To the Atheists

[SHaYap]

1 hour ago, Scudbuster said:

Oh boy, that is, without question, the single most convoluted "story" I have ever attempted to wrap my mind around.....ever...!  

Evidently then, you've only been not very far and seen very little

 

1 hour ago, Scudbuster said:

Yes, I now know for sure there's a guy up there in the sky floating around with a big plan for us all - just can't believe I have been missing it all these years......

No, you are referring to religion, psssst .... its not the only thing you've been missing ... all your life ... even now as you are clearly showing

 

1 hour ago, Scudbuster said:

Real verified facts  - evidence that can be examined, such that it can be evaluated and go through the scientific process. It would be a proven hypothesis developed by a scientist - and then that hypothesis is verified / not verified by other separate and unrelated scientific groups.  If it passes all these hurdles, it can become theory. That's what I'm looking for. As far as I know, no one yet has won a Noble prize by proving god exists. 

That only works if God is similar to a piece of fecal matter, isolated in a test tube, dissected under a microscope, extracted, dissolved and categorized in a manner that Science can recognize, understand or present abject conclusions on its speculated origins. All that is possible to verify from the actuality of such notions in relation the reality of the matter is that there is a great amount of speculation that Science is unable to prove with this Hypothesis.

THe absence, in other words, of correlating proofs that you present here is not Evidence, hardly even a a Postulate. Do you know of anyone winning the NObel Prize, or any form of a prize for that matter, by proving God does not exist ? 

God isn't any of that so ...

Some say God is 'dead' How is that possible when God does not 'exist'

Some say God does not 'exist' How is that possible if there is no God ?

~

[rashore]

Something I just noticed about the poll itself. Agnostic isn't accurate, because agnostic isn't choosing not to believe in anything. It's acknowledging you don't know, or not being so deeply seated in your belief that it becomes knowing a personal truth like atheism and theism can be.

There are atheist agnostics- don't know and don't believe

Theist agnostics- don't know and believe

Apatheist agnostics- don't know and don't care

[eight bits]

LG

Hope you're feeling better. I've been shoveling snow, so it's been a sub-par day all around, it seems.

More or less in reverse order of your post:

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Nope, I don't know anything about Popper.  If he's proven or demonstrated something that defeats Shermer formulation, I'm always interested.

Sure you do, he's the one who started the "science is falsification" meme. You made some observations about people who couldn't come up with a probability in Shermer's challenge. I offered Popper as an example of somebody who mightn't come up with a probability because he'd deny that a probability was a meaningful way to express the information sought - a formulation difference.

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It's not that I dispute the categories, it's that the purpose of this categorization within the context of Comparative Religion 101 is not something I can connect to Shermer's statements.

That's a good counter. However, it suffices that the people being challenged see the connection. I doubt that most Abrahamics conceptualize it in exactly that CR 101 way, but they usually do impress me as knowing that their favorite god has revealed it/themselves, know the name of the work where the revelation can be found, and know that their revealed god has ruled out the worship of any others.

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If you understand that flow, then you understand why I don't understand noting the fact that Zeus and God are, to me, superficially different in Shermer's scenario.

But you personally don't believe in either Zeus or God. Is it not possible, then, that you are not seeing as much importance in some distinction that a Zeus devotee or a Jesus devotee might see as very important? Speaking for myself, I don't "feel" the importance, I just recognize that somebody else does.

Recognize? How? Recall that these people used to kill each other over something. Some of the pagan Roman Imperial decrees against Christians specifically provided for the confiscation and destruction of Christian books. That suggests some pagan authorities understood the mechanics of revelation. The pagans didn't believe in it, but did understand that the books are what the Christians believed in and are what made the X-team hostile to pagan worship.

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Zeus and Yahweh are both proposed gods and that the evidence for them is about the same;

OK, then what do you think the "X" is that stands in the analogy X : Zeus :: Gospel of John : Jesus?

(And so far as I have heard and can tell, your understanding of heartworms is correct.)

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If you do believe that some Zeus worshippers did believe he existed, then why are the veridical claims in the gospels logically, rationally more believable and relevant than that of Zeus worshippers?

We seem to be losing sight of what the Christian has to explain: the basis of his own belief. That belief implies that Zeus doesn't exist as a god. That situation isn't symmetrical, a Zeus believer couldn't be an Abrahamic, of course, but could believe that an Abrahamic god was a god. Julian the Apostate was seriously planning to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple, for example, as a Jewish temple and was aware that that was itself a gesture of divine respect on his part.

By all means question the Christian about what's so convincing about the Gospel of John. There is, however, no further degree of freedom that allows Zeus if somebody does adopt the conventional reading of John. Accepting an exclusive god implies not accepting Zeus, as surely as "none of the above" implies not accepting Zeus.

One might just as well question Shermer's single pick, too. For example, if there are a thousand and one different god claims, all but one more-or-less equally good (except for the one he likes) then what are the chances that all the 1000 are flat-out wrong? What is the superior evidence for the 1001st choice? Why not say that all 1001 are about equiprobable, and so argue it's 1000-to-1 that I should be a theist?

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no hearsay

That about 400,000 people in my reigion lost their electrical service last Friday was (to me) hearsay, along with everything else on the news (with very few exceptions). I believe some of  the news with high confidence. Hearsay as such is not the issue that some people make of it. Besides, the Gospel of John says it's relaying eyewitness testimony.

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We don't get an answer to, 'what about God revealing himself and Zeus not increases the probability that God exists compared to Zeus?'.

Well, yes we do, you just don't like the answer.

- I read the Gospel of John
- I find it credible (even knowing that you don't)
- What it teaches implies that Zeus is at most a lesser order of being than Big-G God & Son
- If we can agree that "god" is the highest order of being, then you now know why I believe Zeus isn't a god.

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but it doesn't work for academic debate and definitely not science.

Lucky for us, then, that our subject is religion, eh?

Sets: I don't see how that helps. The Abrahamic, just like Shermer, is going to pick a singleton while another theist, Julian the Apostate, is going to pick all the ones he can find for his set, even including one of the Abrahamics, it seems. (IMO, Julian believed Jesus existed, but that he wasn't a god; Allah wasn't in play yet) Surely, then, the argument has no force at all against Julian, compared with some force against the Abrahamic, maybe. If you don't pick only one, it doesn't make any sense to ask why you picked only one. "I didn't," says Julian, because he picked loads.

Pinkoski: I guess it isn't critical that I understand the relevance of the Noah's Ark people to the merits of Shermer addressing his question to theists at the Oxford Union. Since I have no idea why Pinkoski thinks that his ring-free rock is petrified wood, I can't comment on his thought process. Also, since fraud was hinted at in your source, I'm not even sure that I'm dealing with an actual belief.

Get well soon.

-
@Liquid Gardens

[+Liquid Gardens]

54 minutes ago, eight bits said:

Hope you're feeling better. I've been shoveling snow, so it's been a sub-par day all around, it seems.

Thanks 8, the worst is over cold-wise.  I'm pretty sure what region of the country you live in and it seems like winter's plastered you 3 times in about as many weeks.  Definitely have my sympathies, it has its moments but not my favorite season.  Appreciate your detail as always, I always feel a little clumsy with my arguments bull-in-a-china-shop-wise on topics like this since the topic of uncertainty is definitely way in your wheelhouse.  There have been a few conversations with you in this area where I as well as you end up making points against whatever position I was taking, the uncertainty for me includes being uncertain how these problems should logically be approached since some times I seem to find more than one method or angle.

I had thought more about Shermer's argument after posting and although I understand what it's getting at I'm not sure how much I like the overall formulation either, 'probability' is throwing me a little.  I see the request as trying to force the believer into confronting the question from 'reason' or 'logic' for lack of better words since scientific/mathematical probability is based on that, which I don't really have a problem with as a tactic; the quote I saw says 'the probability' not 'your probability' where he's trying to put this in the objective arena.  (You probably have a better less ambiguous word than 'reason' for what I'm referring to, but I'm talking about 'reason' the process I guess not what's reasonable to someone; conclusions based on faith may be reasonable to someone, but faith doesn't really intersect with plain reason at all.)  However, the problem we're dealing with at least to my statistics-stunted mind is not conducive to this kind of estimation.  I won't use the Gospel of John as I have some comments below still doubting its use, but let's say that they dated the Shroud of Turin to Jesus' time, everyone agreed that it could not have been painted or created in any known way.  My question to Shermer would be, 'how much has the probability that Jesus existed and was crucified increased by the evidence of the Shroud?'.  I don't see how he or anyone can answer that, there's no number I can put on it, which makes the formulation fishy.

On the other hand, I can view the probability request more colloquially, like what I think you mean when you say you're 60-40 for Jesus' historicity.  I know what you mean when you say that, but I think then I think I see a little why you're interjecting what is credible to the person; I don't think you're actually claiming that the actual probability that Jesus was a historical person is an objective sense 60%, that seems the wrong kind of question to apply probabilities too.

1 hour ago, eight bits said:

However, it suffices that the people being challenged see the connection. I doubt that most Abrahamics conceptualize it in exactly that CR 101 way, but they usually do impress me as knowing that their favorite god has revealed it/themselves, know the name of the work where the revelation can be found, and know that their revealed god has ruled out the worship of any others.

This is an unusual discussion in another way and I think some of my confusion might be clearing up, in that I don't think you are actually taking the position that God is more believable than Zeus.  I'm not sure though as I seem to recall a conversation with you about leprechauns or Santa or something where you had relegated them to the mere folklore category a little too hastily for me although I don't recall if we got any deeper than that.  I think most of your comments have been noting that the believers think this, which may be why it seems to me sometimes here that some of my questions or points about the veracity or reasoning behind their distinction are bouncing off as I don't think you think that's the issue. 

You may have stated this already, but do you agree that everything you have said applies to the exclusive Zeus believer too?  It's not that God is actually more believable than Zeus, it's that those who believe are able to point out some distinction?

1 hour ago, eight bits said:

Is it not possible, then, that you are not seeing as much importance in some distinction that a Zeus devotee or a Jesus devotee might see as very important?

Sure it's possible.  We don't believe in creationism either, is it possible that we aren't seeing the importance in a distinction vs evolution?  Remotely I guess.  If that was the topic under discussion would you even ask this question?  Than why is it valid for a different topic?  (I think the answer is that I should be approaching this problem differently than others due to its uncertainty)  I'm not quite clear why the distinction's importance can't be demonstrated or examined if its true, I seem to be capable of doing that with lots of other things and I seriously doubt that I need years of study to understand the validity of the distinction.

1 hour ago, eight bits said:

OK, then what do you think the "X" is that stands in the analogy X : Zeus :: Gospel of John : Jesus?

Greek myths?  There probably is no direct analogy.  What do you think stands for the X in this analogy:  X : God :: Ragnarok : Odin?  It is a distinction without an analogy on the other side; Odin dies.  Now it seems like your next logical response would be, 'but what about Ragnarok makes Odin more likely?', to which I would say 'exactly'.  If you add 'to me' after 'likely' than the Odin believer (sorry to switch gods on ya, I watched Thor: Ragnarok the other night which was a much better movie than I expected) is done, and we're at a standstill.  (to clarify, when you analogize John to Jesus, I'm limiting that to the supernatural aspects as those have no other support or evidence, unlike the fact that crucifixions occurred)

2 hours ago, eight bits said:

What is the superior evidence for the 1001st choice?

Is there no reason behind the idea of the burden of proof?  

2 hours ago, eight bits said:

We seem to be losing sight of what the Christian has to explain: the basis of his own belief.

Maybe again we shouldn't have started talking about the Gospel of John then as I may have mistaken that you agreed with some reason why that is a valid basis.  Do all of your general points apply here if the believer just says their basis is faith or that the Bible is true?

Let me try a more direct attack albeit a roundabout approach on the veridical claim stuff.  Argumentum ad populum and fallacious arguments from authority derive from roughly the same thing, that what somebody believes or says is true, even if their an expert or a mass of people, does not make it true. Everyone on earth can believe in creationism for their credible reasons to them, and they'd all be wrong.  So why would we then think that a non-authority believing what someone else a long time wrote down about what they believe about the truth of supernatural events is anymore reasonable than faith?  Why do we think it will be any more accurate than "I believe the Bible" in ascertaining the reality about the diversity of life? 

It seems like for some aspects of this discussion, whether or not a method or a conclusion is valid or not is relevant.  Otherwise again it seems like you could have just said 'faith' and been done with it, although that indeed wouldn't have been as much fun.  Probably have saved you some typing though which may have cut into your non-stop shoveling needs.

2 hours ago, eight bits said:

Well, yes we do, you just don't like the answer.

- I read the Gospel of John
- I find it credible (even knowing that you don't)

Not quite 'I don't like' but stronger in a different way, 'everyone knows you can't believe everything you merely read, you don't believe what you read about Odin or Zeus.  Just as it is utterly irrelevant if someone finds the Bible believable about life's history and is a creationist.  That goes to the reliability of your method, sans some further argument from you''

2 hours ago, eight bits said:

- What it teaches implies that Zeus is at most a lesser order of being than Big-G God & Son
- If we can agree that "god" is the highest order of being, then you now know why I believe Zeus isn't a god.

That technically wasn't the question that I don't like this answer to, the question was 'what about God revealing himself and Zeus not increases the probability that God exists compared to Zeus?'.  It wasn't questioning whether they consider Zeus a god or not, I'm totally fine with Zeus being a 'supernatural entity' and posing the same question.  Unless there is an argument somewhere supporting the idea that gods are more credible than other kinds of supernatural/divine creatures.

2 hours ago, eight bits said:

Pinkoski: ... I can't comment on his thought process.

Is that relevant, or is it only relevant that they to themselves, based on their own standards of credibility, no matter what you and may like, made a distinction or appealed to an unproven, unreliable 'reason'?

2 hours ago, eight bits said:

Get well soon.

Thank ya, watch your back and especially your heart shovelling.  I'm not in horrible shape but was surprised the few winters how sneakily strenuous shoveling can be.

[SHaYap]

12 hours ago, Scudbuster said:

There has to be some evidence to evaluate and investigate. 

Let me introduce you to :

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[00.11:06]

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... and St Anselm
 

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Anselm: Ontological Argument for the God's Existence | Internet ...

https://www.iep.utm.edu/ont-arg/

St. Anselm, Archbishop of Cantebury (1033-1109), is the originator of the ontological argument, which he describes in the Proslogium as follows: [Even a] fool, when he hears of … a being than which nothing greater can be conceived … understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understanding.…

‎The Classic Version of the ... · ‎The Argument Described · ‎Aquinas's Criticisms

 

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You can't say 'there has to be' by implication of 'there is none' by not trying to look very hard ... see what I'm getting at ? That's exactly what the basic Principalities of Religion are ... and Propositioning the Evidence of this Negative with the same Basics from the perspective of Science is just muddling the business on your end ...

~

 

[SHaYap]

Just now, Scudbuster said:

Yes, thanks, and I see your point and I see his angle, but having feelings trump reason - in my view- isn't the way to ascertain certain things.

But yes, I do understand religion is based on feelings/faith........it's just not my way to evaluate things.

And there is nothing wrong with that, technically speaking it is the manner of this form of the presentation that formulates the presence of the logic of this particular progression.

~

[eight bits]

LG

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the quote I saw says 'the probability' not 'your probability' where he's trying to put this in the objective arena.

That (can someone say "the" probability versus "your" probability?) is a hot spot of contention. Here's a medium-length answer from the perspective of historians:

https://uncertaintist.wordpress.com/2017/01/25/historians-and-probability/

The short version: sometimes "your" probability is "the" probability, but the Question of God doesn't seem to be one of those times.

In the terms used in the blog post, Shermer would say, I think, that there is a "reference class" for god claims, which is something objective. Because they are all more-or-less equally good, the correct probability to use is the uniform distribution (for 1000 god claims, each p = 1/1000). That's not quite objective, but it's not purely personal, either.

So, THE probability that the Nicene Jesus is a god is about 1/1000, IF all assumptions are granted. I honestly do not know how Shermer proposes to avoid the conclusion that THE probability that there is some god is about 1000/1001, which if so would seem to be the end of rational atheism (and of my own beloved agnosticism, too).

There is an additional complication that not all god claims are mutually exclusive, although some are. Your set idea would make for a huge space (2^1000 candidate sets), culled down to the logically admissible combinations.

In his defense, I think Shermer has said that his analysis should be viewed as a "back of the envelope" affair, which means he should be cut some slack. Which is fine, but by definition, probability adds up. If you want any one hypothesis to outweigh the rest, whether Jesus or none-of-the-above, then you need to justify that special weight in its own right, which defeats some of the point of using probability in the first place.

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My question to Shermer would be, 'how much has the probability that Jesus existed and was crucified increased by the evidence of the Shroud?'.

Yes! You're a Bayesian. Lol. Probability is MUCH better at explaining (and justifying) belief change than belief itself.

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On the other hand, I can view the probability request more colloquially, like what I think you mean when you say you're 60-40 for Jesus' historicity

People do use expressions like that colloquially, and from time to time I remind folks that I'm not being precise. If I had to unpack what that 60-40 means to me, I'd say

it's more than 50-50 for me (same as what I think people usually mean wjen they say that), but it would only take fairly little or fairly low quality adverse new evidence to drive it under 50-50 for me.

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I don't think you're actually claiming that the actual probability that Jesus was a historical person is an objective sense 60%, that seems the wrong kind of question to apply probabilities too.

That's right. Carrier disagrees, of course, and I agree with him to the limited extent that even though probability isn't going to resolve the problem, it does help a lot when trying to reason with evidence. (A hammer won't build a house all by itself, but whoever is building a house will be glad to have one.)

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I think most of your comments have been noting that the believers think this, which may be why it seems to me sometimes here that some of my questions or points about the veracity or reasoning behind their distinction are bouncing off as I don't think you think that's the issue.

That's probably true. I've pretty much given up explaining why people believe some of the things they do, which also means (in "probability-like" theories of belief and belief change) giving up explaining why people give the weight they do to specific pieces of evidence.

You mentioned the Shroud. At our current level of knowledge, "You can't explain this mysterious picture of a corpse. That's strong evidence that the man is no longer dead." Say what? I don't grasp any connection (except that the guy looks like Jesus would have looked if he was a European, which nobody except the old-line Nazis believes he was). That's why I go with the Gospel of John as an example, because at least I understand how the dots could be connected between the contents of the book and the conclusion that Jesus is a divine figure if the contents are substantially true.

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do you agree that everything you have said applies to the exclusive Zeus believer too?  It's not that God is actually more believable than Zeus, it's that those who believe are able to point out some distinction?

Yes.

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We don't believe in creationism either, is it possible that we aren't seeing the importance in a distinction vs evolution?

Yes. See the recent thread about "Evolution 2.0," where apparently people like us are completely failing to see the many scientific advantages of having a supernaturally directed selection instead of solely natural selection. We just lump ID in with all the other religious theories of speciation. Our bad.

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What do you think stands for the X in this analogy:  X : God :: Ragnarok : Odin?

Well, Ragnarok is the end of the current reigning gods, something very Indo-European. Capital-G God has managed to acquire a lot of I-E trappings, but not that one. X would be something antithetical, like "eternity" maybe?

Oddly, I find it more credible that a real thing has both a beginning and an end. Even with the Abrahamic gods, and especially in light of some paradoxes about self-knowledge, I find it more credible that they had a beginning they cannot remember and will come to an end that they cannot foresee.

Maybe that makes Odin a better god, rather than a more credible one .

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to clarify, when you analogize John to Jesus, I'm limiting that to the supernatural aspects as those have no other support or evidence, unlike the fact that crucifixions occurred

OK, but one reason I chose John is that one of the "eyewitness reports" is the last chapter's cookout, which is natural, hosted by the no-longer dead Jesus, which is supernatural. I am pretty sure that John meant his whole book to be accepted as literally true, natural and super-, just alike.

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Is there no reason behind the idea of the burden of proof?  

In formal contests (judicial trials, debates like the one at the Oxford Union, ...), where at some definite time there is going to a winner and a loser (or maybe exceptionally a tie), then there have to be rules (for example, a "tie breaker" rule which the "burden of proof" sometimes is).

On questions of personal opinion? No. The only "burden of proof" is tautological, whoever seeks to change the opinion of somebody else succeeds only when they change that person's opinion.

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Do all of your general points apply here if the believer just says their basis is faith or that the Bible is true?

Yes, if they say the Bible. Unless I'm missing the definition, though, "faith" wouldn't explain what seems to me to be "faith." It may be that the accurate answer is "I just believe," but that's pretty much a conversation ender, and could apply to Zeus, Big-G, or anything else equally well (Shermer wins the round). At least the Gospel of John picks one, and the Bible as a whole narrows it down to two.

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So why would we then think that a non-authority believing what someone else a long time wrote down about what they believe about the truth of supernatural events is anymore reasonable than faith?

We, you and I, don't. Of those who do, my experience is that the conversation can go off in any of several directions. The oldest explanation on-pont I can think of is Paul's. He thinks that he personally visited God's domain,which explains his belief in earlier writings that comport with his experience up there. I'd be tempted to guess that the causal arrow really pointed the other way, that his reading shaped the experience, but that's a skeptical perspective.

Other people tell other stories, as you know. The point is that the justification is not necessarily ad populum, or insupportable reliance on others' expertise.

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That technically wasn't the question that I don't like this answer to, the question was 'what about God revealing himself and Zeus not increases the probability that God exists compared to Zeus?'.

Be careful whom you say "technically" to. One of the few things almost every uncertainty manager agrees on is that if A implies B, then B cannot be less plausible than A. And implication is transitive, if A implies B and B implies C, then A implies C. So, A cannot be less plausible than B is plausible or than C is plausible.

John implies Jesus and Jesus implies not-Zeus. If I find John credible, meaning I find some level of plausibility, then I must find both Jesus and also not-Zeus at least that plausible.

Lucky for my relationship with Zeus, the extent to which I find John credible is "not so much." But everybody is bound by the overall principle, the same for everybody. There is nothing peculiar to our hypothetical believer except that they have a jollier view of John than I do.

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Is that relevant, or is it only relevant that they to themselves, based on their own standards of credibility, no matter what you and may like, made a distinction or appealed to an unproven, unreliable 'reason'?

I strongly believe that he's mistaken about his rock. That mistake has something to do with related mistakes about the Ark, about trees, and ultimately about how the Bible was written. But that's as far as I get. I don't know whether that's all one root mistake carried to its logical conclusion (no reasoning flaw at all, just bad data), or a few independent mistakes (for example, I don't recall anything in the Bible about whether trees had rings before the Flood), each piece with its own line of reasoning, now mashed together in a train wreck of compounded error.

Thus, even if it were the very picture of relevance, I personally can't figure out how to apply it to Shermer's direct question to the theists in the audience at the Oxford Union.

Shoveling: I do try to be careful ... some wise god seems to have provided that my other muscles cramp up before my heart does.

-

@Liquid Gardens

Edited March 9, 2018 by eight bits

[eight bits]

Oops, my typing is worse than my shoveling:

4 hours ago, eight bits said:

if A implies B, then B cannot be less plausible than A. And implication is transitive, if A implies B and B implies C, then A implies C. So, A cannot be less  more plausible than B is plausible or than C is plausible.

Full disclosure: I did get out in tne woods on snowshoes this morning. That made up for a lot .

[SHaYap]

11 hours ago, eight bits said:

Oops, my typing is worse than my shoveling:

Full disclosure: I did get out in tne woods on snowshoes this morning. That made up for a lot .

What happened to your SnowBat  mobile ?

~

[SHaYap]

~doybled *snip

Edited March 10, 2018 by third_eye
wonkey server