic assumptions about how things work, and these three aspects (evidence, models, and a basic idea of how things work) are constantly in flux and tension, rubbing against one another and producing friction. Some folks try to smooth over the rough edges with exceptions and special pleading, others pull at the untidy or frayed threads and unravel a portion of the patchwork. I don't hold to the notion that we are somehow more clever than our predecessors, or that our models, or how we decide what is evidence (or how to describe and use it), or our basic assumptions about the world, are one day going to appear any more or less brilliant or ridiculous than those who came before us. Just because some feel comfortable promoting what they see as proper evidence to the status of "knowns" or beliefs (as represented by their models) to the status of knowledge doesn't mean others won't come along and demote them in the future. The idea that we are running out of beliefs is almost incomprehensible to me. Paradigm shifts can involve any three of the key elements in the process becoming unsatisfactory.

We're not running out of beliefs. What I meant was that the scope of paradigm shifts is rapidly shrinking. We're not going to find another particle as revolutionary as an electron. We're not going to find a cause of disease as fundamental as bacteria. We're not going to suddenly figure out that the Earth is not a roughly 4.5 billion years old rock in an expanding universe. Humans will always be a species of large-brained mammal. Some facts are not subject to change. Today, the only fields where I believe paradigm shifts are likely to occur are the ones where there's an open admission of ignorance — some aspects of the mental sciences, social sciences, and fundamental physics.

Tiny
I don't assume that in the future these must be the ways that we divide up the game board, or that there aren't whole other parts of the board we can't even yet imagine. I don't assume, therefore, that the universe is more or less known and that we have mapped out most of the fundamentals or that these fundamentals are immune to future revision or rejection. Notice this isn't a rejection of such key models or ideas, or a critique suggesting we have good reasons now to doubt them. But for all we know, people may talk in disbelief about our idea of "particles" like we may talk now about Darwin's idea of pangenes. And the scope of the world may have also broadened considerably, such that what we think we now know may seem like a drop in a child's plastic bucket. How could we have ever thought, they might wonder, that we we pretty much had the major framework of the universe fairly well fleshed out? Our physics and chemistry may be their alchemy. Given the history of science so far, I don't think these are unreasonable speculations. They may have fields of study and paradigms beyond our wildest dreams.

Quantum Troll wrote:

QuantumTroll wrote:*(This is a game I've played, actually. Someone picks a surprising scientific fact that they suspect nobody else knows, and says a topic (e.g. mammals or sex chromosomes or particle physics). The other participants invent "facts" that sound plausible but are false. Then we guess at which "fact" is the true one. Very fun and often very funny stuff! Anyway, my experiences playing this game gives me confidence in the breadth and accuracy of my scientific erudition.)

That's cool, but it is relying on working with evidence in a system based on the working assumptions of that system. What about things that are ambiguous, or which lie on the margins. What about evidence, models and basic assumptions that are not (entirely) congruous with the prevailing paradigm? And how do you verify your answers to these trivia challenges? Of course, by consulting an expert, either in person or publication. Not that this is wrong, but again, it doesn't deal with the foundations of knowledge but rather as you said an extrapolation of what is already assumed.

Hmm. "Foundations of knowledge". That sounds like something I haven't dealt with explicitly. It sounds like you're assuming that knowledge has some sort of foundation, a ground from which it is built. I don't believe that. In practice, and in my philosophical worldview, knowledge has no foundation, no ground. Knowledge supports itself circularly. I think the only way to establish whether something is false is by showing that it contradicts something that is true. And showing that something is true, well, I wish you good luck with that. Truth is shown only insofar as you can show it's consistent with everything else that seems to be true. So you see, if the "chooser" in my game chooses good science, then she is dealing with as foundational knowledge as possible because it's by definition consistent with scientific facts and practice.

God, I wish I could remember what this concept is called. It ain't new, that's for sure, but my philosophy-terminology brain is glitching...

Foundations of knowledge was just an expression, not an assertion. I am referring in that sense to the basis for currently accepted models and paradigms.

Quantum Troll wrote:

I would also add there are many part of the game board that are, by science's own self-imposed limitations, beyond its scope.

What limitations are you thinking of?

The usual. Phenomena that are not either unique or so big that we can't observe them repeatedly. Phenomena which exhibit some degree of regularity and predictability. Phenomena which can be readily experienced by and therefore comparatively described by nearly everyone. Phenomena which have a consistent empirical expression which can be sufficiently perceived, processed and pondered by the human mind. Other phenomena are experienced and known but are problematic to some degree in one or more of these areas, making it difficult or impossible to employ basic scientific standards and methods.

Atheists Hide In The Gaps

 


I started this thread on CARM. (remember CARM therads are backwards so go to the last page to see the beginning). The atheist responses have been predictable if not furious and angry, but the  funny thing is not a one of them has actually addressed the issue. The concept is simple, there's always a gap in knowledge, there's always a need for a leap of faith. The only question is how wide is the gap, can we narrow it with conventional forms of knowledge (logic, science, reason, yada yada yada)? The punch line is the atheists assume as long as there is a gap there's a reason not to believe. Yet, there is always a gap, so they are hiding in the gap because they not only have o intention of bridging it, but they actually against the attempt.

I always use the concept of a diving board for the leap of faith. Its' an amusing metaphor based upon real life childhood experiences of going up the high dive ladder with good intentions and brave heart, and coming back down the high dive ladder having decided that more manly aspect of leaping is not leaping. This always came after a long period of deliberation about the nature of faith and the lack of necessity of leaping, conducted at the end of the high dive board, shivering and shaking from fear with a long line of agitated older kids behind me going "come on and jump!" That's when I became an existentialist, that moment. I decided it was much more important to understand and deal with the angst of being a kid stuck on a high dive than to jump! I use this metaphor to represent my arguments. No argument will eliminate the need to make the leap but perhaps come can get us out there further on so we narrow the gap.

There's always a gap where one must make a leap of faith. You can reduce the gap or it can grow wide, but there is always a gap. Even in what atheists take to be rock solid proved scientific facts there is a gap. If you look in the right place, usually do some epistemology, every source of knowledge and every rock solid fact has a gap where we don't know and we have we must bridge the gap with a leap of faith.

We solve most gaps with a make-piece system of accepting what works and moving on. That's part of Heidegger notion of "ready to hand" in the discussion of the nature of being. What that means is bridging the gap with what works and making the leap of faith are so much a part of what we take for granted about life we don't even know we do it.

Atheists use the gap as an excuse to shun belief in God. We see this being done now in the thread about certainty. The atheist wont to pretend his world view is based upon "fact" and faith is some stupid thing only fools resort to. When we use answers that work, which fit the common criteria by which we judge reality, the atheist balks and demands absolute proof a standard even scinece doesn't pretend to.

you are hiding in the gap. you are using the fact of a gap to pretend that faith is somehow sub standard and that doubt is some kind of answer to truth.

The early responses just asserted the all sufficiency of scientific outlook to tell us what's what, really this amounts to gap denial.  From "Big Thinker" (contrasting his name to that of my friend Tiny Thinker, Tiny is one of the most Brilliant people I know, and their names are the inverse of their abilities).

Typically, the atheist's position is based on fact, its based on what is known. This contrasts with the believer's position that is founded on faith. The believer's position is based on possibility and speculation. The believer's gap is HUGE, their conclusion are unfounded and (ironically) unwavering. The atheist who's position is based on known facts is not emotionally committed to any particular idea but rather to an honest and critical assessment of the existing facts.

This is the same guy who said my 200 studies can't be any good because no academic would ever make a study showing that religious experience was good for you because it clearly isn't. when I pointed out that these were published in academic journals and done by real academics, not theologians and not religious publications he asserted that none of them were double blind. When I put down a link to a textbook written by the major researcher, Ralph Hood Jr. Of University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, the definitive article on the "M" scale which is the control mechanism for knowing if religious experience is valid, this stalwart defender of scinece refused to read the article, he would not click on a link and asserted that it wasn't scientific. He has no knowledge of the body of work, he has not read one word about what the field says of Hood or his M scale (I've talked to enough shrinks of religion to know that they regard him highly). When push comes to shove this guy has no regard for scinece, and no faith in scinece at all, no understanding what is and what is not scinece. All he's doing is working on prejudices and stereotypes.

In fact what he's doing is a perfect example of hiding in the gap. Almost all atheist arguments are argument from incredulity "I refuse to ever believe no matter what the evidence, therefore, it can't be true because if it was true I would believe." It's a form of circular reasoning.  In asserting this sort of sceitnism he's actually illustrating hiding in the gaps.  He's really saying "if there's a gap it's an excuse not to make the leap becuase there's a gap and I'm opposed to leaps of faith of any kind." Of course, his alternative is a selective pretense that only regards that which backs his view as "real scinece."

Super Genyus says (see link above):

There's no such thing as a "rock solid proved scientific fact." All scientific knowledge is tentative and conditional. Why you would need faith to say, "There is strong and copious amounts of evidence to suggest X being an accurate representation of reality," is beyond me.

Of cousre there's not "rock solid proof" that's my whole point. There is always a gap and always a leap of faith no matter what the issue. Even scientific hypothesis requires some leap of faith, however small it may be. Why we need faith to say something is reality is precisely because of what he said, all hypothesis are tenuous. What he's doing is to say first there is no such thing as solid proof, secondly, we can take evidence as solid proof if it's strong enough. That's fine, but what's strong evidence. It's apparently evidence that supports their view and not mine. If it supports mine it's not scientific and suddenly bad evidence. Look at the hypocrisy of this answer in relation to the next two issues that come up. The issue is no rock solid proof in scinece but we can accept strong evidence in place of proof (which is exactly what I say in m rational warrant argument--God is not proved but belief in God is rationally warranted).

the very next statement he makes:

This is generally not the case. We, generally speaking in terms of your most common arguments, just don't see how an explanation "working" to improve one's well-being relates to "working" as an explanation of reality. They are two separate criteria.

He's talking about 200 empirical studies that all basically say religious experience is real good for you and will transform you life (change dramatically for the better).  Not only do they not have one study but they refused to look at the text book chapter explaining all about the studies. In two years of putting that link up time after after time (well over a hundred) one of them has actually claimed to look at at it and I'm certain he did not read the whole chapter because he still doesn't know what the M scale is. He asserts just being good for you isn't evidence but why wouldn't it be? The claim is that God wants to save you, to renovate your life and make your life better. We find that experiencing God's presence actually does that. That seems pretty much like validation for the number one claim religion makes to be true, so why would that not be a rational warrant for belief? Strong evidence is warrant when ti backs atheism. Not when it backs God belief?

Is 200 studies strong evdience? Air Bags were deemed proven by four studies. Naturally the quality of the studies matter but 200 is a heck of a lot of studies, and none of them have managed in two years to dig up a valid methodological problem. This is proof of what I say that the atheist admiration for science is totally selective and ideologically driven. Also note the contradiction, one says the atheist position is "fact" (even though they can't find a single "fact" that disproves the existence of God) the other one says there are no rock solid proofs in scinece, it's all tentative. Yet, despite this contradiction they both take the very same position with regard to counter evidence that challenges their world view. They are both hiding in the gap. When the gap is in terms of their view it's trivial and can be traversed easily or it's just not there at all, when it's in terms of belief in God then it's a huge chasm that can never be bridged.

The poster Crockoduck (that's his screen name) get's into it:

So miracles actually remove the need for faith. True? In the Bible, God went around demonstrating his power all the time even when it wasn't necessary. Like when God took pot shots at the defeated and fleeing Amorite army:
Joshua 10:10 The LORD threw them into confusion before Israel, who defeated them in a great victory at Gibeon. Israel pursued them along the road going up to Beth Horon and cut them down all the way to Azekah and Makkedah. 11 As they fled before Israel on the road down from Beth Horon to Azekah, the LORD hurled large hailstones down on them from the sky, and more of them died from the hailstones than were killed by the swords of the Israelites. [emphasis his]
So why can't he do some miracles today?

I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove. It's begging the question on miracles, assuming there are none without consulting the evidence. It looks more like a gratuitous opportunity to throw rocks at the Bible. A lot of atheists have been conditioned by fundamentalism to think that if there's anything wrong with the Bible then God id disproved. I think most atheists see through that but not all. Still it introduced the issue of miracles into the thread which became a huge argument and joke. Joke because the poster "Paradoxical" (that's his screen name, I guess "Metacrock"Is not one to make fun of screen names) continued to assert the same untruths against the shrine at Lourdes as though extraneous issues disprove miracles. I talk about Lourdes, that it has strict rules and doctors on the committee. Paradoxical talks about people spend their life savings to go to Lourdes, how cruel of God to lure people to that one place, take their life savings, then not heal but a tiny handful. I document with sources such as the Marion Newsletter that this is simply not the case. No one has ever claimed that God will only heal at Lourdes, that is not the deal. If one can't make it to Lourdes the water can be brought to them.

Then of course he cuts lose on the committee. They are all lackeys who work for the Vatican. The RCC has taken lots of measures to assure the autonomy of the committee. They are not paid, that is not their job. It's true that many of them loyal Catholics but they also use skeptics on the committee. He continually asserts these things over and over again as though I said nothing, and I'm quoting sources. Of course he also asserts other prayer studies have proved inconclusive so in his mind that is a complete disproof of God or miracles. That is an incredibly illogical conclusion. All that can really prove is that the study itself was inconclusive or that the double blind type of study is bad for prayer because outside prayer can't be controlled for. For example no one was healed in the experimental group above natural cure rate (even with the control group). Does that mean there's no God, or that God didn't want to heal anyone that time? How do we know no one outside the study prayed and that's why they weren't healed. So that's still an issue of control group. We can't control for outside prayer. I used to argue for those studies there 14 of them which are good and show results, but this one was suppossed to be the best.

Yet the Lourdes evidence is quite different. That is empirical evidence. the Xray shows the lung grew back over night. That is not remission, nothing grows back over night, lungs never grow back. Lungs that far gone (in the case of Charles Ann was not really a  Lourde's case but a saint making miracle) do not remit. That statistically never happens. That it did happen make it automatically a candidate for miraclehood. That's totally different than the controlled double blind study which just relays upon statistical averages. Yet Pradoxical seems to think these externalizes issues about how the shrine is run and allegiance of the doctors are germane to the evidence, and he doesn't even consider the xrays. Such concern with scientific fact!

What's really going on is he's hiding in the gaps too in a way. They are all saying "there's some kind of  gap in knowledge of the God element and as long as there is belief is totally unreliable. Yet their view, which they contrast as "factual" also has gaps but those gaps they write off as trivial, based upon selective evidence that just excludes anything that disproves their views. That's what I call "hiding in the gap!"

There's also an interesting epistemological problem with miracle hunting but I'll consider that net time.