Kenny

I’m taking it as a given that beliefs such as belief in the reliability of inductive reasoning, belief in the reliability of memory, etc., are rational. If not, then nearly all of our beliefs are not rational, since they depend on these beliefs for their rational justification. But, if that is the case, then rational discussion becomes pointless. Since we are engaging in such a discussion, however, it means that we are taking for granted that these beliefs are rational.

I’m talking about evidence also, not a proof.

Perhaps we are working from different definitions of ‘evidence.’ Of course, philosophy of evidence is itself a complex matter. I prefer to define ‘evidence’ in such a way that makes the notion subject to analysis via probability theory (i.e. Bayesian Confirmation Theory). I would define ‘evidence’ in the following manner: e is evidence for h if and only if h is more probable given e and k (where k is a relevant set of known background information which neither includes nor rules out h and neither includes nor rules out e) than h given k, and e is observed to be the case – roughly: e is evidence for h if h is more probable given e and whatever else we know than h given whatever else we know, and we observe e to be the case. In terms of mathematical formalism, this definition of evidence could be stated as follows:

e is evidence for h if and only if:

1.) e
2.) k
3.) 0< P(e/k) < 1
4.) 0< P(h/k) < 1
5.) P(h/e&k) > P(h/k)

where P(x/y) means ‘the probability of x given y’

I think this definition captures what we mean by the word ‘evidence’ most of the time as well as giving the term ‘evidence’ a precise and workable mathematical definition. Of course, I do not claim that it captures all the nuances of what is sometimes meant by the word ‘evidence,’ but I think this definition has the most philosophical utility.

Now, does the reliability of inductive reasoning in our past experience meet the above criteria for evidence for the hypothesis ‘inductive reasoning is reliable’? I would argue that it does not because, as I have pointed out, unless the principle of induction is already assumed to be part of one’s background information, one cannot say that observation of the reliability of inductive reasoning in the past increases the likelihood that inductive reasoning will continue to be reliable in the future. So either it is not the case that 0 < P(h/k) < 1 (because h is already assumed in the background information which means that P(h/k) = 1) or it is not the case that P(h/e&k) > P(h/k) (because without assuming the reliability of inductive reasoning in the background information, past observation of the reliability of inductive reasoning does not increase the likelihood of future observations of the reliability of inductive reasoning).

These beliefs are rational because these beliefs are innate to those properly functioning cognitive faculties of human beings which are part of well designed plan aimed at the production of true beliefs in the type of environment in which human beings are designed to function and there is a lack of sufficient defeaters for such beliefs.

No, some beliefs are such that they are likely warranted for their adherents in a properly basic manner if they are true, but only in certain specialized circumstances (again, see my essay).

God Bless,
Kenny

Philosoft

Look, I'm not going to comment on any other atheists you might have encountered; they might all be immoral heathens for all I know. However, I have been posting here regularly for nearly a year and in that time, I have seen more logical, empirical and intellectual argumentation from the atheist perspective than I can possibly recall. Your comment serves no purpose other than to make your stereotype known without blatantly accusing anyone. The insinuation is obvious, however, and, frankly, it's insulting. Take that for what it's worth.

I don't really have a "belief that atheism is true." What I do have is an empirical universe that behaves as a universe that has no conscious guiding-force. I also have philosophical and logical arguments that suggest many concepts of God are incoherent or illogical.

Whatever I decide.

Who said anything about my criteria applying to everyone? This usage of "sufficiency" obviously lacks objectivity. Intersubjectivity is the best we can hope for.

It means I need to be able to conceive what you are talking about when you talk about God.

No. I'm saying evidenced beliefs are more emotionally satisfying than non-evidenced beliefs.
I'd rather leave it up to the theist to demonstrate that God exists. I'm really not stupid enough yet to try to prove a universal negative.

bd-from-kg

Theli:

Sigh. If anything in our minds is ipso facto subjective, then propositions themselves are subjective. The fact that some things are objectively true is subjective. The fact that the sun rises in the east is subjective. The fact that my pet is a dog rather than a cat is subjective. This sort of thing obliterates the distinction between objective and subjective. You can use language this way if you like, but it’s not useful.

Yes, when two people utter the same words, one person may mean one thing and the other something else. What the first person means may be true while what the second one means may be false. All true. And it’s also true that sometimes when two people utter the same words they mean the same thing. And still other times they may mean very slightly different things, but so close as to make no practical difference. And all this implies what exactly?

My comments in this area were originally prompted by your statement:

Frankly, I still don’t understand what you meant by that, but at this point I’m not interested. It’s clear that you were not advocating any version of verificationism, but intended only an uncontroversial observation of some sort: perhaps that the model most consistent with our observations is the one that a rational person will accept (provisionally) as true. It doesn’t really matter.

As for the rest, if you still can’t see the transparent circularity of your attempted justification for trusting the reliability of one’s memory, there’s nothing more I can say to help. We’ll just have to agree to disagree, as Kenny puts it.

bd-from-kg

Kuyper:

I note that you’ve resorted to the “we don’t know how God would do things” argument on a number of occasions. For example:

On God dispensing infinite punishments for finite offenses:

On God creating “man in His own image” via the tortuous process of evolution:

On God answering prayers:

Now the common thread here is that, since we have no way of knowing how God would do things, the fact that (according to Christianity) He does or has done things in ways that strikes us as unreasonable, immoral, or unjust is no argument against Christianity.

There are two basic problems with this line of argument. The first is that it leaves us basically up a creek when it comes to making moral judgments. The Christian must say that deciding what’s right is in essence a process of determining what God would have us do. But if God’s ways are so mysterious and incomprehensible that they are completely beyond our understanding, this is a hopeless undertaking. For example, if His concept of just punishment is so alien to ours that things that seem transparently unjust to our human way of thinking are unequivocally, cosmically just to God, there’s no point in our making any attempt to act justly. We simply have no idea what’s just; we might as well give off thinking about it, just do whatever pleases us or strikes us as being in our best interests, and let God sort things out in the end. It’s no good to say that we risk going to Hell ourselves if we act this way; we risk going to Hell in any case. If we have no idea what’s just, we have no idea whether it might be just for God to send us to Hell for trusting and obeying Him and rewarding us with eternal bliss for rebelling against or mistrusting Him. If we can’t make any kind of meaningful judgment about how God would do things, how can we make any kind of meaningful judgment about whether God would do things that way (or any number of other logically possible ways)? You can’t reject the argument “God wouldn’t do things that way” on the grounds that we have no idea how God would do things and then use that very argument on your own behalf.

The same applies to answering prayers. If God’s failure to save millions of innocent Christian children from dying horrible deaths in spite of the most fervent prayers by their parents on their behalf is the “right thing to do”, how can we possibly know whether saving a child from a horrible death ourselves is the “right thing to do” in any particular case? If the right and wrong of a thing is so shrouded in mystery that it’s beyond the power of mere mortals to discern it, even in the most seemingly clear-cut cases, why think about it at all? God has a plan after all, and it must be the best possible plan, so what’s to worry? Whatever we do must be part of His plan. If He had wanted Hitler to die as a child, he would have done it; if he had wanted my friend’s baby to live (or at least not to suffer horribly until he died after a year), He would have seen to it. Thus, let’s say that I’m in a position to rescue a child from a burning house. If I choose to rescue her, I know, ipso facto, that God wanted her to live, so I did the right thing. If I choose not to rescue her, I know, ipso facto that God wanted her to die, so again I did the right thing. If the right and wrong of things are impossible to unravel in any other way that by observing what God does or allows to happen, this is the only way to figure out what I ought to do or ought to have done: whatever I in fact do must be the right thing. And if this reasoning doesn’t work, then by according to your way of thinking there’s no way to figure out the right and wrong of things.

It gets worse. Arguments along the lines of yours tend to assume a consequentialist morality – that it, whether an act is right or wrong depends on its consequences. (For example: “Suppose that the one praying to be spared were a young boy named Adolph Hitler? What's the greater good here...that the boy be spared so he can grow up and murder millions of others? You simply have no way to know from the perspective of eternity what the positive should or should not be.”) But in practice Christian morality seems to be largely deontological – i.e., the right or wrong of an action depends on the nature of the action, and not on its actual (or expected) consequences. But that makes your “we just don’t know how God would do things” position even harder to defend. The reason is as follows. Either we have access to the moral principles involved or we don’t. If we don’t, then again we’re up a creek. If we do, then we can judge God’s actions based on whether they are in accordance with the principles of morality; we don’t have to worry about imponderables like what the consequences will be a few years (or a few hundred or thousand years) down the road. Of course, you can say that God isn’t subject to the principles of morality, or that He’s subject to some moral principles, but they’re not the same ones that we’re subject to, and we have no way of knowing what they are. But in that case you’ve reduced the claim that God is good to pure nonsense. What does it mean to say that God obeys some moral laws that are in principle unknowable to us? And if you say that God’s doing something automatically makes it right, then the statement that God is good means nothing more than that God does whatever God does.

So if Christianity is really saying anything meaningful, God’s ways must be knowable to us, at least to some extent. We must be able to say, for example, that it’s generally wrong to allow an innocent child who’s dying anyway to suffer horribly if one can prevent it with no risk or effort, and that therefore if God does so routinely, in almost every case where He could have prevented it, He has almost certainly acted wrongly in some of those cases. Similarly, if it seems transparently clear, according to our human notions of justice, that it is unjust to punish someone infinitely for a finite offense, especially under circumstances where it cannot serve to rehabilitate the offender, where his punishment cannot possibly serve as an example or deterrent to others, and where he cannot possibly have made an “informed choice”, we must be able to say that it really is unjust, or else admit that we have no idea what “justice” means.

In short, you have to be able to show that the way God operates is at least plausibly the way we might expect an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being to operate. You can’t deflect objections of this sort by simply observing “we don’t know how God would do things”, a.k.a. “the ways of God are mysterious”.

The second problem is even more severe. A Christian apologist must argue that God would in fact do things one way rather than another in some cases because his religion entails that He did. In these cases the Christian is making the positive claim and therefore has the burden of proof; it won’t do merely to point out that it can’t be proven that it isn’t so. Thus, it’s no good to say merely that we don’t know for sure that God would not condemn all mankind because Adam and Eve ate something from a tree; you must argue that this is just the sort of thing that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God might do. You cannot argue merely that we cannot know for sure that God would not become a man (in fact, be human in part from the beginning of time) and sacrifice himself on a cross in order to redeem mankind from Adam’s sin, but still condemn anyone who was unwilling or unable to believe this ridiculous-sounding tale to eternal torment; you must show (at a minimum) that it’s reasonably plausible that an all-powerful, infinitely loving God would behave in this weird way. You have to show that God would, in all probability, reveal His deepest, most vital secrets by having some fallible men write them down anonymously, having some other men write similar but false works, allowing them all to be altered to an unknown extent, and then having some other fallible men sort out the “true” stuff from the “false” by majority vote. You have to argue that the true meaning and significance of Jesus’ life and death can be reliably deduced from the fact that one particular competing faction succeeded in declaring the others “heretical” and wiping them out along with virtually all of their writings. And the only remotely plausible argument for this is that God wouldn’t have allowed a false doctrine to prevail: “God wouldn’t do things that way”.

K

Kenny:

Your posts go a long way to try to obfuscate a very simple argument. I don't believe it's intentional, but I do believe it is the only way to support your position. Let me try to boil this down to the fundamental issue.

There was a claim made that all rational beliefs must be based on evidence. You claimed to have refuted that with several counter examples (eg. utility of inductive reasoning). In order for these to truly be counter examples, they must have the following properties - they must be rational beliefs, and they must have no evidence to support them. Regardless of the definitions of evidence, warrant, knowledge, etc., these properties must be present in your examples in order to refute the original claim.

So now let's look at one of the examples.

In order for the utility of inductive reasoning to be a refuting counter example, you would have to assert that:

It is rational to believe that inductive reaoning is useful in using past events to predict future events (you even said that it was useful in one of your posts). However, there is absolutely no evidence to indicate that inductive reasoning is useful in using past events to predict future events. If there is no evidence for the utility of inductive reasoning, what possible grounds is there for using it?

By the way, your definition of evidence is fine with me. But you abondoned it to claim that inductive reasoning wouldn't be included for reasons that had nothing to do with the definition you provided.

Kuyper

I certainly meant no insult. It has simply been my experience that no matter what the argument, no matter what evidence is put forth, most atheists I have encountered simply brush it all aside. It leads me to wonder if there is any evidence or argument that an atheist would accept as valid. From what I've seen in most (again, not all) cases is doesn't appear so.

Quote:

I don't really have a "belief that atheism is true." What I do have is an empirical universe that behaves as a universe that has no conscious guiding-force. I also have philosophical and logical arguments that suggest many concepts of God are incoherent or illogical.

And if the universe did have a conscious guiding force, how would it behave? In order for your comment to make sense, you must have some notion about what such a universe would look like, otherwise your claim that this universe behaves as a universe without a conscious guiding force doesn't seem to hold.

How would you recognize a universe that did have a conscious guiding force?

Quote:

(in answer to my question as to what is "sufficient" with respect to evidence) Whatever I decide.

Which makes it entirely subjective. There doesn't seem, then, to be much room to tell a theist that they have insufficient evidence for their theism. The theist will simply say "its sufficient for me". Hence any claim that the belief is irrational because it lacks sufficient evidence is itself irrational because the claim lacks sufficient evidence.

Quote:

Who said anything about my criteria applying to everyone? This usage of "sufficiency" obviously lacks objectivity. Intersubjectivity is the best we can hope for.

If that's true, it would seem to undercut any argument that theistic belief lacks sufficient evidence.

Quote:

It means I need to be able to conceive what you are talking about when you talk about God.

When I speak of God, I am speaking specifically within the Judeo-Christian context.

Quote:

No. I'm saying evidenced beliefs are more emotionally satisfying than non-evidenced beliefs. I'd rather leave it up to the theist to demonstrate that God exists. I'm really not stupid enough yet to try to prove a universal negative.

Is belief in your own existence emotionally satisfying? You have no evidence for it, yet you do believe you exist.

I'm not asking you to prove a universal negative. But, I do ask what evidence you have that atheism is true?

K

Kuyper

BD:

Thanks for your comments. I'll need more time than I have at the moment to respond. It'll be a couple of days due to my schedule.

Thanks

K

Jobar

bd-from-kg, that was a wonderfully clear and immensely powerful argument. I doubt that it can be answered; Kuyper, the ball is in your court. Can you return it?

And I don't recall anyone even attempting to answer the question that has been put forth more than once- if theistic belief does not require evidence, then how may one distinguish between the thousands of such beliefs of which we have record? If not by evidence, what? A vote? What your mommy told you?

Last theist standing, wins?

Philosoft

I'm guessing by, "brush it all aside," you don't mean, "counter with logical, rational and empirical argument"?

I've already told you about the futility of generalizing from your small sample of atheists to a population of atheists. I've already told you that your stereotype is, at least applied to the current environs, demonstrably false in a significant number of cases. I've already told you that, from my point of view, your polemic only serves to insult the intellect of those who are arguing with you. If you're not going to listen, I'm not going to keep talking about this. I only hope you realize, should you pull this nonsense out at an inopportune time, I'm not going to be very happy or nice.

Very few of the effects Christians claim God has on the universe and its known inhabitants appear to obtain.

Christians make a number of claims about their God that would be apparent, were they true.

Isn't this what we see? In any case, "sufficient evidence" has a degree of intersubjectivity. We all use a rudimentary scientific method to get through the days, but when it comes to God, we are told that, not only is God currently unobserved by the method all other allegedly existing things are observed, God is unobservable by this same method.

We all generally agree that we can observe that tree, or that bus because I can point to it or otherwise draw your attention to it, but when I ask you to show me that God, you cannot point to it or tell me where to go look for it. I am supposed to use another method, apparently by which things are not observed, yet they are known. And no things are knowable by this method except Godly-things. So, the only way we know that we know about these Godly-things is that we know about them. Is this what you would like to have classified as "rational"?

This does not appear to follow from your above argument.

People often engage in doublethink because they compartmentalize their knowledge and beliefs. If I were to ask a random theist, "Is there sufficient evidence that God exists?" the answer would undoubtedly be "yes." If, however, the question was, "Is there sufficient evidence that God can be shown to exist using the scientific method?" the answer would probably be quite different. But do we not agree that, in principle, the scientific method is a fantastic way of gathering, categorizing, understanding and drawing strong conclusions from evidence? Why do we suddenly decide that we can't apply the method to the alleged evidence for God?

I know quite a bit about the things this God is said to have done, but I don't really know what or who this God is.

I don't really understand calling this a "belief." I don't know what it means to disbelieve in my existence.

Heh. Translation: "I'm not asking you to prove that God doesn't exist, but what evidence do you have that God doesn't exist?"

Steeeeeerike two.

ReasonableDoubt

I just wanted to say to bd-from-kg- your post was great! I want to hear a counter argument (if there is one).
I don't WANT to be an atheist, but it seems that there are few if any rational reasons for being a theist.
Of course, anyone can believe whatever they wish. Perhaps Pascal's wager is the only basis left upon which to believe....