K

SOMMS:


Actually, I should have said that you made no DIRECT claims about UFOs hiding behind comets. Indirectly you have. I'll give you an example.

If I say that the fact that 16 is even is sufficient evidence to prove that it is the square of an integer, then I have said INDIRECTLY that 2, 4, 8, and all the other even numbers are squares of integers.

Your claim that personal evidence is sufficient to imply the truth of your claim indirectly says that the truth of ANY belief is sufficiently implied by personal evidence for that belief.

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Selsaral,

Well this is a peculiar thing for an atheist to bring up Selsaral. I have studied how others act. And as it turns out most people on the planet have some form of God belief...and most of these are Christians.


So it seems that how I perceive my experiences is completely in line with how others act.




Correct. And since the issue at hand is exactly the rationality of my God belief...you can't dismiss the evidence I've witnessed. Because it is the evidence that determines if a belief is irrational or not.


No you haven't. What you have done is (by your own admission) dimissed the evidence I have witnessed. However, the issue at hand is is the evidence I've witnessed consistent with my God belief.

We are not discussing whether or not the experiences I've had are admissable or not...we are discussing if the conclusion I've come to given the evidence is irrational or not.



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K,

Ok...it looks like you've got 3 posts here...I am going to zero in on what I believe the most relevant points of contention are. Please let me know if I missed something.

You misunderstand K. We are not saying that 'evidence implies truth of belief'. That really isn't what we are talking about here. We are talking about rationality of belief. We (you, me, Webster) are saying 'evidence implies rationality of belief.'

If you agree with this K then you must begin to admit (albeit reluctantly) that my God belief is rational.







Uh...?
Clouds can't be made of gold because they wouldn't float in the sky or produce rain. Trees can't be greedy because they aren't sentient.





Actually no K. I do not want you to admit that the evidence I have witnessed suggests the truth of my assertion. This is important enough for me to repeat it. Again, I am not trying to get you to admit anything one way or the other about the truth value of my belief. All I am trying to get you to see is that my God belief is rational. Just as I hold that your unbelief in God is rational because you see no evidence. Notice that I don't necessarily think your hypothesis is true...however I don't think your hypothesis is irrational (for you).





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Selsaral

Excellent. This is the meat of my argument.

You are agreeing that you are a human who is innately superstitious just like all the rest (and by the way, I am not claiming that I, as an atheist, is any different). You said (to paraphrase) 'i act just like everyone else', and that is my whole point. You, just like everyone else (me included) is extremely superstitious. They worship UFOs, they claim the end of the universe would occur on January first 2000, etc etc. I am asserting that your particular brand of superstition, christianity, is no different than any other. People have thought this way for thousands of years before monotheism arose. It is partly emotional. It often grants you everlasting life, absolute morality, and punishes all the wrongdoers. It allows you to influence events in your current life through prayer. It arises partly from misinterpretation of coincidence and dreams.

Your beliefs are no different than thinking thunder is caused by Zeus in his chariot, or that the stars are holes poked in a dome. You just have a more modern version of that.

If human's innate superstitious nature always led them to christianity, you might have a point. (Or if the 'faith' of a christain were greater than that of a muslim, you might have a point.) But it clearly doesn't. In fact it (very suspiciously) nearly always leads you to the dominate religion of the culture in which you grew up. As I said, I find this incredibly suspicious, and neatly reinforces the concept of religion as a cultural construct that provides psychological and cultural well-being to its adherents.

Furthermore, most of the religions out there today or that existed in the past are extremely bizaare by our standards. In the early to mid 20th century a lot of british anthropologists did ethnographic studies of the disappearing African religions, and I found many of them to be beyond strange. The Nuer for instance employ oracles to tell the future. One oracle is the chicken oracle. You administer poison to a chicken (in a ritualistic way) and ask a question. Your question is answered as 'yes' or 'no' depending on whether the chicken survives. I find this religion laughable. But the adherents were utterly convinced of its truth, just as convinced a christian is of his truth. This superstitious nature of human beings is at work again, just in an extremely different culture. All humans are superstitious, and the result of that superstitious thought is often a religion, and that religion is shaped by the culture it developed in.

EDIT: To add to this, Evans-Pritchard in his famous book about the Azande, concluded that one of the primary causes for superstitious thought amont the Azande (another group he studied in Africa) was coincidence. That coincidence, in all its forms, begged a supernatural explanation from humans who innately try to put events in order in their minds. I find this explanation extremely powerful to explain the superstitious thoughts of humans, particularly in my own mind. I regularly am simply baffled by the apparent coincidences that happen around me, almost thinking that something other than blind chance is at work. But as soon as I qualitatively measure things, I find it is random, and I unconciously count the hits and forget the misses.

Sorry. I meant to say I dismiss your evidence as having any value to me. I understand it has value to you. If we artificially cut off all other perspectives, and all other evidence, and examined your situation in a total vaccum, I might agree your conclusion is legitimate. However, I am arguing that it is irrational to cut yourself off from the rest of the evidence. In this last reply by you, we've finally gotten into the meat of my argument. I see now that it isn't that you refused to consider my perspective (as we've been talking right past each other quite a bit), it's that you've already considered it in the past, reached a conclusion about it, and moved on. I think here we can begin to re-examine your conclusion, because I consider it faulty.

K

SOMMS:

I just want to get this straight. You are claiming that any evidence for a belief makes that belief rational. It doesn't matter if the evidence implies that the belief is true. Simply having some evidence (even inconsistent and incoherent evidence like personal evidence has been shown to be) is enough to make a belief rational.

That is about the last thing I would agree to. Rationality requires coherence and consistency - not just any old evidence treated in inconsistent ways. Did you actually think I would agree that a belief based on evidence that didn't imply the truth of the belief was rational?!!

See how difficult is to show something is irrational when you're not allowed to take any other information into account? You immediately used information about the density of gold vs. air and the sentience of trees. My challenge was for you to only use my evidence and conclusion. That's why it's ridiculous to try and evaluate the rationality of a belief in a vacuum.



But wait, let's look at what you said several posts earlier...

In fact, this is what we have been discussing for pretty much this whole page. You were incredulous that I didn't find that your evidence suggested the truth of your belief that God exists. Now you act as though you had never claimed that your evidence suggested that truth. Which is it?

And I'll repeat this again. Your belief in God is exactly as rational as every other beleif that is based on similar evidence. These include Heaven's Gate beliefs, Astrology, and channeling prehistoric dolphins with Scottish accents.

Not believing in something for which there is no evidence to suggest that it is true.

Believing in something for which the only evidence doesn't suggest that it is true.

Do you really hold these beliefs as equally rational? We're right back to suggesting that it is rational to believe in leprechauns.

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K,
I am not claiming anything K. I am using the definition of 'irrational' in Websters. The upshot being that if one has witnessed evidence of a hypothesis then one's belief in that hypothesis is not irrational. (And no...I don't think you've shown how the evidence I've witnessed is inconsistent with my God belief...in fact you have admitted that it is consistent.)



Point #1: Untrue. I have no evidence of 'aliens behind comet' or astrology or prehistoric dolphins. As such I have made no claim about these things. Any belief I had in these would be irrational. Why do you keep bringing these up K if I haven't even mentioned them?

Point #2: I have witnessed evidence for...
A-Gravity
B-2nd Law of Thermodynamics
...however, I doubt you feel my belief in these constructs is 'irrational'.






K, I think I see where our disagreement lies. I am simply asking you to evaluate my belief relative to evidence I've witnessed. Instead of evaluating the evidence however, you dismiss the evidence I have witnessed claiming it is inadmissable.


Here's the catch...we are not discussing if the evidence I have witnessed is admissible or not. I witnessed it. I feel it is admissible...for me. You may not wish to do the same in your life. That's fine. However, we aren't talking about what evidence you think is admissable or not. I am discussing your claim that my belief in God is irrational.



So here's the deal. IF you want to discuss whether or not the evidence I've witnessed is admissible or not fine...however, this is a completely different conversation than actually discussing the evidence. Let's finish this conversation first...then move on.




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Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Selsaral,

And since we (you, me, everybody) are superstitious we should base our beliefs on things we have evidence for. I have no evidence for 'UFO', 'the end of the universe will occur on Jan 1, 2000' or 'athiesm'. I have witnessed evidence that suggests (to me) that God exists. This is why my belief in God is rational...because I have seen evidence for it.





And again...I have no evidence of 'Zeus' or his chariot causing thunder. Thus for me to hold this belief would be irrational.





Ok...this is a start.


I hear what you saying Selsara. And I agree with you that you consider my position (God exists) faulty. This is fine. Likewise, I feel your conclusion (God does not exist) is faulty. However, I don't consider your position irrational. In the same manner, I don't think you can really consider my position irrational..even though you may not agree with it.

I guess what I am trying to point out is that 'truth' and 'rationality' are not mutually exclusive. You and I can have mutually exclusive beliefs (as we do) yet both be rational in our adherence of these beliefs.




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K

SOMMS:

That's not at all what Websters says. You're leaving out the extremely important point about being consistent.

The fact that there is no peanut butter sandwich in front of me is evidence that martians stole it to power their spaceship. However, this belief fails the consistency aspect of the definition and is therefore irrational.

I've only agree that it was non-contradictory. Just as the Heaven's Gaters' evidence was non-contradictory to their belief.

The last time we reached this point, you claimed that your belief was different because your evidence suggested that God exists. Now I'm not sure whether you believe your evidence suggests He exists or not since you've claimed that it did and then emphatically denied making the claim.

For the umpteenth time, IT DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU HAVE EVIDENCE FOR THIS OR NOT. If your belief is rational based on personal evidence, then other peoples' beliefs are rational if they are based on the same evidence. This would include the Heaven's Gaters, the astrologers, and the prehistoric dolphin channelers.

If you believe in gravity and the laws of thermodynamics because you finished a coding challenge, had prayers "answered", and get a feeling a peace believing in them, then your belief in them is irrational.

If, on the other hand, you believe in them because there is verifiable physical evidence for them, your belief is rational.

Which I've done.

I haven't claimed that it's inadmissable. I've only claimed that it flunks miserably when tested as a basis for rational belief.

I think you even realize that you can't make a consistent belief based on your evidence. Half the time you claim that your evidence suggests the existence of God. The other half, you claim that it doesn't. It seems that you change whenever it fits your current argument. This is a glaring sign that your belief is inconsistent (and irrational by the definition you provided).

Agreed.

That's fine. But don't call it rational. Whether you believe it or not has nothing at all to do with it being rational.

And holding an inconsistent belief based on evidence that doesn't imply the truth of the belief is exactly what irrational is.

You claim that I'm not allowing the evidence. That's not true. I'm evaluating the evidence you've provided against the standard set by Websters and finding it terribly lacking.

That's not at all what I want to discuss.

And before we proceed, I would like to know whether you believe that your evidence suggests that God exists or not. This is fundamental to the discussion and your position has seemed to change several times.

Selsaral

But the fact is that all these other religions that have existed over the last ten thousand years (and probably much longer) had adherents who had personal experience just like you of their religion. If I was religious, this trend would bother me. It would suggest that my personal experience isn't proof of anything, because the very nature of human religious experience is as common as getting hungry. The trend shows that humans believe in all sorts of things quite easily. Ever watched a devout Muslim pray, or the native South Americans get mystical with their crazy drugs? I personally like scientology as a great example of people utterly convinced of a ridiculous and fake scam. If I were religious, I would either have to think I (and everyone who followed my exact religion) was special and different from all the other humans who have gone before me (which would be very difficult because the religions closely follow cultural lines and show suspicious trends of development just like other cultural features and most religions show equal levels of faith and devotion and 'experience'), or that personal experience of the supernatural was essentially debunked as a reliable piece of evidence. Once again I call on the dream example. Dreams would freak me out if I didn't know everyone else has them and that they are an extremely common feature of being human. I would either think I was going crazy, or having some serious mystical experiences. But because I can see dreams are an extremely common and utterly natural feature of human nature, I can't accept that any of my dreams have any supernatural qualities. Similarly, when superstitious thought and personal experiences of the supernatural is seen to be a common aspect of being a human, I would never use it as a reliable indicator to the existence of the supernatural. Perhaps it would be a piece of supplementary evidence to other things, but I could never rely on it solely.



True. But it is showing you the trend. People believe in other religions exactly like you believe in yours. Either you are special, and no one else has 'real' personal experiences but you (again this would be impossible for me personally to believe after studying and watching all the other humans and their obviously equal devotion), or there should be at least some suspicion about the natural of your experiences.


I guess the issue here is the trend. To me, it shows that humans are obviously gullible and superstitious creatures. I don't see how, in the face of the evidence supporting the trend, you wouldn't feel suspicious about the nature of your own experience. Perhaps you would suggest a third (or more) option(s) to my possiblity of conclusions? As I mentioned, option one is 'I am special (and everyone else of my religion) and my personal experiences are real and everyone else's is fake'. Option two is 'the trend shows that human beings have personal experiences of tons of different religions spanning many thousands of years indicating human beings (including me) are innately supersitious and gullible and this at least partially discredits the reliability of my personal experience'. I obviously lean hard to #2, partly because I have studied and watched a lot of humans in their mystical endeavors and seen startling similarities. Furthermore I find it highly suspicious so many of these religions push the hard buttons in the human psyche - immortality, absolute morality, punishing your enemies, and giving you power over the world through prayer, ritual, spell etc. Also the fact that people nearly always adopt the religion they are raised with, rather than some alien and uknown religion indicates it's usually a matter of childhood indoctrination. Also the way religions borrow ideas and change over time (and show startling geographic relationships) shows them to be cultural institutions meeting the needs and changing facts of the cultural situation. In Marvin Harris' 'Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches', Harris (a well-known and respected anthropologist) discusses the significance of the sacred cow in Hindu India and the taboo pig in Islam and Judaism. He convincingly shows these features to be functional adapations to the environment required for the success of the respective cultures. More evidence that shows religion to be a cultural construct. I just can't help but be suspicious in the face of the evidence. Which conclusion do you take in the face of this evidence?

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K,
Let's see about that. The Merriam-Webster dictionary...

irrational:lacking usual or normal mental clarity or coherence.

coherence:systematic or logical connection or consistency.

consistent:COMPATIBLE

So according to Webster compatiblity is equivalent to consistency.

Moreover, you claimed that my God belief was compatible with the evidence I witnessed here...

Logic implies that you can't think my belief is irrational...because you openly admit it is compatible/consistent with the evidence I've seen. However, you won't admit that my belief is rational. What is one to make of this situation given your above statement?


Regardless...the issue at hand isn't about what would be convincing evidence for you...it's about the rationality of my belief given what I've witnessed. I'm sure you can see why one could easily interpret the evidence I've seen as support for God. This is all that is needed for my belief to be rational.




I believe God exists. I believe because of the evidence I've seen.



And I think we finally see the problem in our discussion K. I am not asking 'How will you regard other beliefs people may have IF my belief in God is rational?' This is a personal issue for you K. I am simply asking 'In what way is my God belief irrational given the evidence I've witnessed?'




K...can you simply tell me why you think the evidence I've witnessed doesn't support my belief WITHOUT bringing up...
A-UFO's, dolphins, or any claim other than the one at hand.
B-How you personally must deal with these beliefs IF my belief in God is rational.

?

Yes or no?




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