Oxymoron

Surely that was Satan interfering with LuvLuv's prayers?

Rusting Car Bumper

Actually its the best and only evidence for gods.

However, the believer then needs to realize this and understand that his belief stops at the end of his nose.

DC

Ion

Man, no:
that's free will interfering with luvluv's prayers.

Because not getting a car after praying for it, 'means' that God takes into account the human sin, and Jesus died for human sin, and Judas died twice because...etc.

'Free will' that's awesome, but I lost track of consistency here and after repeating 'free will' a few dozens of times, 'free will' will make sense to anyone.

Family Man

Why do you think Luvluv has been so upset with me? It isn't because I've been horribly rude to him; it's because I've attacked the reason he believes.

Boro Nut

He's not nearly as upset as I am with him. That Lada is still on my drive. To make matters worse I left the sunroof down hoping someone would nick it and now someone has thrown an old three-piece suite into it, and the bloke across the road is furious with me because his house sale has fallen through because the Albanian Gypsies caught sight of it.

Boro Nut

luvluv

Clutch:

You say that you have such evidence but you haven't presented any information from any study nor even mentioned a study by name. Therefore I believe I am justified in believing that you are making an appeal to "common sense" dressed up in an argument from authority.

Well, I haven't dismissed your case out of hand, nor declared it to be actually insufficient. I am only declaring my doubts about the efficacy or usefulness of any scientist to make an accurate assesment of the meaningfulness of events. Science has no way to measure meaning. I actually think I asked you to clarify or describe some technique by which signifigance can be measured with total accuracy by science. You are quite right, I fully do not believe there is a way for it to be done. But if you can prove me wrong, please do so now.

Like Lawrence Taylor, I don't do nothing halfway.

Of course I do. I have an irony-o-meter, remember?

Listen, I never intended my little diatribe to be regarded as an argument that scientific data on this regard is actually mistaken. I am only saying that I, personally, am dubious as to anything a scientific study of the personal, human signifigance of an event can bring to life.

Science is a tool, not unlike a hammer or a screwdriver. Certain tools are only capable of certain jobs. And just as you would not use a hammer to unstop your toilet, or use a screwdriver to put air in your tires, so you cannot use the tool of science to measure meaning. I do admit that I think that some people on this website consider science to be a god, in the sense that they believe it can answer all questions. I believe that to be a modern superstition which will one day be regarded as being as silly as inerrantism or the infallibility of the pope.

Family Man:

That does not change the fact that your beliefs about the beliefs of others could be just as influenced by the "self-fulfilling prophecy" as the beliefs you are trying to analyze. If you do not firstly recognize this possibility and take it into acount, all of your further reasoning is poisoned.

All right, but what you are doing is ignoring whatever evidence might contradict that conclusion. I enumerated several reasons why what I believe I am hearing may actually come from God, and you simply dismiss them all without mentioning any of them specifically.

No, only that your pre-existent belief that all religious experiences are untrustworthy because of the possibility of "sefl-fulfilling prophecy" caused you to totally dismiss any particular experience on the basis that it is a "self-fulfilling prophecy" no matter how alien the particular experience may be to that explanation.

Firstly, and with all due respect, unless you are a psychologist with some training and research in this area, I doubt you would be able to identify what actually constitutes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and what would exclude an experience from being the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When I enumerated reasons why my claim does not fit the classic paradigm of the self-fulfilling propehcy (that I came from a liberal religious tradition that did not believe that God spoke to people anymore, if he did at all; that I had a personal bias against the idea that God spoke to people, that the things God told me to do were unexpected and often totally unwanted by me, and often involved life-altering sacrifices on my part which I did not want to make, and that God's voice in my life had a very high rate of leading me to good things I couldn't have possibly known anything about) you simply ignored ALL OF IT, and said that as long as I lived in a society which believes that God talks to people, that you could without further investigation into any specific claim still hold the belief that every specific claim is equally suspect.

Well, excuse me, but that strikes me as bad science, and of someone being insufficiently willing to falsify their own hypothesis. If a claim emerges which demonstrably departs from the clinical definition of a "self-fulfilling prophecy", it seems to me to be terribly insufficiently rigorous to declare it to nonetheless be a self-fulfilling prophecy because of a general belief in the society that God tallks to people.

Let's apply this reasoning to other of our beliefs, shall we?

I happen to belief that democracy is the best form of government. According to you, this must be a self-fulfilling prophecy because I live in a society in which there is the general belief that democracy is the best form of government. Therefore, none of my independant testimony (which could perhaps come from personal experience of having lived in a country which did not think that democracy was the best form of government, or having personally doubted that democracy was the best form of government, or of having the actual [and new] experience of democracy working benefits in my everyday life, benefits I could not have forseen coming from a country in which democracy was taken to be an evil) none of this would, in your view, have anything to do with the fact that I believe democracy to be the best form of government.

No, all of that individual data can simply be dismissed, because, after all, everyone where I now live believes that democracy is the best form of government, so it is only a self-fullfiling prophecy that I now beleive this to be the case.

Well, it seems to me that this would signifigantly call into doubt the veracity of our beliefs about a great many things. Indeed, any belief that we hold in common with the general beliefs of our culture are probably nothing more than self-fulfilling prophecies. Like our belief in the inevitable progress of science, or evolution for example. Sure, there could be independant evidence for their veracity, but this assuredly is besides the point. Despite the evidence, your actual BELIEF in these creeds is suspect, and is likely entirely due to the fact that you live in a culture where these beliefs are widely held, not due to the evidence itself.

And if caution be the supreme virtue, then hold fast to it. But if there be greater virtues than caution, and if these virtues (like faith and hope) can only be had at caution's expense, then your course is sterile and foolhardy. In this case, the decision is forced, and not making a decision is a decision. To not yet believe is the same as to disbelieve, and not merely in terms of your eternal destiny but in the meaning of your life, and of the lives of your fellow man, and in all of your actions and theirs. Caution would tell us not to value them until their value be proven. But of course to withhold value would compel us to act ALREADY as if we knew they had no value. I would say, with William James:

"What proof is there, dupery for dupery, that dupery through hope is so much worse than dupery through fear?"

I would rather risk my life in hope than preserve my life with fear. But, perhaps, it is this willingness to risk, and not the unwillingness to think , which really marks of the religious from the irreligious man.

I have not attacked you personally, I have only tried to show you how it felt to be condescended to. And the proof is in the pudding, because you feel insulted (apparently). That is how I felt, also. It was not meant in anger, only as instruction. That course, too, was perhaps rash and I apologize for that. I'm not upset with you in the least, but I do tend to come after what I take to be bad arguments with somewhat of a righteous indignation. It was not meant as a personal attack. Let us keep our heads.

luvluv

Boro Nutt:

Actually, I didn't pray for you to get a new car I prayed that all of your attempted humour vis a vis my position would not be funny.

And, as we see again, God never fails.

Clutch

luvluv,

Quote from Clutch, this thread:Not only won't you read the science before you pronounce it deficient, you won't even read my posts before doing the same!

Gilovich is a Professor of Psychology at Cornell University, and is a major authority on these matters. But I cited this book not so much for TG's outstanding reputation, but because it is so accessible, non-technical, and widely available. If you can inform yourself about the basics, then I'm happy to discuss the specific detailed studies.

luvluv

My mistake. I knew someone had mentioned a book but I didn't know it was you.

I think I've actually seen this book and I'll see if I can purchase it today. I'll try to defer my sketpicism.

Clutch

luvluv, good for you. I look forward to hearing any remarks you may have.