Freethought & Rationalism Archive

theophilus · 01-10-2002, 01:20 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Datheron:
Theophilus,

Then you have already defined yourself to be in an infalsible position (and not an infallable one). That is, you have already defined the Bible to be the supreme authority, therefore it cannot be questioned. Can anyone else see the circular reasoning presented here?

Since my first post here, I have identified myself as a Christian presuppositionalist. I acknowledge the Bible, as God's word, as the authority by which I judge all issues of truth. This is not circular reasoning. All truth claims assume some foundation. Atheists assume that their personal intellect is sufficient to judge truth. We cannot "prove" presuppositions since they are the things by which we prove everthing.
The question is, which presupposition makes knowledge possible and which best explains life as we perceive and experience it?

And similarly, I can make my own set of definitions. Catnip, for all purposes, I define is superior to the Bible. It is the authority which even God trembles to behold, and is mighty fearsome indeed. Not even God nor his error-ridden Bible may question the validity of catnip, for it is beyond their comprehension to understand the essence of its existence.
We'll you've missed the point, haven't you. How does catnip, which is admittedly part of the material order explain the existence of the material order? What does catnip tell you about reality? How does it communicate that knowledge to you - it can only be non-verbally?

Therefore, I have shown that my authority is greater than yours, and reduced yours to a pile of rubble.

Actually, you have shown what was apparent all along, i.e., you have no authority apart from your own intellect which cannot be validated.

theophilus · 01-10-2002, 01:26 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Theli:


What the hell are you talking about? You don't need any superior standard to judge it. All a person needs to claim that the bible is false is reason. You don't need to be "superior" to something to question it...

Don't you see that you are asserting "reason" as the superior standard? Judgement requires a standard, i.e., something by which to "judge."
If you say something is true, you must have a standard of truth by which to evaluate the thing being judged.
If reason is to be the criteria by which the Bible is to be judged, then you must demonstrate that reason is sufficient to do so. You must show that reason is "superior" to revelation.

Theli · 01-10-2002, 03:05 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by theophilus:


Don't you see that you are asserting "reason" as the superior standard? Judgement requires a standard, i.e., something by which to "judge."
If you say something is true, you must have a standard of truth by which to evaluate the thing being judged.
If reason is to be the criteria by which the Bible is to be judged, then you must demonstrate that reason is sufficient to do so. You must show that reason is "superior" to revelation.

Haven't you already responded to that?
Oh...well...
I find reason superior since it's a way for an individual to decipher right from wrong. It's simply called "thinking". It's what we have to decide right from wrong.
And about "Revelation"... If you are talking about stories recorded in the bible, it's nothing really that makes that more true than any other fiction. BTW, the bible is packed with miracles and revelations. Why does nothing like that happen now?
If you are talking about any personal revelation, there is no reason for me to believe that something like that ever happened to you.

DarkBronzePlant · 01-10-2002, 03:27 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by theophilus:


Actually, you have shown what was apparent all along, i.e., you have no authority apart from your own intellect which cannot be validated.

Ah ha... interesting comment, theo. I'd think, however, that we could in fact validate Datheron's intellect, but you can not validate your so-called "authority."

bgponder · 01-10-2002, 04:00 PM

Well, y'all we've let 'em do it to us again!! On the third page the CPist strikes!!

Theophilus:

Quote:

No, the issue here is about foundations for belief...

No, o theophilus. The issue here in this thread was whether argumentum ad populum could indeed be evidence for the existence of God, and as such that puts CP out of the damned picture! CP needs no validation, there is no room in the view for a discussion of whether or not God exists. As I have said before, with CP there are no paradoxes. Why do you even argue with us, us pitiful, non-elect hellbound non-Cpists? You know by your absolutely factual, snake-talkin' sea-partin' non-paradoxical divine revelation that we are not right. Why do you waste your time, and ours, by introducing these Grand Assertions forever, knowing that we will bite that which is utterly ludicrous? And I refer not to the Bible itself, but to the great blindness that is CP, for if you cannot indeed rely on the validity of your own intellect, how can you trust yourself to have correctly interpreted the Divine Revelation?!?! You have no wherewithal whatsoever to know if you are indeed among the elect!! And look at the FACTS!! You do spend a lot of time among sinners!! Are you sure, theophilus?? Are you sure???

edited to say: Oh forgive me, y'all. He strikes on page two.

<and cornbread guy ducks head as he sees CPist winding up with something about "Jesus sat with publicans and sinners">

Peace YET, and cornbread Barry

[ January 10, 2002: Message edited by: bgponder ]

Datheron · 01-10-2002, 06:54 PM

Theo,

Quote:

Since my first post here, I have identified myself as a Christian presuppositionalist. I acknowledge the Bible, as God's word, as the authority by which I judge all issues of truth. This is not circular reasoning. All truth claims assume some foundation. Atheists assume that their personal intellect is sufficient to judge truth. We cannot "prove" presuppositions since they are the things by which we prove everthing.
The question is, which presupposition makes knowledge possible and which best explains life as we perceive and experience it?

It is circular reasoning when you then claim that the position is infalsible and untouchable. Yes, I agree that all worldviews require a set of presuppositions, and that such a presupposition should then form a basis for one's explanations. So....what does that have to do with authority? The very idea of explanation is such that we may test it against reality and have it pass. Its very characteristic of demonstration is sufficient for its validity, and it needs not any pre-supposed authority. There is a reason why appeals to authorities are considered fallacies.

Quote:

We'll you've missed the point, haven't you. How does catnip, which is admittedly part of the material order explain the existence of the material order? What does catnip tell you about reality? How does it communicate that knowledge to you - it can only be non-verbally?

How do you know it's material order? Where in your authority does it say anything about catnip? Why can't I "read" catnip, like how ancients read the innards of animals (and I would say how Christians read their Bible, but I suppose I have to keep this politically correct)? It communicates via symbols - which I claim I can read and understand, even parts which are beyond human comprehension and such.

So the question remains - how exactly can you counter the almighty catnip, whose power is over God himself?

Quote:

Actually, you have shown what was apparent all along, i.e., you have no authority apart from your own intellect which cannot be validated.

You haven't been reading my post, haven't you? Yes, I know it's a farce, but for the purposes of showing you the fallacy of appealing to authority and then defining that authority to be invincible, I have shown by analogy the problems with your argument. Simply defining yourself to be infallible is hardly convincing, especially when that source of infallibility is known to contradict reality itself.

bgponder · 01-10-2002, 07:07 PM

Against bd-from-kg's "widespread belief as evidence thesis"

Hey Y'all--

If we might return to the OP for awhile, I would like to rehash from page one, because it seemed to me that some were actually agreeing with the idea, at least partially, and it just boggles my mind. I cannot see how belief is ever evidence of anything! All comment and critique appreciated (except from theophilus. I have made a New Year's Res to avoid harmful memes.

Just kidding, theo!!)

To bd's post:

Quote:

The fact that the great majority of people believe X really is good evidence that X is true. For example, many people believe...<SNIP easily percieved examples each of which contain possibly numerous other perceptual associations with which to determine X's truth>...all of these widespread beliefs are true.
**In general, for any proposition X imagine two cases: (1) you have no evidence regarding it except that the great majority of people believe it; (2) you have no evidence regarding it except that almost everyone disbelieves it.
{separations mine}
Only a fool would suppose that he was not far more justified in believing X in the first case than in the second. Which is to say that widespread belief has strong evidentiary value. The fact that many false beliefs are widely held shows only that it is not an infallible indicator of truth.

We can express this point formally as follows. Let F be “the great majority of people believe H”. Obviously P(F|H) > P(F|~H) (i.e., widespread beliefs have a positive correlation with “reality” ) , and therefore P(H|F) > P(H). That is, F constitutes evidence for H.

So the argument that the fact [if true] that most people believe in God is evidence that God exists cannot be dismissed on the grounds that the existence of this belief is not “really” evidence. I think it can be dismissed on other grounds, though.

Since no one has the time to examine the evidence regarding every question, all of us take the “short cut” of accepting the popular opinion about lots of things...<SNIP fluff for brevity>...There’s nothing wrong with this; it’s perfectly rational. But ultimately, to be justified, a belief must be based on evidence other than the fact that most people subscribe to it...for any popular belief, it’s essential that some people examine it to determine whether it has any underlying evidentiary support. A person who does this is called a “skeptic”... Thus when a belief is examined from a skeptical standpoint the fact that it is widespread is automatically out of court. Now when a question is “put in play”, it is usually taken for granted that the idea is to discuss it from a skeptical point of view. In this context the state of public opinion may not be taken into consideration...<snip>...while it’s perfectly rational for an unreflective person to believe in God because most people do, in a serious discussion of whether God exists the popular opinion that He does is irrelevant.

Welll, this contradictory stuff certainly makes one wonder why in the hell he put it in this thread in the first place, since the question is obviously "in play"!! But I'll be nice and call it a recovery. At this point I really would like to drag just a little more stuff of his over from the Evidentiary Arguments thread, just to solidify how ludicrous it is, even if we define "evidence" not in the usual way of "evidence: ground for belief;that which tends to prove or disprove something; proof--(def. 1 from Webster's Unabridged), but in the way of that which makes the truth of a proposition more likely, of a higher probability. This, of course, is the only sense in which bd's thesis has a snowball's chance in hell.

In the Evidentiary Arguments thread, after giving a good example of the use of Bayes' theorem, he says:

Quote:

The initial probabilities used in this reasoning can be questioned on various grounds, but at least theycome from somewhere; they weren’t drawn from a hat. But if H is something like “God exists” or “A invariably causes B” there seems to be no nonarbitrary way to assign the initial probabilities. In fact, it isn’t even clear what “probabilities” would mean in such cases. Either God exists or He doesn’t; either the causal relationship between A and B holds or it doesn’t. There is no “domain” of possible “outcomes”. Thus the concept of a “probability” would seem to be meaningless for any universal statement – i.e., one without any “free variables” – because any such statement is either always true or always false.

In a vast number of cases, although P(H), P(H|F), etc. are theoretically meaningful, in practice their values are pretty much unknown. At best one might be able to say, for example, that P(F|~H) would seem to be much lower than P(F|H). The only real value of Bayes’ theorem in such cases is qualitative; it shows, for example, that if P(F|H) > P(F|~H), then F is evidence for H in the sense that whatever initial probabilities are plugged in, P(H|F) > P(H).

I quoted all that for use in the near future and just to show how the propositions "God exists", or H, and "the majority believes that God exists", or F, might play out, for folks like me who are math-deficient.

Since indeed according to bd God exists or He doesn't, and such a use of Bayes' and the definition of evidence probabilistically entail that this argument is a strong inductive argument, the deductively valid case (true without exception) is given the value of 1, and falsity is given zero.

Ergo if we assign H=1, ~H=0, then P(F/1)>P(F/0), which is nonsensical, for division by zero is undefined.

Also, if we assign equal values to H and ~H, by reasoning that either God exists or God does not exist, we have P(F/1)>P(F/1), which is a false statement.

I hope I have beaten this horse enough to show conclusively that such arguments are not applicable to non-quantifiable, "universal" propsitions.

Now I want to extend this to the notion of widespread belief as evidence. Earlier in the thread bd gave an example using coin flips(where, BTW, he mixed up the hypothesis and the outcome/evidence, but that is trivial, yukyuk) and also using the example of a roulette wheel. Now it is obvious that the evidence is the coin flips, on the one hand, and the spins of the wheel on the other, and moreover, that it is the corroborative outcome of the coin flips/spins that makes the hypothesis more likely, and the non-corroborative outcomes that makes the hypothesis less likely. It is also obvious that each outcome is itself an objective, physical truth as well.

However, given the "widespread belief" example above, ** where there is no other evidence, there is no objective physical basis on which each successive belief is held. It is an absolute fallacy of reification to equate the successive beliefs of each person to the coin flips or the spins of the roulette wheel. Furthermore, given the fact, conceded by bd-from-kg, that many false beliefs are widely held, it is a totally arbitrary and subjective choice as to whether one believes or not. We may feel justified in doing so, but we are not making a choice according to evidence.

I reiterate my former post, which bd handwaved away:

Even the cornbread man knows that belief is no evidence whatever of the truth or falsity of a proposition.

Moreover, simple professed belief is not even evidence of belief! Many Americans will say that they believe in JCGod, yet many of those who say that they believe do not attend church regularly, have not read the Bible, etc.; ergo they are "practical" atheists.

Professed belief is only evidence that the one professing is professing, and even demonstrations of belief are only evidence of the possibility that among those involved in the demonstration, there are those who actually believe. Some of them could be hypocrites...

Peace, much cornbread for 2002 Barry

[ January 10, 2002: Message edited by: bgponder ]

Infinity Lover · 01-11-2002, 01:59 PM

Does it matter how many people believe God exist?

I could go two ways with that:

1. Are you crazy? The less the better off course!!

2. No, you can't believe something into existense. The only thing that can be said for sure, is He maybe exists. And that'll never cut it as actual existing. And it's impossible to prove the nonexistense of anything (ever tried gathering nonexistent evidense? LOOK! I took a picture of lack of God!!)

theophilus · 01-11-2002, 02:14 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Theli:


Haven't you already responded to that?
Oh...well...
I find reason superior since it's a way for an individual to decipher right from wrong. It's simply called "thinking". It's what we have to decide right from wrong.
And about "Revelation"... If you are talking about stories recorded in the bible, it's nothing really that makes that more true than any other fiction. BTW, the bible is packed with miracles and revelations. Why does nothing like that happen now?
If you are talking about any personal revelation, there is no reason for me to believe that something like that ever happened to you.

Thank you for demonstrating my point. You assert "thinking" as the means by which we decide right from wrong. But thinking cannot "decide" anything unless it has some standard, so "authority" by which to evaluate it. Thinking can't decide which actions are right and which are wrong unless it is first established that there is a basis for such concepts. Thinking alone, cannot justify morality or ethics.
You may want to assert a pragmatic system like Utilitarianism, and decide right and wrong on that basis. But that is mere preference.

bgponder · 01-11-2002, 03:20 PM

<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Jesus, theo. Can't you think at all outside that CP box? Can't you just answer one question straight, without backhanded Reformed/Calvinist preaching? Answer Theli's question about why there are no more revelations, even if it's with chap-verse like "when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part shall be done away..."--but lose the Party Line!! Show some originality, anyway!! You really are beginning to sound like a recording.

Peace, non-CP cornbread Barry

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01-11-2002, 01:59 PM	#68
Infinity Lover Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 1,047	Does it matter how many people believe God exist? I could go two ways with that: 1. Are you crazy? The less the better off course!! 2. No, you can't believe something into existense. The only thing that can be said for sure, is He maybe exists. And that'll never cut it as actual existing. And it's impossible to prove the nonexistense of anything (ever tried gathering nonexistent evidense? LOOK! I took a picture of lack of God!!)

01-11-2002, 03:20 PM	#70
bgponder Regular Member Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Arkansas Posts: 156	<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> Jesus, theo. Can't you think at all outside that CP box? Can't you just answer one question straight, without backhanded Reformed/Calvinist preaching? Answer Theli's question about why there are no more revelations, even if it's with chap-verse like "when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part shall be done away..."--but lose the Party Line!! Show some originality, anyway!! You really are beginning to sound like a recording. Peace, non-CP cornbread Barry

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