Freethought & Rationalism Archive

David Gould · 05-15-2002, 08:55 PM

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Originally posted by Metacrock:


Meta =>Not if you are an Augustinaian like me. To Agustien Evil was just the absense of the Good.

But that is just an assertion. I could claim that good is just the absence of evil. What is wrong with my claim?

HRG · 05-15-2002, 10:37 PM

A brief rejoinder ....

Quote:

Originally posted by Tercel:


[qb]Conciousness
A basic property of anything is whether it is self-aware. Physical matter, presumably, is not self aware (at least I hope this table desk I�m leaning on isn�t self-aware). Adding lots of non-self-aware things together must result in something that is non-self-aware, since self-awareness vs non-self-awareness is a difference in kind not degree.

Tercel, aren't you committing the fallacy of composition ("atoms are not self-aware, so if we are just atoms how could we be self-aware?")? Om addition, I think you are not right in regarding self-awareness as a 0/1-property. A cat is more self-aware than a mouse, a chimp more than a cat and we are more self-aware than a chimp.

Even for 0/1-properties like "metallic conductivity", adding a lot of silver atoms which are not conducting yields something which is a metallic conductor.

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Thus self-awareness is a basic property, neither reducible, nor a result of physical matter.

Sorry, I do not see how that follows. See above for a counterexample.

Regards,
HRG.

HRG · 05-15-2002, 10:45 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Metacrock:
Meta =>to say the least. You can't disprove God because that would require proving the negative. the best you can do is to disprove someone's concept of God.

But Meta, disproving God is identical to disproving someone's concept of God. How else would we know what we are talking above when saying G-o-d, except by reference to someone's concept (in your case, we'd also have to ask which one of the 35 concepts is being referred to).

Or do you think that those three letters are intrinsically connected to the Ground of Being ? The GoB is your concept of God; a more conservative theologian will have a different ones. "G-o-d", like all linguistic signs, is arbitrary (Ferdinand de Saussure), unless someone assigns a meaning to it.

BTW, "something such that no greater can be conceived" is not a unique characterization, unless a clear-cut definition of "greater than" as a total ordering has been given. I haven't seen yet such a definition, let alone an argument that any two entities are comparable.

Regards,
HRG.

Automaton · 05-16-2002, 04:43 AM

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Miracles and relgious experiences by personal testimony.
The thing that has personally led me to Christianity, is the accounts of miracles I have heard and read of that have happened in the present day within a Christian context.

Really, now. Do you you believe that there are little grey aliens flying around in metal saucers abducting people and performing experiments on them? How about ghosts? Or psychic ability? There is at least an equal, if not overwhelmingly more, amount of personal testimonies that these things are real as real can be. Unfortunately, personal testimonies don't mean shit to me, I demand a slightly better standard of evidence.

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[Now some charge that since Muslims etc claim miracles to this cancels everything out. But I believe this is not so:

Of course not, why would the fact that every single religion, no matter how far fetched or contradictory to others it is, claims miracles have anything to do with the validity of the proposition that a small amount of miracle-claims for one particular religion is evidence for that religion?

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1. The evidence is better for the Christian ones.

The evidence is better? What evidence? This is nothing more than hearsay. How extraordinary the hearsay sounds is irrelevent.

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In my experience I have never actually encountered any claim outside a Christian context that was remotely as convincing a numerous Christian ones.

Muslim: "In my experience I have never actually encountered any claim outside an Islamic context that was remotely as convincing a numerous Muslim ones."
Hindu: "In my experience I have never actually encountered any claim outside a Hindu context that was remotely as convincing a numerous Hindu ones."
ad infinitum...

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2. I can perfectly accept that God might do miracles outside the "true religion" (if such can even be said to exist). God presumably cares about everyone, not simply those who have exactly the right doctrine. Hence miracles within a different religious context should not be construed as cancelling out claims from other contexts. (Although they do make it harder to judge which religion is the truest one)]

Too bad the properties and characteristics of the various gods differ so radically that believing in one pretty much mutually excludes the others. If God really cared about us, he wouldn't be purposefully misleading and deceiving people by pretending that he is some other god with different attributes performing the miracle.

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You must understand that it is impossible to relate even a tiny portion of all I have heard and read here, and it does not do justice to the accounts to tell them second hand like this. Talking to the person who is making the claim, or reading their life-story gives evidence which cannot be reproduced here.

How convenient. You have stunningly convincing accounts although you don't feel reproducing them here would do them justice.

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Suffice to say, I have heard a large number of accounts that I have found extremely convincing (of healings, miracles, imparted knowledge, tongues, the demonic etc) and this is the primary reason I am specifically a Christian as opposed to some kind of deist or agnostic theist.

Have these miracles ever been documented or recorded in some way, and held up to the scrutiny of methodological naturalism? Of course they have not. The only reason they survive is because people love to pass on tales (especially if these tales tend to be justification of their belief system.) The one that got away is always the biggest. If what actually happened, if anything even did, was actually objectively, empirically tested, it would fall apart as the cheap parlour trick it is.

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As far as evidence for you goes, (although this is slightly different to personal testimony)

Slightly different?

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sometimes miracle claims of healings can be scientifically assessed.

Indeed. That's why we have organizations like CSICOP. A question, do CSICOP investigators remain unbelievers because they are blinded by their preconceived notions (let me remind you that one of the founders was a devout Christian?) or because all miracle claims are shams?

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Although world-wide there is generally no scientific assessment accompanying miracle claims, the International Medical Council of Lourdes will review cases of miracle claims that happen at Lourdes, France. (A particularly famous location for miracles) Over the past 50 years, the board has found a number of healings to be completely inexplicable to known medical science. (You can read more about this a the <a href="http://www.lourdes-france.org/gb/gbsa0010.htm" target="_blank">Lourdes Web Page</a> - the text on the left is a menu)

Lourdes is telling people how good Lourdes is? Wow, that's obviously unbiased. I can't think of any reason a healing establishment would make the claim that it offers extraordinary healings.

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Fine Tuning
Science has uncovered that there are a number of parameters in the fundamental make up of our universe, and if any of them had differed by a very small amount them life as we know it could not exist (either they�d be no stars, no galaxies, or the universe would already have collapsed back into a singularity). By very small amount, they mean one in ten to the power of 30 or so. Or in one case, one in ten to the power of 120. Now given that the number of grains of sand on all the beaches of the world is approx 7.5 times ten to the power of 18, the probability of an event with one in ten to the power of 30 chance of happening is approx the chance of three people independently picking the same grain of sand given all the beaches in the world to choose from. So we ask the question of why the fundamental constants of the universe are all within these tiny life-permitting ranges. Now, this argument doesn�t prove God. But the idea the world is the creation of a purposeful deity would seem at least as reasonable an explanation as �it was a fluke� or �there are really lots and lots of universes out there�.

Fine-tuning assumes what it's trying to prove. Naturalism makes no such claim that the big bang was a unique event, and since nature does not usually behave in a brute, singular fashion, Ocham's razor would appear to tell us otherwise. So why, exactly, is it a challenge to naturalism?

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Conciousness
A basic property of anything is whether it is self-aware. Physical matter, presumably, is not self aware (at least I hope this table desk I�m leaning on isn�t self-aware). Adding lots of non-self-aware things together must result in something that is non-self-aware, since self-awareness vs non-self-awareness is a difference in kind not degree. Thus self-awareness is a basic property, neither reducible, nor a result of physical matter. Since I am self-aware, something that is self-aware clearly exists. Thus the fundamental reality has be something that is self-aware (since non-self-awareness cannot give rise to self-awareness), and self-awareness is that which we call the deity.

One of your premises, "Adding lots of non-self-aware things together must result in something that is non-self-aware, since self-awareness vs non-self-awareness is a difference in kind not degree," commits the fallacy of composition. And not only that, it is wrong, because we indeed see a gradiated degree of self-awareness in animals. The argument falls apart as this premise is false.

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A Moral Argument
As humans we often perceive that some behaviours are right, and others are wrong. Some would argue that we get taught morals from our parents and society and it is thus a subjective human construct. But of course, we get taught maths by our parents and society too! The question is of course, is morality simply a human construct or is it something objectively real? So is morality simply a matter of human taste? Is morality simply subjective? One person likes strawberry icecream, another likes vanilla. It is a matter of taste. One person thinks torturing babies is okay, another thinks it isn�t. One person thinks violent rape is okay, another thinks it isn�t. Is it just a matter of taste? Is morality really and truly a matter of one group liking their bread butter-side-up and another group liking their bread butter-side-down? Shall we go to war because of that? One side thinks murdering an entire race of people is okay, the other side thinks it isn�t. A matter of subjective opinion, or is one side really objectively wrong? The Holocaust: a matter of subjective opinion similar to one group of people liking carrots better than potatoes, or was it really and truly wrong?
As I see it, morality is objectively real - some things are objectively right and wrong, it is not simply a matter of subjective opinion. But if morality is objective then it must exist objectively. How tall I am is not a subjective matter, but objective, because my height exists independently of peoples� thoughts about it. Some moral standard must exist objectively then. But is it some arbitrary standard floating in space? In our experience laws and rules about how humans ought to behave are created by intelligent beings. Hence it suggests that the objective moral standard exists as the dictate of the deity.

Morals dependent on God's opinion is just as subjective as morals dependent on human opinion. Objectivity means morals are necessary truths, just as 1+1 will always be 2 regardless of what any infinitely powerful entity dictates.

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A Dualist Argument
In our experience we observe the workings of two separate worlds. The world of the concrete and the world of the abstract. The physical world contains entities which when it boils down to it do nothing more than simply exist and obey a few mathematical laws of movement. But in our minds we can deal with the abstract world � logic, rational argument, mathematics. This does not seem to be something we create ourselves, rather we all recognise the validity of logic, and we �discover� mathematics. We progress in mathematics not by making up things ourselves, but by proving new and different theorems which follow logically from the results we already have. It seems there is a world of logic out there that is independent of physical existence. We can also create concepts, and meaning and infer these things from the environment around us. Writing on paper is physically made up of nothing more than blobs of black ink atoms sitting on white paper atoms. Yet it would be ignorant to assert that the writing is nothing more than this. The writing contains information. This information has no meaning to the physical world � mere blobs on paper. But when a self-aware being comes along, the being can interpret the information represented on the paper as having meaning and referring to ideas and concepts. If two mathematicians are arguing about a geometry puzzle on the blackboard, only an idiot would ask them what they�re arguing about and assert that the figure on the blackboard is nothing but many atoms chalk arranged in a certain way. The physical representation clearly corresponds to a non-physical concept.
And so in addition to the physical reality we have this strange world of logic, concepts and meaning that is comprehensible by all intelligent beings.
The abstract world is ultimately more real to us that the physical world � the physical world we must know through our senses and interpret that sense data, whilst the abstract can be known directly in our minds.
Now the abstract world seems to completely surround and underlie the physical world. No matter where in the physical world we go, logic is still there, mathematics still exists � it is omnipresent. We also find basic mathematical constructs describe the very foundations of physical reality. Now it seems clear that physical reality cannot create the abstract world, but perhaps something from the abstract world could create physical reality? It is our experience that intelligent beings such as ourselves do indeed conceive of ideas and actualise them in physical reality � bridges, buildings, paintings etc. Hence it is reasonable to infer that an intelligent being in the abstract world is responsible for the creation of physical reality in its entirety, and that being we call the deity.

Not much really to say about this really but it seems you're a little confused. 1. The abstract and the physical are two seperate worlds. 2. The abstract underlies the physical. Huh?

The Other Michael · 05-16-2002, 05:19 AM

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Although world-wide there is generally no scientific assessment accompanying miracle claims, the International Medical Council of Lourdes will review cases of miracle claims that happen at Lourdes, France.

IIRC from Randi's book on faith healers, that council is run by Catholics with the agenda of validating the Lourdes claims.

I think Randi also pointed out that the percentage of the population going to Lourdes that undergoes some sort of "cure" is actually LESS than would be expected for spontaneous recoveries in the general population.

Sorry I can't cite chapter/page on that, but I've loaned my copy of the book out, and so don't have it handy. It's possible that the info came from Sagan's "Demon Haunted World" instead.

cheers,
Michael

Koyaanisqatsi · 05-16-2002, 06:55 AM

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Originally posted by Tercel:
Toto, you must have your head buried in the sand.

Kettle? Pot on line two...

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MORE: Surely no amount of wishful thinking could ignore the fact that archeology has been systematically proving the accuracy for Luke for the past hundred years with regard to all the minor details such as names and titles of rulers, information on towns and local customs etc.

Oh my God! Say it isn't so! Do you mean to tell me that an author basing his mythology on actual towns and rulers somehow proves that his fairy tales are true?

Stop the presses!

And he got them right?? Why, that would be like me...I don't know...writing a screenplay about, say, the assassination of Abrahm Lincoln being the result of extra terrestrials inhabiting the body of John Boothe and, according to you, it would be a factual account of actual history because I correctly used the title "President of the United States," the names "Abraham Lincoln" and "John Wilkes Boothe" and set my story in Washington, D.C.!

Why, I even got the name of the theatre correct!

Holy crap!

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MORE: Archeological digs in Jerusalem, such as the uncovery of the Pool of Bethseida, demonstrate that the writer of the Gospel of John had accurate knowledge of features of Jerusalem prior to its destruction in 70AD.

This is, without a doubt, the largest pile of horse manure you've yet stuffed into a straw man.

What kind of "acurate knowledge?" That's nothing more than forced (ridiculous) hyperbole. I don't recall any blueprints in John and even if there were any, what does that prove? That the author of John knew the area and retold the same stories he heard from others?

Are you trying to argue that the author of John lived in a vacuum in Antarctica, because short of that, the fact that cities and towns and "names of rulers" are mentioned means only that the author was taught the history (no big surprise considering the region, the time and the fact that the myths were part of oral tradition) or, which is more likely the case, just regurgitated what was already written by others before him.

We only have a collection of papyri that survived, but for all we know such books were prolific among the early christian cult.

Orthodox Rabbis would rather die than let the Torah be desecrated. The detailed chronicling of cult mythologies, oral traditions, local historians, and Roman records easily and simplistically account for the "accurate knowledge" you seem to think has any meaning at all, not to mention the fact that even if John were written earlier than is currently theorized, that still doesn't mean that Jesus was God or that he raised from the dead, etc., etc., etc!

This is without a doubt the lamest argument I've yet heard.

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MORE: I also understand that archeology has supported the accuracy of Mark in several instances.

Notice how you don't qualify that in any way.

All that you have said is that excavation has found areas that could be what ancient authors were describing as part of their setting for their stories.

Who cares? Stephen King describes towns in Maine. Does that mean that his novels are works of non-fiction?

STUFF THAT STRAW MAN! YEE HAW!

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MORE: The driving out of the moneychanges in the temple was "undoubtedly fictional" eh? I think you need to check your sources on that one...

Is that a counter-argument? No.

As always, Tercel, you present no arguments whatsoever, but think you are.

Why is that? It just boggles my mind to no end.

How does digging up a pool thought to be the one described in a story from antiquity have any bearing at all on whether or not burning bushes can speak?

Unbelievable. It just drips with desperation.

You have my pity.

Tercel · 05-16-2002, 02:36 PM

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Originally posted by HRG:
A basic property of anything is whether it is self-aware. Physical matter, presumably, is not self aware (at least I hope this table desk I�m leaning on isn�t self-aware). Adding lots of non-self-aware things together must result in something that is non-self-aware, since self-awareness vs non-self-awareness is a difference in kind not degree.

Tercel, aren't you committing the fallacy of composition ("atoms are not self-aware, so if we are just atoms how could we be self-aware?")?

That rather depends. I'm committing reasoning by compostion certainly. However the charge of fallacy of composition is a rather difficult thing to define exactly/prove.
<a href="http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/composition.html" target="_blank">This site</a> comments that It must be noted that reasoning from the properties of the parts to the properties of the whole is not always fallacious.
In my opinion, unless there exists an adequate reason why reasoning by composition is invalid, then it is valid as generally the whole is the sum of its parts.
You can say "fallacy of composition" all you like and there's not much I can do about it. However actually proving your charge is a different matter... can you?

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One addition, I think you are not right in regarding self-awareness as a 0/1-property. A cat is more self-aware than a mouse, a chimp more than a cat and we are more self-aware than a chimp.

In my opinion they may be self-aware or they may not, however they don't have a sufficient reasoning capacity to communicate it to us one way or the other.

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Even for 0/1-properties like "metallic conductivity", adding a lot of silver atoms which are not conducting yields something which is a metallic conductor.

I'm no physics expert, but it's my understanding that conductivity is very much something that happens in degrees, and isn't a 0/1 thing.

Tercel · 05-16-2002, 02:38 PM

For those wanting some more arguments for God, Peter Kreeft has a few on his new <a href="http://www.peterkreeft.com/featured-writing.htm" target="_blank">site.</a>

Dr Rick · 05-16-2002, 03:42 PM

...which is a waste of time and bandwith.

The "new" site contains "golden oldies" such as the Argument from Design, the Argument from First Cause, the Argument from Conscience, the Argument from History, the Argument from Pascal's Wager, the Argument from Desire, and The Divinity of Christ. For a rational deconstruction of these fallacious arguments, see this <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/arguments.html" target="_blank">infidels site</a>

[ May 16, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]

Automaton · 05-16-2002, 11:03 PM

Tercel defends his use of fallacious reasoning. I wonder if Tercel would defend this argument as well: Being a fork is a matter of kind not degree. Atoms are not forks. Therefore no amount of atoms can make up a fork.

05-16-2002, 03:42 PM	#59
Dr Rick Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: USA Posts: 5,393	...which is a waste of time and bandwith. The "new" site contains "golden oldies" such as the Argument from Design, the Argument from First Cause, the Argument from Conscience, the Argument from History, the Argument from Pascal's Wager, the Argument from Desire, and The Divinity of Christ. For a rational deconstruction of these fallacious arguments, see this <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/arguments.html" target="_blank">infidels site</a> [ May 16, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

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05-16-2002, 02:38 PM	#58
Tercel Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: New Zealand Posts: 1,315	For those wanting some more arguments for God, Peter Kreeft has a few on his new <a href="http://www.peterkreeft.com/featured-writing.htm" target="_blank">site.</a>

05-16-2002, 11:03 PM	#60
Automaton Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 717	Tercel defends his use of fallacious reasoning. I wonder if Tercel would defend this argument as well: Being a fork is a matter of kind not degree. Atoms are not forks. Therefore no amount of atoms can make up a fork.

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