Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

K,

I think there are a couple of issues that need clarifying.


Issue #1: God is 'incompatible' with other gods.
Let's be real clear on this K. Existence of other gods is not incompatible with God's existence. That is there are other gods than God. This is certainly a biblical perspective and it is specifically why God says in Deuteronomy 6:14
"Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; "
...because in fact there are other gods.


What I think you are attempting to point out is that at most one God is speaking truth when they say 'I created the universe'. This is absolutely true. They can't all be right. However, this isn't saying the existence of these gods are incompatible with each other...it's just saying at most...one of them is right.

Issue #2: Personal evidence can't support belief for other gods.
This also is false. I'm sure that the servants of Ra had plenty of evidence that something like Ra actually existed. There are satan worshippers who worship satan...I'm sure they have some evidence that support their believe.


Issue #3: The meaning of personal evidence. I'm not sure if you are confused on this or not...just thought I'd clarify. 'Personal evidence' is just evidence that has been witnessed by someone. They 'personally' witnessed it. This does not mean that 'personal evidence' is not necessarily objective. All of us have personally witnessed gravity.


Just hoping to clear some stuff up.



Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

K

SOMMS:

Let me get this straight. Personal evidence is sufficient to show that each of these gods exist. However, there is no way to know if any of the claimed attributes of these gods are for real.

God and Allah are both likely to exists as long as Christians and Muslims have personal evidence to indicate this. However, since both claim to be creator and ruler of all, one of these gods is a liar and there is no way to tell which one.

Is this an accurate representation of your position?

Your claim was not that your personal evidence supported your belief, but that it was sufficient to make your belief rational. There is a HUGE difference.

The fact that 5 is not evenly divisible by 2 supports the belief that it is the only odd number. It clearly isn't sufficient to make it a rational belief.

The fact that David Berkowitz claimed that a 2000 year old talking dog ordered him to murder people supports the belief that a 2000 year old talking dog is going around commanding people to murder. I hope it's obvious that this evidence isn't sufficient to make that a rational belief..

Do you see the difference?

That's why I said that I am using "personal evidence" as shorthand for the list of personal evidence you gave - an accomplisment (like your 3 day programming challenge), several "answered" prayers, and a sense of peace and happiness. When I've used the term "personal evidence" in the posts above, these are what I was referring to. I explicitly spelled that out before embarking on this part of the discussion.

K

SOMMS:

Oops, I didn't see this on until after my last post, so I'll repeat.

There is a big difference between evidence that supports a postition and sufficient evidence to warrant rational belief in something. Here is another example.

The fact that there my sandwich is no longer sitting in front of me is evidence that supports the idea that Martians stole it to power their space ship. This is not sufficient evidence to make this a rational belief. That's the reason that rational beliefs are supposed to be COHERENT.

Secular Pinoy

There's a book, Belief's Own Ethics, that might be useful for your discussion. I haven't read it, though.

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

K,
This is not quite accurate. I don't believe there is any objective evidence that proves definitively to all that God exists.

Well God and Allah are probably bad examples to use here K...as they both could simply be different names for the God of the Abrahmic religions. I think a more definitive example of what your attempting to point out would be comparing Christianity and Hinduism. I'm not sure what kinds of evidences a Hindu has suffice to say that I'm sure they do have some and this evidence was witnessed personally.



? Yes...I think. Let me rephrase for clarity. For our discussion here I am not making a general statement about 'the truth value of a hypothesis supported by (someone else's) personally witnessed evidence'. I am in no position to do this...because I have not witnessed the evidence.

Moreover, I would point out that this is primarily the position of weak atheism. In this sense I completely agree with the viewpoint of weak atheism.

What I am claiming is that if someone has personally witnessed evidence for a belief (and this belief doesn't necessarily have to be about God...though that's what we are discussing here) then this belief is not irrational.






This is a bit different. The fact that 5 is not evenly divisible by 2 supports the belief that 5 is odd. I do want to say that this analogy is not accurate to what we are talking about.

The issue before us is 'There are multiple gods...at most one can be truthful'. This is analogous to having 3 boxes each with a different number in them...at most only one of the boxes can have the number 5.

Now we may know things about the numbers in each of our boxes. For example in one box we know the number is less than 20. In another box we know that the number is greater than 1. And in another box we know that the number is odd.


What I want to point out is that one could have a rational belief in any of these boxes...because their belief 'My box is the one with 5 in it' is supported by the evidence they have.

This doesn't mean however that every belief is correct. At most one can be correct.








Cool. My mistake. I was just checking.



Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

K

SOMMS:

No, but you stated that personal evidence is sufficient to make a supernatural belief rational.

That may be, but I thought you said you believed in the CHRISTIAN God. Muslims in no way, shape, or form believe that Jesus is God - and I think it would be ridiculous to propose that no Muslim has ever had personal evidence to suggest the truth of that statement.

But you have made a statement about the truth value of a hypothesis supported by someone else's personal evidence. You asserted the following two things.

1. Your supernatual belief is sufficiently supported because of personal evidence.

2. Your standard for evidence is coherent.

By these two facts, you imply that if sombody has personal evidence for a belief (any belief whatsoever), then that belief is sufficiently supported.

It makes no difference whether you've seen the evidence or not. If somebody has personal evidence for some belief that belief is sufficiently supported.

Weak atheism doesn't propose two standards of evidence. It rejects personal evidence due to its inherent inconsitency.

Again, that is only true if the evidence is SUFFICIENT.

Were the Heaven's Gate followers holding a rational belief that a UFO awaited them behind Hale-Bopp? Or do you claim that none of them had any personal evidence?

It actually supports both beliefs. But one belief is can be held coherently based on the other evidence that exists. The other can not.

I think it's highly relevent. It demonstrates that coherent beliefs must treat similar evidence in a similar manner. [/QUOTE]

That isn't the issue. The issue is whether personal evidence can be considered sufficient to warrant a belief in a coherent manner.

As a side note, does it seem at all absurd to you to be suggesting that there are possibly thousands of Supreme Beings going around lying and that one (or one group) of those Supreme Beings might be telling the truth.

This actually would lean heavily if favor of Hinduism. At least the Hindu gods can corroborate each others stories.

While this example is not related to what my example was designed to illustrate (incoherent standards of evidence), I would like to make a couple of comments.

While there certainly isn't sufficient evidence in your example to suggest that a particular box holds the number 5 (even if you throw out the non-integers), it is not a belief that violates any laws of nature. A much more relevent example would be:

Person A believes the box holds a leprechaun who is more powerful than any other fairy tale creature.

Person B believes the box holds a group of elves who are the most powerful fairy tale creatures.

They both have the same evidence - they feel warm all over thinking about the creatures they believe to be in there.

Now to be "coherent" with the evidence, person A suggests that both are correct - it's just that the elves are lying about their power.

This has been my point all along. Personal evidence can not be used coherently. The same exact evidence leads to contradictory beliefs.

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

K,
Absolutely. And by 'personal evidence' I mean 'evidence that one has witnessed personally'.



Actually no. Again, all I have stated is the definition of 'rational' (using websters) and the evidence I have personally witnessed.

I have made no general statement about what beliefs are 'sufficiently supported' or even what 'sufficiently supported' means.



K...here is what I am most curious about.


Do you feel my belief is irrational because it is just one possibility out of many of a mutually exclusive set OR do you feel it is irrational because

The statement 'God exists' is incompatible with

-The marked and verifiable prosperity in my life where before there was none. In terms of finances, health, friends, family, education, career and physical, mental and social achievement. One could draw a line on the calendar accurate to within probably 2 months of when I drew close to God.

?


Well, not really. Your point all along has been the my belief in God is irrational.

You most likely don't actually feel this way K. 'Personal evidence' just means 'evidence you've witnessed personally'. Have you ever 'personally witnessed' gravity? Are you claiming the evidence you've witnessed for gravity is not coherent?




I also think I'll add the following. You seem to be confusing 'truth' with 'rationality'. Let me explain the difference.

Just because a belief is 'rational' does not mean it is true. As demonstrated above...it is perfectly allowable that mulitiple people can hold mutually exclusive beliefs and each belief is rational. In fact this is exactly how the scientific method progresses:consider the model of the atom in the 60's. There was evidence for the classical theory model of the atom and there was also evidence for the quantum theory model of the atom. Physicists from each camp certainly had rational beliefs about each model...even though these two models are incompatible and only one is correct.









Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

K

SOMMS:

Again, I'm using "personal evidence" as shorthand for the evidence you gave for your belief in the existence of God.

The definition you used focused on coherence and so that is what I am focussing on as well.

Coherent was part of YOUR definitions. If your belief is coherent, then similar evidence must lead to similar conclusions. The only question left is whether you believe that your personal evidence makes the existence of your God likely.

If you are not saying that your personal evidence makes it likely that your God exists, then you must be saying that it is rational to believe in a God that is not likely to exist!!!!

So, what is it? Does your personal evidence make the existence of your God likely? If not, why do you call it rational to believe in an unlikely entity that goes against everything we know about nature?

I believe your belief is irrational for a whole host of reasons. Most of them have to do with the contradictory nature of your God, but those have been hashed out in many other threads.

Here I'm concentrating on part of the defintion you supplied for rational - "coherent". I've attempted to show that your belief is not coherent because one of the following must be true (let me know if I'm missing any):

1. Personal evidence is sufficient to make the existence of your God likely, but it is not sufficient to make the existence of others' gods likely.

This is incoherent because it treats the same exact evidence in different ways (remember the "5 is the only odd number" example?).

2. Personal evidence for anyone's belief is enought to make that belief likely.

This leads to an incoherent state of affairs where contradictory deities and concepts are all likely to exist as long as someone has personal evidence for each of them.

3. You reject others' claims of personal evidence.

It should be obvious why this is incoherent. You're asking me to call your belief rational, but if we go down this road, there is no reason for me to believe you have any personal evidence.

4. Personal evidence is not sufficient to make the existence of your God likely.

This works for coherency.

But that now means that your belief is in a supernatural deity that isn't likely to exist based on any evidence. And to call that rational opens to door to calling any belief rational - no matter how unlikely.

... because that belief is incoherent.

How many times do we have to define this? I'm using "personal evidence" as shorthand for the list of evidences you cited for your belief in God.

I have base my belief in gravity on a personal accomplishment or "anwered" prayers.

First of all, those two models weren't mutually exclusive. There was a great deal of REAL evidence for both.

As more evidence became available, the classical model camp realized that their view was no longer coherent. There were some experiments that were incompatible with the classical model - making for an incoherent model of the world if they kept their model and accepted the evidence from these experiments. They would also be incoherent if they simply rejected these other experiments - that would be an inconsistent treatment of the evidence.

The classical model camp was force to give up their inconsistent model.

Now at that point, if any of the classical model camp had said, "based on the evidence, the classical model isn't likely to be accurate, but I believe it anyway." I would call that an irrational belief.


One last question. If members of the Heaven's Gate cult had "personal evidence" (again similar to that you listed for your belief) that a UFO behind Hale-Bopp was going to take them to a place of eternal bliss if they castrated and killed themselves, was that a rational belief?

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

K,
Granted...but what I am asking you is

Are you claiming the statement 'God exists' is incompatible with the statement...

'The marked and verifiable prosperity in my life where before there was none. In terms of finances, health, friends, family, education, career and physical, mental and social achievement. One could draw a line on the calendar accurate to within probably 2 months of when I drew close to God.'

?

Yes or no?



This will clarify your position for me.


Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

K

No, it's not incompatible. In the same way that 5 not being evenly divisible by 2 is not incompatible with 5 being the only odd number. It's easy to find things that are compatible with irrational beliefs - it's another thing altogether to find something that coherently supports that belief. The evidence you presented is equally compatible with fairies playing tricks on you. It's also equally compatible with aliens planting a chip in your brain so they can control you by having you think that they are God. Do you see why coherence is so important for a belief to be rational?

Now I'll ask you again since you seem to be avoiding the question. If the Heaven's Gate members had "personal evidence" similar to that that you outlined for your belief, does that make their belief rational (you know, UFO waiting for them if they castrated and killed themselves)?