Biff the unclean

I am not fooling myself by believing in God.
I enjoyed your parallel though...
If I tell you something that I don't know to be a fact (I cant prove) and you believe it then I have "fooled" you-by definition.
If you tell yourself something that you don't know to be a fact and you believe it then you have "fooled" yourself--also by definition. Because you are doing exactly the same thing to you that I did to you.
But it's really real, you protest, even though you (or anyone else) can't prove it is real. And it is because you think like that that I can say that you are fooled.
If you said to me "Wait a minute, Biff! You don't know what Pierce Brosnan is doing. You have no way of knowing, you told me so yourself. You can't tell me one minute that you don't know what he is doing and in the same breath tell me Pierce is coming to my house!!!" Then I would know that I hadn't fooled you. You were too smart for my tricks.

Surely you are too smart for your own tricks too.

Amie

Then by your own line of thinking you have fooled yourself into thinking there is no God...
after all you claim that you would bet your soul on the fact there is no God and you claim to have no doubts that God does not exist however you are basically telling yourself something you can't possibly know to be a fact...so I guess you are foooling yourself eh?

[ December 11, 2002: Message edited by: Amie ]</p>

Keith Russell

Greetings:

The concept of the 'supernatural' contradicts (by definition) 'nature' (reality), just as the concept of 'God' contradicts nature (reality), again for the same reason.

(The same is true for 'miracles'.)

Keith.

Aerion

I can't even imagine what it would take to convince me. Maybe a little face time with a really convincing God might do it. But I'd be a pretty hard sell.

Objective T

Clarke's Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Jobar's Corollary to Clarke's Law: Any true magic (miracle) would be indistinguishable from a sufficiently advanced technology.

Sorry but I am not familiar with Clarke’s Law. Perhaps he explains what he means by “sufficiently advanced” but if we are in possession of sufficiently advanced technology then it is clear that his law is false. By logical extension Jobar’s Corollary is also false.

If technology is the practical application of scientific knowledge and magic is the application of supernatural powers to effect the course of events then it follows that the there is a difference between them.

What exactly does Clarke mean by ‘distinguishable’? Does he mean that a trained intelligent observer could not tell the difference or that an uneducated observer could not tell the difference?

Again, you seem to require proof or certainty. There is no such thing when it comes to matters of fact.

I have some understanding how telescopes work and how they are put together. There is no magic involved in observing the distant objects through a telescope. I can also understand how Galileo’s critics thought that looking through his telescope would have been like taking an hallucinogenic drug or that it could be considered delving into magic. They had no knowledge of how telescopes work.

To the ignorant, technology is indistinguishable from magic. So what? You and I can tell the difference, not in all cases perhaps, but speaking for myself, in every case that I have ever encountered and in every case I have ever heard about. The ignorant often fail to understand important differences. Clarke’s Lsw seems nothing more than a trivial truism at best and if taken to be a serious attempt to block the distinction between naturalism and supernaturalism then it is false and sadly misguided.

Consider three possibilities:

Culture A is so many times more scientifically and technologically advanced than us that we do not understand how they can do what they do
In Culture B people perform miracles
Culture C is both so scientifically and technologically advanced than us that we do not understand how they can do what they do and they perform miracles as well.

I would say that Culture C is at least a logical possibility (i.e., that sentence does not entail a contradiction).
If that is true then Clarke’s Law is false and we can infer the falsity of Jobar’s Law as well.

Culture A might distinguish science from magic. They might have the same sort of ontological commitments that we have. They distinguish the natural or physical world from the supernatural world. They believe that science explains what happens in the physical world. They just have a much greater understanding of the physical world than we have. They find it easy to explain how their scientifically grounded methods work on the physical world.

They reject our beliefs that what they are doing is indistinguishable from magic. Being relatively ignorant, we have difficulty in comprehending these methods and distinguishing them from magic. This is the plight of the ignorant everywhere.

So what does this have to do with the current discussion of miracles. We can make the best judgments that our scientific knowledge permits. Will we always be correct in these judgments? Of course not.

If someone comes along healing people and performing other fabulous feats that are beyond our ability to understand does it logically follow that miracles are occurring? Of course, not. But neither does it follow that there is no distinction between miracles and technology nor does it follow that intelligent reasonable people would be foolish to conclude that these events are miraculous. We can only decide the issue based on the best knowledge that we have and not on the basis of what more knowledgeable people might think,

Rejecting miracles on the sort of a priori grounds that you and Clarke defend, I believe, is repugnant to every scientific and rational principle western culture has worked so hard to establish for the last centiry or so. I reject miracles based on empirical grounds not by Clare’s little logical sleight of hand. We lack any good evidence that any miracle has every occurred. I am deeply suspicious of any attempt to show, by a prior reasoning, that miracles are impossible. The history of human knowledge – including Hume’s analysis of miracles, shows too much foolishness in that arena.

Objective T

Biff the unclean

after all you claim that you would bet your soul on the fact there is no God
If you have been following this so far you will realize that the soul is something "supernatural." No supernatural = no souls. So I have wagered nothing.

and you claim to have no doubts that God does not exist however you are basically telling yourself something you can't possibly know to be a fact...so I guess you are foooling yourself eh?
Not at all, because I am not operating without information. In fact you gave it to me. You told me that you and everyone else that claims that there is a God is unable to prove their claim.

Just as you weren't fooled by me about Pierce Brosnan coming to your house because I told you that I didn't know what he was doing.
You have told me that you don't know (can't prove) that there is a God so I would be a big dope if I believed you when you turned around and said one existed. You can't fool me that easily.

One thing that you seem to have lost sight of here is that we aren't dealing with miracles and Gods here. Nobody has presented any. All we ever have, or ever have had, is people telling stories about Gods and miracles. These same people freely admit that they can't prove--and therefore don't really know--that the stories are true. So a person would be silly to even consider them.

Synaesthesia

Point of view have nothing to do with it, the popularity of my view has nothing to do with it. (Although you will find that it's shared by a disproportionate number who have a vested interest in being correct as opposed to feeling correct. Psycologists, scientists, skeptics and magicians.) Well verified miracles do not exist. Popular delusion is everywhere. That is a fact.

Moreover, the erronious and brittle epistemologies of believers should be compared very carefully to the immovable conviction with which they believe.

Delusion, in modern clinicology, is defined not by the falisty of the belief but by the incongruity between the rationale and the strength behind the conviction.

Amie

first off stop with the condescending remarks bub. I am following it.

hell...you're the one who said this:
I was simply repeating your words back to you.

I haven't lost sight of anything Biff.

ok Biff think believers are silly, you are certainly entitled.

they may not be able to prove it but people believe based on faith. I don't see any harm in believing in miracles nor do I think it is silly.

[ December 11, 2002: Message edited by: Amie ]</p>

Keith Russell

Greetings:

While I'm not sure I would say that believing in miracles (or the supernatural in general) is silly, I do believe it can be stated that doing so is irrational (since there's no evidence to justify such belief).

Keith.

Amie

Hi Keith I do understand what you are saying here however one does not require evidence to justify a personal belief to oneself...
Have you ever believed in anything without evidence of it?