What If There Is a God?

[PairTheBoard]

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However, when this understanding crosses over into the real world, you are directly in the realm of science, and you ARE claiming scientific knowledge.

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This is slippery here. You have to make it clear what you mean by crossing into science. Claming the Sun revolves around the Earth would be such a crossing. But the examples you give below are not so clear.

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The realm of science extends to claims of Jesus walking on water, rising from the dead, prayers working, God picking your lotto numbers, etc.

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The only way these claims would cross over into science would be if they were used to impose on science some new laws of nature which science should include in its investigations. Science can say these things were virtually impossible under scientific laws of nature. Science can't say anything about what might happen if those laws don't apply. And there is no rigorous way science can talk about even the liklihood for disruptons in the scientific laws of nature. Science Assumes scientific laws of nature apply continuously in the past, present, and future.Science can only report on the reliability of the assumption for the data set science has available to it.

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The fact is that science has shown that all of these are far more likely to be false then true.

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This is akin to the kind of "Math tells us" statements Sklansky sometimes makes. Science hasn't shown us anything of the sort. Science can say that under its assumption that scientific laws of nature hold, these things are virually impossible. Science can say that in it's data set, these laws reliably hold. But Science has no rigorous way to talk about the liklihodd that those laws might somehow be disruputed somewhere outside its data set. The reason is that there's no way for science to know the measure of what's outside its data set.

I realize this is a fine point, and one I don't especially enjoy defending because I think Religion should step away from archaic perspectives. But it's correct. Yours is a misrepresentation of science.

I think Religion will step away from archaic perspectives in the future. I think such archaic perspectives degrade the reality of the faith rather then confirm it. This is funny. People say these archaic perspectives are what make religions unbelievable. But when I suggest an upgraded modern perspective for the religion those same people then say I've removed the foundation of the religion's credibility. I must lol.

PairTheBoard

[PairTheBoard]

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We only have problems when they start telling other people their belief, or try to influence political policy or similar.

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Their secular behavior is certainly open to scrutiny, especially if they try to impose their religious rules on our secular behavior. But telling people their beliefs is something else. And your analogy below is not a good one.

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NotReady "knows it" just like many people "know" online poker is rigged. They can be aware there is no scientific proof of it, but they understand what they mean.


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This is not a good analogy because the belief that online poker is rigged can be addressed by the scientific method. Religious beliefs, other than ones like "the Earth is flat", generally cannot.

A better analogy might be to a belief in the FSM. But that's really a vacuous analogy because there really is no such belief. Nobody really believes in the FSM despite the jokes they might make about it.

PairTheBoard

[Lestat]

I can't explain my opinion any better than Luckyme has below.

Yes, assertaions are made based on subjective evaluation. I assert an apple doesn't need a god to fall from a tree. NR recently asked someone to show this to be true. Of course, it can't be shown. So he wins? NR's assertion gains equal ground just like that?

There are all kinds of assertions one could make that can't be falsified (I think pigs flying when we're not looking is a perfect example). But we shouldn't give such an assertion equal footing with the assertion that they don't ever fly.

[PairTheBoard]

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I said: "I can't claim that as a fact but I can think of it to be the most likely option". I, subjectively, think it's more likely. I didn't in any place bring mathematical probabilites into this. Just because you have issues with Sklansky doesn't mean that I can't use the word "likely" especially when I explained what I mean by that.

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Fair enough.

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You could say that I have a belief that is based purely on science, you could say that in order to believe something I need to have scientifical proof.

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You can "Believe" that in order to believe something you need to have scientific proof. But you don't have scientific proof for that "Belief". You are contradicting yourself.

PairTheBoard

[PairTheBoard]

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You don't realize it but you are denying your own antecedent. The "reason" on which you base your conclusion is your feeling or thinking of what's "likely". Just using the term "likely" doesn't make it rigor, despite what Sklansky might have misled you to believe. So you are now asserting something you can't prove, based on Your subjective evaluation which You think is reasonable, just like NotReady does. And your denial of your antecendent is a conclusion that denies the validity of just such kinds of subjectively based assertions.

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Not being a logician or a mathematician and almost certainly being a SklaMoron, does the same argument hold when somebody tells me that they think it's likely pigs can't fly and I argue that "they might be doing it only when we're not looking". Certainly, they can't prove that pigs can't fly, can they? Pigs could be using techniques we haven't heard of, or do it in invisible mode or something.

Are we both on equal footing as you suggest above?

luckyme

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This is like the FSM analogy. The thing is it's a vacuous analogy. There is no such belief in flying pigs. Nobody believes that.

The "Equal Footing" thing is slippery. You can believe that NotReady does not have "Equal Footing" with you. But you can't prove it. That's essentially the Presumption that radical Atheists make when they conclude Religion should be abolished. They Proclaim the "Footing" for Religion to be as they believe it to be.

PairTheBoard

[PairTheBoard]

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I can't explain my opinion any better than Luckyme has below.

Yes, assertaions are made based on subjective evaluation. I assert an apple doesn't need a god to fall from a tree. NR recently asked someone to show this to be true. Of course, it can't be shown. So he wins? NR's assertion gains equal ground just like that?

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It certainly would not gain equal footing if you misunderstand him to be saying something about the science of the apple falling. But he's not saying that. You are talking apples and oranges. You are complaining that oranges are not on equal footing with apples.





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There are all kinds of assertions one could make that can't be falsified (I think pigs flying when we're not looking is a perfect example). But we shouldn't give such an assertion equal footing with the assertion that they don't ever fly.

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As I've said before, this is a vacuous analogy. You don't have people making that assertion. You are presuming that what Religious people are talking about is analogous to Flying Pigs. Just because it seems so to your subjective view doesn't make it so. In fact, if you close your mind to any other possibility you may never understand what it is they might really be talking about. There seems to be a lot of them talking about such things. Of course they have little consensus among themselves. But it might be worth considering the possiblility that there's Something to it.

PairTheBoard

[luckyme]

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This is like the FSM analogy. The thing is it's a vacuous analogy. There is no such belief in flying pigs. Nobody believes that.

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That's why I opened up Sasquatch or Yeti. In case you used that dodge.
Or to alien abduction or UFO.
Or to out of body experience.

People do believe those. I haven't opened myself up to those either.

So where are where are we. On an equal likelyhood?
Their negative is unprovable, somebody believes them ( quite a few in some cases), I think they'll all much unlikely, near zero.

luckyme

[Schmitty 87]

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As I've said before, this is a vacuous analogy. You don't have people making that assertion. You are presuming that what Religious people are talking about is analogous to Flying Pigs. Just because it seems so to your subjective view doesn't make it so. In fact, if you close your mind to any other possibility you may never understand what it is they might really be talking about. There seems to be a lot of them talking about such things. Of course they have little consensus among themselves. But it might be worth considering the possiblility that there's Something to it.

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Ugh. If there was a group of people (or even one person) who believed that pigs could fly, then the analogy would be appropriate though? The mere fact that many people believe in something does not make it any less ridiculous. A person may think that believing in the flying abilities of pigs is immeasurably important, and guess what, that belief is still ridiculous. The intensity with which someone follows a belief does not make that belief any less ridiculous. I do not dispute that Evangelical Christians think that the truth is on their side. But does that make their veiled (or often blatant) hatred and intolerance any less ridiculous? Tell me that unquestionably believing in the unquestionably historical truth of the Bible isn't ridiculous. You say your own beliefs are irrelevant, and I agree. I'm not asking you to tell me whether you believe it or not. Just tell me that it's not ridiculous.

Really PairTheBoard, I too often want to defend religion. I consider myself a religious person (it appears as though you misinterpreted my previous post). But this is not the way to go about it. Shall I say that Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son was not ridiculous? Shall I say that I am not in part appalled by his actions? Shall I simply say that Abraham was willing to give his best for God, neglecting to mention that give=kill and best=son? I agree that religion is not analogous to flying pigs, though in many cases I think they're pretty damn close. I really don't think that the reasonableness of religion is it's strong point, and the religious person should not be afraid to admit that. The Evangelical may say that creationism is the only reasonable answer, but we know that not to be true, and were we to refuse to label strict belief in creationism (even worse, often at the expense of science) as ridiculous, we may as well remove the word ridiculous from the dictionary.

[PairTheBoard]

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This is like the FSM analogy. The thing is it's a vacuous analogy. There is no such belief in flying pigs. Nobody believes that.

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That's why I opened up Sasquatch or Yeti. In case you used that dodge.
Or to alien abduction or UFO.
Or to out of body experience.

People do believe those

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I missed your mention of those. My last response was to the Flying Pigs.

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So where are where are we. On an equal likelyhood?

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Now you've changed your language from "Equal Footing" to "Equal Likelihood". What do you mean by "Likelihood"? Do you have a probability model in mind for those questions? Can I look at it? I understand you give little credence to such claims. And I understand that you believe they are analogous to what I've been talking about might be behind the phenomenon of Religion. But you don't know they are good analogies. That is your presumption. I don't mind if you make it for your own personal use. But when you use it to proclaim a crusade to abolish religion I'm afraid I can't just take your word for it.

PairTheBoard

[Schmitty 87]

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This is like the FSM analogy. The thing is it's a vacuous analogy. There is no such belief in flying pigs. Nobody believes that.

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That's why I opened up Sasquatch or Yeti. In case you used that dodge.
Or to alien abduction or UFO.
Or to out of body experience.

People do believe those. I haven't opened myself up to those either.

So where are where are we. On an equal likelyhood?
Their negative is unprovable, somebody believes them ( quite a few in some cases), I think they'll all much unlikely, near zero.

luckyme

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Fair enough, but religion is different, even if we find them all to be equally unlikely. I hope you'd agree.