quote:

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Originally posted by anteater:
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy which tries to define what valid grounds for belief are. Most atheists believe strongly that the only valid grounds for demanding belief are that a proposition can be subject to tests which can decide empirically where or not it is true, and failing that, there is no compelling case for belief. Privately you can believe whatever bat shit you want so long as you don't expect anyone else to. Agreed?

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Most atheists, and all the ones of my acquaintance, don't believe an observation necessarily needs to be empirical or scientific to be valid. I don't know anyone, atheist or not, who breaks out a spectrometer in order to tell what color a flower is.

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Ah yes, the stereotype of the scientific atheist.

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Originally posted by anteater:
Talk of "breaking out a spectrometer" is just a red herring. Nobody is suggesting you have to do it yourself, just that it has been done. If you are really saying that Atheism does not demand evidence for belief, I think you are in a minority. Or maybe being pedantic.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Most atheists, and all the ones of my acquaintance, don't believe an observation necessarily needs to be empirical or scientific to be valid. I don't know anyone, atheist or not, who breaks out a spectrometer in order to tell what color a flower is.

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Just to be pedantic: Telling what colour a flower is seems to me a paradigm case of an empirical observation.

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quote:

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Originally posted by pimple:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
Telling what colour a flower is seems to me a paradigm case of an empirical observation.

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Doesn't that depend on whether you're a human being. a bull or a butterly?

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
But in none of the above is the process described as 'telling what colour a flower is' a matter of reasoned argument.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Since you seem to be having trouble with this example, let's try another. Let's say Office Atheist's co-worker tells him "there are bagels in the break room this morning"? Is Office Atheist required to disbelieve this information, since it comes to him in the form of hearsay instead of empirical observation?

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Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
As for ethics: one only needs to consider that nature does not provide us with an "ought". There is nothing in the empirical scientific method which requires us to act in a certain way. The methodology of Josef Mengele is, in principle, no less scientific than that of any normal doctor who seeks the wellbeing of his patients.

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Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Of course, it is important to point out that many atheists have a strong moral sense. I think it would be wrong for any theist to deny that. But this is not the point. It's one thing to have a strong moral conscience, but it is quite another to claim that it has objective validity and therefore it can be imposed on others.

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Since you seem to be having trouble with this example, let's try another. Let's say Office Atheist's co-worker tells him "there are bagels in the break room this morning"? Is Office Atheist required to disbelieve this information, since it comes to him in the form of hearsay instead of empirical observation?

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
The big problem with this kind of analysis is that Josef Mengele was not an atheist, he was a Roman Catholic. Given this, it's not apparent that adhering to some kind of divinely mandated moral code is required to prevent Mengele-like behavior, or that it's very successful at doing so.

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Originally posted by EE:
As for ethics: one only needs to consider that nature does not provide us with an "ought". There is nothing in the empirical scientific method which requires us to act in a certain way. The methodology of Josef Mengele is, in principle, no less scientific than that of any normal doctor who seeks the wellbeing of his patients.

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who are working class people, and who don't normally argue in those terms

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Originally posted by anteater:
My evidence is based on stuff I have read, and atheists who I have listened to, all of whom took the view that religion lacks the basis of reasonable proof by which they mean scientifically testable. It certainly is the thrust of the current wave of atheist books, whose titles I'm sure you know.

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Of course, some theists make hay with this, and begin to argue about basic beliefs in God as foundational, and here atheists may well call a halt.

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Not all proofs are scientifically testable. Just ask a mathematician.

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I think a clearer formulation is atheists point out that religion has made a whole lot of claims which are scientifically testable . . and that these claims always fail to pan out.

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Originally posted by anteater:
I'm not sure you're right here. In any case, has not Science made loads of claims which did not pan out?

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Originally posted by anteater:
Even where clams are made, I don't think the church invites testing, or claims that it's beliefs are testable. There are exceptions, like research into meditation and brain patterns (Buddhist typically - not christian). But in general the Church's attitude is that demands that God be subject to scientific testing are illegitimate.

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Originally posted by anteater:
But maybe I am just wrong. I have to admit that I genuinely thought that a central plank of atheist thought was that in order to legitimately demand assent, some testable evidence has to be submitted, and that this affect non religious claims (e.g. homeopathy, and even in some people's view string theory) as well as religious claims.

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Originally posted by anteater:
I have to admit that I genuinely thought that a central plank of atheist thought was that in order to legitimately demand assent, some testable evidence has to be submitted, and that this affect non religious claims (e.g. homeopathy, and even in some people's view string theory) as well as religious claims.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
Compare Schopenhauer.

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A key difference here is that science doesn't claim to be the revealed eternal truth from an omniscient superbeing.

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bagels in the break room redux

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Someone like A.J.Ayer would have endorsed the kind of position you're attributing to atheists.

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Originally posted by anteater:
Croesus:

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bagels in the break room redux

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But does this work with a non-trivial example. If your good friend assured you that some financial product was a dead cert, or that God spoke to them would you automatically accept this too?

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Originally posted by anteater:
The religious objection to this is that it cannot cover most of the essential issues of life.

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For most people, whether we evolved or were created as separate species has little impact on our lives, whereas questions about whether it is ok to discriminate on the basis of race, sexual preference or whatever, or whether abortion is sometimes/always justified, or whether capitalism is morally good/bad/neutral: these are the things which really do effect our lives.

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That is not to say that the strictly scientific is irrelevant, but it is to claim that ethical issues are more pressing for most people.

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I'd say it was more likely to be the other way round, but I have no evidence to support this assertion!

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And if the modern atheist movement ...

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I admit that many are utilitarians (e.g. Singer) but they seem to accept no responsibility to establish this philosophy in the face of its many criticisms.

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The expression it's like herding cats' seems to come up quite often when people talk about putting atheists into a group!

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Dawkins, in a recent interview, admitted that the science is not friendly to altruism, but said nothing determines that we should live selfishly. I agree, and think that the religious claim that all atheists somehow have to be spencerite social darwinists is wrong-. headed.

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But it still looks as if those who have such a strong critique of religion as not being evidence based, are themselves living on no better a basis: ...

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...unless they ignore all ethical issues, which few of them do.

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One way out is to class all ethical matters as private preferences, so one hates antisemitism in the same way one hates cubism. Does anyone really take this view? I can hardly believe it, ...

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I think there is a real problem here. I'm not saying it is easy, but at least the Religious are trying, and grappling with varying degrees of success, at addressing problems which can never be the subject of scientific experiment.

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Have I got hold of the wrong end of the stick? If so where?

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I don't think so, but I think there will be quite a few here who will think that I have!!
 

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Posted by anteater (# 11435) on :
 
Croesus:

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No, you've missed the point.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:

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Originally posted by anteater:
My evidence is based on stuff I have read, and atheists who I have listened to, all of whom took the view that religion lacks the basis of reasonable proof by which they mean scientifically testable. It certainly is the thrust of the current wave of atheist books, whose titles I'm sure you know.

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Not all proofs are scientifically testable. Just ask a mathematician. I think a clearer formulation is atheists point out that religion has made a whole lot of claims which are scientifically testable (the Universe is six to ten thousand years old, rain is caused by Zeus pissing through a sieve, the sun is a flaming barge that sails the heavens, etc.) and that these claims always fail to pan out.

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Crœsos:
Well not always. Christians and Jews have always held that the universe was created ex nihilo. One hundred or so years ago the prevailing scientific view was that the universe was past eternal. It is advanced in science that have led to the standard cosmological view that universe is finite and has an absolute beginning.

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The schedule appears to be much different than originally believed.
As a non-philosophizing atheist,my question is; if believe in non-falsifiable hypothesis, how do you distinguish between the many variations. How many gods do you believe in; 1, 2, 3, 7, 9,4000 or infinitely many? Family tradition seems a poor justification.
 

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Posted by mstevens (# 15437) on :
 
Okay, a vague attempt at a reply from an atheist perspective, it's a big subject!:

As others have said, I think a lot of atheists are not necessarily all that philosophical, and may not think about the epistemological issues raised here at all.

As I see atheism, it's primarily a position on factual rather than ethical issues - does this God chap exist or not? Obviously we're leaning on the "not" side, with varying degrees of intensity depending on the person.

As I understand religion, ethics is rather complicated, but the rough position is "morals come from God", which seems to me to be a mix of factual and ethical claims - a) factually, God exists, b) he is the source of ethics. Knock out (a), as atheists think they have, and (b) doesn't work.

Knowledge generally comes in through the senses in various ways, and doesn't always require the full "scientific palaver" of double blind experiments and peer reviews and so on. I can have a fair degree of confidence my coffee will be tasty without doing a full research project on coffee taste.

I read a few moderately philosophical and fairly heavily atheist websites (eg lesswrong
where ethics is agreed to be an important problem. People seem to lean towards Utilitarianism and Consequentialism

At lot of work seems to go into justifying ethics on some non-religious basis, the rough principle being to provide some solid foundation for people's ethical intuitions. Personally I've never seen anything convincing, although I do lean in a Utilitarian direction as above.

(general footnote: I'm generalising quite wildly in various ways above, and using "he" for God for grammatical convenience)
 

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Posted by mstevens (# 15437) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I don't think there is such a thing as atheist thought, is there? Many Buddhists are atheists, for example, and it is quite difficult to predict where they would stand on this issue of testing ideas.

It sounds as if anteater is reifying a loose group of scientifically minded atheists, who may be influenced by the Four Horsemen, and who purvey a warmed over (and self-defeating) version of 19th century positivism.

I don't think that that summarizes the thinking of atheists, though.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:

quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Crœsos:
Well not always. Christians and Jews have always held that the universe was created ex nihilo. One hundred or so years ago the prevailing scientific view was that the universe was past eternal. It is advanced in science that have led to the standard cosmological view that universe is finite and has an absolute beginning.

---

The schedule appears to be much different than originally believed.
As a non-philosophizing atheist,my question is; if believe in non-falsifiable hypothesis, how do you distinguish between the many variations. How many gods do you believe in; 1, 2, 3, 7, 9,4000 or infinitely many? Family tradition seems a poor justification.

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quote:

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As a non-philosophizing atheist,my question is; if believe in non-falsifiable hypothesis, how do you distinguish between the many variations. How many gods do you believe in

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quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
We've moved past the bagels as a specific instance. Office Atheist is reaching a conclusion (Co-Worker is a friend) based on evidence (familiarity of address, occasional chit-chat, tip-offs about break room snacks) which is non-scientific in nature. Your basic theory is that Office Atheist wouldn't be able to reach this conclusion (or any other) without several repeats of a double-blind experiment (or similar).

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quote:

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Originally posted by mstevens:
Knowledge generally comes in through the senses in various ways, and doesn't always require the full "scientific palaver" of double blind experiments and peer reviews and so on. I can have a fair degree of confidence my coffee will be tasty without doing a full research project on coffee taste.

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Originally posted by anteater:
The point is that it is not by using the scientific method that one finds out how many Gods to believe in. Any more than you can use it to determine whether one has a duty of care to oneself only, ones family, tribe, ethnic group, all humankind or indeed all of life.

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Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:
The point is that Christians don't just believe in a generic 'god of the philosophers', we specifically believe in Yaweh, the triune God of Father, Son and Spirit. As followers of Jesus Christ, we believe that he was the Son, the second person of this trinity, and we believe that he saved the world by dying and rising again.

Our belief is therefore eminently falsifiable: you need to show that Jesus did not rise. As Paul says, "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." There's the condition, go and fulfil it and I'll stop wasting my life chasing after a non-existent God.

You may notice that the condition is now historical, not scientific. That shouldn't be a problem since history is a reputable academic discipline, just like science.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Why are you so stuck on the idea that atheists only believe in formal, scientific observations? It's been pointed out repeatedly that this is an obvious falsehood. If you have some reason to persist in this assertion, let's hear it.

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@mstevens. You observed 'As I see atheism, it's primarily a position on factual rather than ethical issues - does this God chap exist or not? Obviously we're leaning on the "not" side, with varying degrees of intensity depending on the person.'

If you are 'leaning' would this not make you an agnostic, rather than an atheist?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:
As followers of Jesus Christ, we believe that he was the Son, the second person of this trinity, and we believe that he saved the world by dying and rising again.

Our belief is therefore eminently falsifiable: you need to show that Jesus did not rise. As Paul says, "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." There's the condition, go and fulfil it and I'll stop wasting my life chasing after a non-existent God.

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quote:

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Originally posted by George Spigot:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:
As followers of Jesus Christ, we believe that he was the Son, the second person of this trinity, and we believe that he saved the world by dying and rising again.

Our belief is therefore eminently falsifiable: you need to show that Jesus did not rise. As Paul says, "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." There's the condition, go and fulfil it and I'll stop wasting my life chasing after a non-existent God.

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Are you saying that if someone makes a claim it's up to other people to disprove it rather than the job of the claimer to prove it?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:

quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Crœsos:
Well not always. Christians and Jews have always held that the universe was created ex nihilo. One hundred or so years ago the prevailing scientific view was that the universe was past eternal. It is advanced in science that have led to the standard cosmological view that universe is finite and has an absolute beginning.

---

The schedule appears to be much different than originally believed.
As a non-philosophizing atheist,my question is; if believe in non-falsifiable hypothesis, how do you distinguish between the many variations. How many gods do you believe in; 1, 2, 3, 7, 9,4000 or infinitely many? Family tradition seems a poor justification.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:

quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Crœsos:
Well not always. Christians and Jews have always held that the universe was created ex nihilo. One hundred or so years ago the prevailing scientific view was that the universe was past eternal. It is advanced in science that have led to the standard cosmological view that universe is finite and has an absolute beginning.

---

The schedule appears to be much different than originally believed.
As a non-philosophizing atheist,my question is; if believe in non-falsifiable hypothesis, how do you distinguish between the many variations. How many gods do you believe in; 1, 2, 3, 7, 9,4000 or infinitely many? Family tradition seems a poor justification.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:

quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
As a non-philosophizing atheist,my question is; if believe in non-falsifiable hypothesis, how do you distinguish between the many variations. How many gods do you believe in; 1, 2, 3, 7, 9,4000 or infinitely many? Family tradition seems a poor justification.

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Occam's razor would appear to be the right tool in this instance.

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@Croesos. You wrote '. But either God interacts with the Universe, in which case we should be able to observe that interaction, or He doesn't, which is functionally the same as non-existence.'

What evidence would persuade you that is a God interacting with his universe?

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@Croesos: I'll be happy to answer your question in good time. But first, perhaps you would like to answer mine. As a close follower of these discussions you must have seriously considered what would convince you that there a God who intervenes in this universe.

Or at least that it is more likely that God does exist than that he does not.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:

quote:

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Originally posted by George Spigot:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:
As followers of Jesus Christ, we believe that he was the Son, the second person of this trinity, and we believe that he saved the world by dying and rising again.

Our belief is therefore eminently falsifiable: you need to show that Jesus did not rise. As Paul says, "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." There's the condition, go and fulfil it and I'll stop wasting my life chasing after a non-existent God.

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Are you saying that if someone makes a claim it's up to other people to disprove it rather than the job of the claimer to prove it?

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It depends on the claim George. So in the case of atheism the burden of proof is on you to show that God definitely does *not* exist rather than taking the agnostic approach that the question is undetermined.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@Croesos: I'll be happy to answer your question in good time. But first, perhaps you would like to answer mine. As a close follower of these discussions you must have seriously considered what would convince you that there a God who intervenes in this universe.

Or at least that it is more likely that God does exist than that he does not.

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Wait, didn't I answer that question? Personal revelation seems like a pretty specific answer.

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@Pre Cambrian. Well as I said, it depends on the claim. Christians should indeed have evidence to support the claim that Jesus rose from the dead, not just because it is extra ordinary but also because of the implications for humanity in general and Christians in particular.

But that doesn't relieve atheists of their responsibilities to produce evidence to support their claims. The assertion that God does *not* exist (as opposed to the question being open) is an extraordinary claim of its own. So that's my question to you Pre Cambrian - how do you support the claim that God does not exist?

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Originally posted by longing:
...but science will never be able to answer some questions religion can, and vice versa.

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Science may not have a rational answer to some questions, but they do have, 'We don't know yet!'
Therefore, I cannot think of any questions to which religion has an answer that Science does not!

quote:

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Originally posted by mstevens:
Okay, a vague attempt at a reply from an atheist perspective, it's a big subject!:...
I read a few moderately philosophical and fairly heavily atheist websites (eg lesswrong
where ethics is agreed to be an important problem. People seem to lean towards Utilitarianism and Consequentialism

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quote:

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At lot of work seems to go into justifying ethics on some non-religious basis, the rough principle being to provide some solid foundation for people's ethical intuitions. Personally I've never seen anything convincing, although I do lean in a Utilitarian direction as above.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mstevens:

[QUOTE]Originally posted by George Spigot:
Now it's true that there are many many things that I don't know and can't ever know. I can't know for certain that God doesn't exist in the same way I can't know for certain that aliens living on a distant planet don't exist. Why not call myself agnostic then? I feel that if I did it would give the false impression that I was on the fence.

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Practically speaking I don't do any of these things because I don't believe that God exists. This is why I call myself atheist and not agnostic. Wouldn't a true agnostic need to confront Pascal’s Wager?

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Originally posted by longing:
...but science will never be able to answer some questions religion can, and vice versa.

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Why are you so stuck on the idea that atheists only believe in formal, scientific observations? It's been pointed out repeatedly that this is an obvious falsehood. If you have some reason to persist in this assertion, let's hear it.

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Originally posted by anteater:
Secular thinkers will sometimes completely stay away from any attempt to impose, and be extreme libertarians. But most will also impose their scientific beliefs, by for example, taking discriminatory measure against tobacco manufacturers (which I agree with) defining carbon quotas due to global warming (which I don't). In other cases it is done by government propaganda falling short of legislation (like dietary recommendations to avoid fat, which I also disagree with).

Now I am fairly sure you will agree that with the non-religious examples I chose, there is an obligation to back up any proposed attempt to compel assent by equally compelling proof.

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Originally posted by Pre-cambrian:
Now the usual expectation is that the more extraordinary the claim - there's a leftover dinosaur in Loch Ness, Ivory-billed woodpeckers are still flying around the woods of the American South, Hitler knew nothing about the Holocaust - the more the onus lies on the person making that claim to verify it.

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I'll respond at greater length later, but the examples you cite aren't about compelling assent, they involve compelling compliance

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quote:

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Originally posted by mstevens:
Okay, a vague attempt at a reply from an atheist perspective, it's a big subject!:...
I read a few moderately philosophical and fairly heavily atheist websites (eg lesswrong
where ethics is agreed to be an important problem. People seem to lean towards Utilitarianism and Consequentialism

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Must go and have a browse!

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quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:

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Originally posted by longing:
...but science will never be able to answer some questions religion can, and vice versa.

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I'm not so sure about this. The biggest theological question for most of human history was "where does the sun go at night?" That seems a pretty clear example of science answering a religious question.

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quote:

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Originally posted by SusanDoris:
Reading through this thread again, I hope it's not too late to add some further comments to earlier posts.

quote:

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Originally posted by longing:
...but science will never be able to answer some questions religion can, and vice versa.

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Science may not have a rational answer to some questions, but they do have, 'We don't know yet!'

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Therefore, I cannot think of any questions to which religion has an answer that Science does not! [/qb]

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Originally posted by anteater:
Sam Harris has a new book out which claims to provide a scientifically based morality, and to break the rule that even many secular thinkers (like Popper) have accepted that you can't argue from what is to what ought to me.

On my list of things to read.

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Originally posted by mstevens:
I mentioned linking you lot to the lesswrong side, and they seemed concerned they might give a bad impression!

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Utilitarianism is probably the best atheist attempt to tackle the problem I've seen, although I'm not entirely satisfied. But the religious versions seem even less satisfying!

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Originally posted by Squibs:
We don't know yet" isn't an answer, Susan. It's a response.

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Now it might be perfectly reasonable to admit ignorance on a given issue, but let's not mistake this admission as an answer. Incidentally, I assume you would be willing to grant other world-views the same wiggle room?

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I can think of a few. But if you first work from the point of naturalism then I guess you wouldn't like the answers that are tendered.

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I probably wouldn't agree with them but I'd certainly like to read them! The widely varying views expressed here always make SofF such an interesting forum.
 

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Posted by Squibs (# 14408) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by SusanDoris:
Okay, but if a definitive solution/answer cannot be given, then 'we don't know' is the only truthful one, isn't it?

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Originally posted by SusanDoris:
Responses then, including the 'Goddidit' one, need the qualification of 'we believe that...' I think.

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Hmmm, probably, but I'd have to have a think! Perhaps you could give a couple of examples of said world views, please?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

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Originally posted by Pre-cambrian:
Now the usual expectation is that the more extraordinary the claim - there's a leftover dinosaur in Loch Ness, Ivory-billed woodpeckers are still flying around the woods of the American South, Hitler knew nothing about the Holocaust - the more the onus lies on the person making that claim to verify it.

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I've never seen the claim that 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' made except by someone who obviously reads atheist boards on the internet.

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@Pre Cambrian. Well as I said, it depends on the claim. Christians should indeed have evidence to support the claim that Jesus rose from the dead, not just because it is extra ordinary but also because of the implications for humanity in general and Christians in particular.

But that doesn't relieve atheists of their responsibilities to produce evidence to support their claims. The assertion that God does *not* exist (as opposed to the question being open) is an extraordinary claim of its own. So that's my question to you Pre Cambrian - how do you support the claim that God does not exist?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:

quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@Pre Cambrian. Well as I said, it depends on the claim. Christians should indeed have evidence to support the claim that Jesus rose from the dead, not just because it is extra ordinary but also because of the implications for humanity in general and Christians in particular.

But that doesn't relieve atheists of their responsibilities to produce evidence to support their claims. The assertion that God does *not* exist (as opposed to the question being open) is an extraordinary claim of its own. So that's my question to you Pre Cambrian - how do you support the claim that God does not exist?

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Would you care to reply?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:

quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@Pre Cambrian. Well as I said, it depends on the claim. Christians should indeed have evidence to support the claim that Jesus rose from the dead, not just because it is extra ordinary but also because of the implications for humanity in general and Christians in particular.

But that doesn't relieve atheists of their responsibilities to produce evidence to support their claims. The assertion that God does *not* exist (as opposed to the question being open) is an extraordinary claim of its own. So that's my question to you Pre Cambrian - how do you support the claim that God does not exist?

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Would you care to reply?

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quote:

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Originally posted by George Spigot:

quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:

quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@Pre Cambrian. Well as I said, it depends on the claim. Christians should indeed have evidence to support the claim that Jesus rose from the dead, not just because it is extra ordinary but also because of the implications for humanity in general and Christians in particular.

But that doesn't relieve atheists of their responsibilities to produce evidence to support their claims. The assertion that God does *not* exist (as opposed to the question being open) is an extraordinary claim of its own. So that's my question to you Pre Cambrian - how do you support the claim that God does not exist?

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Would you care to reply?

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I don't see why it's an extraordinary claim. Saying that mount Everest does not exist would indeed be an extraordinary claim. What makes saying God does not exist an extraordinary claim?

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
It's based on a claim to absolute and comprehensive knowledge. As you well know George.

And even if it was an 'ordinary' as opposed to an 'extraordinary' claim - how would you justify it?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
[QUOTE]...how do you support the claim that God does not exist?

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The same problem exists for proving that anything does not exist. It can't be done. You can't conclusively prove a negative proposition. The onus of conclusive proof in any argument, in logic as in just law, is on the one making the positive proposition.
 

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Posted by kankucho (# 14318) on :
 
[late addendum]

My above point relates to propositions regarding the existence of non-apparent entities. I acknowledge upthread references to the non-existence of Mount Everest, etc; ditto, on the other hand, the Loch Ness Monster.
 

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Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :
 
To more directly respond to the subject of the OP, let's look at the claim that Gods morality is "written in my heart". Is a simple reading of the argument something like:

1. People have moral values.
2. Moral values had to come from somewhere.
3. God is the only explanation that makes sense.

Please advise if I've got this totaly wrong.

It's one of those claims that I can't refute because its in the realm of the spiritual. Olsen heart surgery will provide no clues I think.

Saying morals exist is an interesting one for me because they dont exist in the same way as a brick exists. You can't say there is a big solid block of moral that God breaks chunks off of and hands out to us when we are born. Morals are just a label not a thing. A person is affected by their upbringing, environment and brain chemistry. They are confronted by a situation, make a disision and act on it. Other people can then label that action as moral or immoral. (Sometimes their judgement will depend on the long term results of the action and often people will disagree on whether it was right or wrong). So what actualy happened here? Did God fashion the environment? Construct and tweak the brain chemistry causing the bout of depression or over confidence that biased the decision?, control the parents?

What I'm trying to get at is that I get confused when people describe morality as given by God as it makes morality sound like a solid thing where as morality is the lable given by other people to the results of actions taken by people caused by not one but many variables.
 

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Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :
 
Olsen Heart. That famous American heart surgeon who always missed his edit windows.
 

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Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
For me, my epistemology ties in with atheism. My first belief is unprovable. Indeed, arguably unjustifiable. It is:

1: Reality exists.

My second belief is that:

2: No one can have a complete understanding of reality.

I believe this to be well-founded both theoretically (any system in which a being can act must be complex enough to include the acts of that being and other entities - meaning it must be more complex than itself) and empirically (add Chaos Theory to the Uncertainty Principle).

3: The piece of understanding of reality I have is different from anyone else's, and by extension everyone's piece is different to everyone else's.

I believe this to be self-evident. And it leads neatly into the next part.

4: Because no one can know exactly what everyone else does, everyone's part of the truth is valuable and therefore everyone is inherently worthy of being protected and helped.

Yes, my atheist epistemology has just lead to the golden rule.
 

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Posted by Ramarius (# 16551) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by George Spigot:

quote:

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
It's based on a claim to absolute and comprehensive knowledge. As you well know George.

And even if it was an 'ordinary' as opposed to an 'extraordinary' claim - how would you justify it?

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Well nobody can say they have absolute knowledge so by your argument every claim is 'extraordinary'.

How do I justify that I don't believe in god? Lack of evidence for starters?

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
And as for lack of evidence, what evidence would convince you that God *does* exist?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
And as for lack of evidence, what evidence would convince you that God *does* exist?

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In order to answer that, don't you need to define what you mean by "God" and describe what facts this hypothesis supposedly explains?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
Oh come come Crossos. As an atheist you must know what it is you're affirming doesn't exist. Otherwise the question is simply irrlelevant and you don't have to have a view either way.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
Oh come come Crossos. As an atheist you must know what it is you're affirming doesn't exist. Otherwise the question is simply irrlelevant and you don't have to have a view either way.

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Well, I've heard God defined numerous different ways, from a Bronze Age Patriarch with a stalkerish concern about what I do with my genitals to some kind of benevolent Force. ("It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.") None of them made much sense, and most of them contradicted all the other descriptions of this supposed entity.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
On the basis of those two definitions I'm as much an atheist as you are.

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Glad I could help you with your enlightenment!

Seriously though, this is one of the more frustrating aspects of the theistic argument; changing the definition of "God" in mid-discussion. (Not saying anyone here is doing this, though leaving that option open might be why I'm having trouble getting anyone to commit to a definition.)

I note you omitted an answer to what seems to be the de rigeur question on this thread: What would it take to convince you of the existence of these dieties whose existence you reject?
 

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Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :
 
I spent an interesting hour or so on Sunday composing a response, pressed the wrong key and lost half of what I'd said to cyber space! I had copied and put the first half on to an e-mnail blank fortunately.
Also sorry to have addressed you as 'squids' before - I think I've done it before too - but I blame the voice and 'age-related hearing loss'!

quote:

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Originally posted by Squibs:
That is exactly what I said, Susan. So we agree.

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Ah, sorry! And, it's always nice to agree!

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"Goddidit" - that's one of those buzz words you hear on internet forums. Probably your friends uses this one quite a lot.

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Unless you are presupposing that any explanation that ultimately has God as it's locus (that God is the creator and sustainer of the universe) I don't see that anyone here has offered up "Goddidit" as a sufficient explanation. To be perfectly honest, Susan, I'm not really sure why we are talking about this.

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Incidentally, next time you respond with "we don't know yet" perhaps you should remember your own words of wisdom and consider what the "yet" might imply. I gather that you are saying "we don't know yet but I believe that it is possible that we might".

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Of course, it's also possible that we might not; that the universe is just too strange for us to conceive.

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Well, that would be any world view that stands apart from the scientism that you seem to adhere to.

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Christianity says something about the nature of God ...

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...and the nature of existence.

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It ultimately answers the "Why?" type questions that people like Peter Atkins and Richard Dawkins think are silly and meaningless.

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The problem is - at least when it comes to the conversation you and I are having - Christianity provides answers to questions you aren't asking.

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That's going to need a bit more cogitation!

[
 

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Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Justinian:


1: Reality exists.

2: No one can have a complete understanding of reality.

3: The piece of understanding of reality I have is different from anyone else's, and by extension everyone's piece is different to everyone else's.

4: Because no one can know exactly what everyone else does, everyone's part of the truth is valuable and therefore everyone is inherently worthy of being protected and helped.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Pre-cambrian:

quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:

quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@Pre Cambrian. Well as I said, it depends on the claim. Christians should indeed have evidence to support the claim that Jesus rose from the dead, not just because it is extra ordinary but also because of the implications for humanity in general and Christians in particular.

But that doesn't relieve atheists of their responsibilities to produce evidence to support their claims. The assertion that God does *not* exist (as opposed to the question being open) is an extraordinary claim of its own. So that's my question to you Pre Cambrian - how do you support the claim that God does not exist?

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Would you care to reply?

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Sarky little bugger, aren't you. Some of us actually have lives to live. Are you saying that to assert that any god doesn't exist is an extraordinary claim - like the non-existence of Poseidon, or Quetzalcoatl, or Baal. Or are you restricting this to the god that you choose to believe in?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
On the basis of those two definitions I'm as much an atheist as you are.

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Glad I could help you with your enlightenment!

Seriously though, this is one of the more frustrating aspects of the theistic argument; changing the definition of "God" in mid-discussion. (Not saying anyone here is doing this, though leaving that option open might be why I'm having trouble getting anyone to commit to a definition.)

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quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
But I think you're missing the point Croessos. In afffirming that "God does not exist" it doesn't matter which particular description of God is in view. You must have some overriding reason why *no* conception of God could *ever* be valid.

What is that reason?

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Well, yes, but it would be unrealistic to expect that, all questions would be answered and in any case there will always be more questions raised.

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But I can't see humans giving up trying to understand as much as possible though!

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I think I'll pass on the world view question. I suppose I do adhere to scientism, but not blindly, and it seems to make a lot more sense than the God belief I had when younger. and the religious views I red today

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I mentally immediately insert the word 'imagined' before 'nature' here.

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The materialist wy questions have or can hope to have scientific answers. The why are we here ones also have scientific answers actually, although there are still plenty of gaps.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Squibs:

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But I can't see humans giving up trying to understand as much as possible though!

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No one suggested otherwise.

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Originally posted by anteater:
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy which tries to define what valid grounds for belief are. Most atheists believe strongly that the only valid grounds for demanding belief are that a proposition can be subject to tests which can decide empirically where or not it is true, and failing that, there is no compelling case for belief. Don’t know about epistemology and can’t be bothered to learn but surely the only ground for demanding belief is that certainty is not an option plus “I really, really want you to agree with me”. If testing establishes truth then belief and disbelief become acceptance and refusal of truth and (dis)belief is not possible

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quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@mstevens. You observed 'As I see atheism, it's primarily a position on factual rather than ethical issues - does this God chap exist or not? Obviously we're leaning on the "not" side, with varying degrees of intensity depending on the person.'
If you are 'leaning' would this not make you an agnostic, rather than an atheist?
No – partly because there are so many definitions as to what might constitute a “god”. That is why atheism is defined as the absence of belief in a god or gods whilst agnosticism is the belief that it is impossible to know whether or not a god or gods exist. In practice many atheists may also be considered agnostics – for my part I have no belief that a god exists (therefore I am an atheist) and I am certain that the God I was brought up to believe in does not exist. Does that rule out the possibility of some being which exists beyond our reality and is undetectable to us? – no – but would you define that as a god? (if so you can also count me as, in your terms, agnostic).

Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
in the case of atheism the burden of proof is on you to show that God definitely does *not* exist rather than taking the agnostic approach that the question is undetermined. Wow – I’m used to the “you can’t prove a negative so I’m right” approach but I don’t think I’ve ever previously seen it banked by an erroneous re-definition of atheism.

Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
Occam's razor would appear to be the right tool in this instance. I suspect you would have answered differently had Palimpsest commenced the series with a zero

Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
And conversly there are questions that science cannot answer that only philosophy and religion can. Science .....cannot tell us whether or not humans have souls,
Unlike religion which believes it can, frequently does, often disagrees with itself and never, never offers a scrap of valid, rationally-based, verifiable support for its various predictions.
Science has many tools to use in the search for souls (human or otherwise) - so far the detection rate is 0%. What would you accept as proof that souls don't exist?

Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
or what becomes of consciousness after death.
Science has been unable, so far, to establish that consciousness exists after death* – it is therefore entirely appropriate that it is unable to describe something which is, at best, imaginary – that, truly, is the province of religion.
*subject to your definition of death of course

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quote:

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orginally posted by SusanDoris:
I spent an interesting hour or so on Sunday composing a response, pressed the wrong key and lost half of what I'd said to cyber space! I had copied and put the first half on to an e-mnail blank fortunately
Got the t-shirt - I now compose my ramblings in word and then copy(NOT cut)-and-paste

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quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:

quote:

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Originally posted by Pre-cambrian:

quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:

quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@Pre Cambrian. Well as I said, it depends on the claim. Christians should indeed have evidence to support the claim that Jesus rose from the dead, not just because it is extra ordinary but also because of the implications for humanity in general and Christians in particular.

But that doesn't relieve atheists of their responsibilities to produce evidence to support their claims. The assertion that God does *not* exist (as opposed to the question being open) is an extraordinary claim of its own. So that's my question to you Pre Cambrian - how do you support the claim that God does not exist?

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Would you care to reply?

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Sarky little bugger, aren't you. Some of us actually have lives to live. Are you saying that to assert that any god doesn't exist is an extraordinary claim - like the non-existence of Poseidon, or Quetzalcoatl, or Baal. Or are you restricting this to the god that you choose to believe in?

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Do I take it from your reply that you find some conceptions of God more credible than others?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
@Justinian. You wrote '4: Because no one can know exactly what everyone else does, everyone's part of the truth is valuable and therefore everyone is inherently worthy of being protected and helped.'

So worth is measured by ignorance.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
Oh come come Crossos. As an atheist you must know what it is you're affirming doesn't exist. Otherwise the question is simply irrlelevant and you don't have to have a view either way.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Russ:
1. As it stands is tautologous - reality means that which exists.

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quote:

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What about ideas - do they exist ? Software ? Words ? Moral values ?

If ideas exist does Aslan exist as an idea ?

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By the time you get to point 3., not only does understanding exist but it is divisible into pieces and the pieces are capable of being owned...

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quote:

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At 4., who is everyone ? Humans ? Thinking humans ?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@Pre Cambrian. Well as I said, it depends on the claim. Christians should indeed have evidence to support the claim that Jesus rose from the dead, not just because it is extra ordinary but also because of the implications for humanity in general and Christians in particular.

But that doesn't relieve atheists of their responsibilities to produce evidence to support their claims. The assertion that God does *not* exist (as opposed to the question being open) is an extraordinary claim of its own. So that's my question to you Pre Cambrian - how do you support the claim that God does not exist?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
Do I take it from your reply that you find some conceptions of God more credible than others?

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quote:

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What would it take to convince you of the existence of these dieties whose existence you reject?

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It's a pity the book is so bull-headed, because Harris's topic is an interesting one, and he himself is an interesting figure who brings together the disciplines of science, moral philosophy and contemplative religion. Unfortunately, he seems to see this as a zero-sum game, in which the competition must be killed. In fact, as Harris must know, the great religious traditions have interesting things to tell us about wellbeing, if we stop trying to punch their lights out.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Squibs:

quote:

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Well, yes, but it would be unrealistic to expect that, all questions would be answered and in any case there will always be more questions raised.

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I was actually referring to the possibility that there are things that the human mind can not comprehend. Much like a toad can't understand Shakespeare.

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Of course, now would be a perfect opportunity to modify your previious statement and play the "we can't demonstrate the validity of scientism yet" card.

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I mentally immediately insert the word 'imagined' before 'nature' here.

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[/QUOTE]I'm sure you did. I suppose it is good that you are honest enough to air your presuppositions.[/QB][/QUOTE]
I can't see any point in not being honest!

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The materialist wy questions have or can hope to have scientific answers. The why are we here ones also have scientific answers actually, although there are still plenty of gaps.

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I'm not sure that I follow you here, Susan. Could you expand? [/QB][/QUOTE]
I'll do my best and come back later on that one!
I sometimes wonder whether Ship of Fools should be prescribed by the medical world for all older people as a definite aid to keeping the brain cells exercised!
 

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Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@Justinian. Thank you for tackling the question! You wrote 'To use an analogy - in a game of poker with a single deck of cards, no jokers, I can't see your cards. If you're telling me the Greek Gods exist you're telling me that you have a Royal Flush. I'm unlikely to believe you. If you're telling me that your Omnimax God exists, you're telling me that you have five aces in your hand. One is frankly unbelievable. But the other is impossible.'

i don't think you've got much further than another circular argument. Applying this to God you're saying that in a world in which it is impossible for a maximally great being to exist, a maximally great being cannot exist. Indeed so. But you haven't shown why it's logically impossible for a maximally great being to exist in this world. I'm afraid I'm still no clearer on how your atheism is grounded.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Justinian:
@Hughwillrideme, this board has some very clear posting conventions. I can't be bothered to work out what you were replying and to whom. Just a heads up.

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quote:

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originally posted by Drewthealexander:
Our difference, then, is one of worldview

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originally posted by Drewthealexander: Now it's the subject of another discussion, but I would recommend a serious study of the evidence for Christ's resurrection. You can apply the same criteria to this as you would to any other historical event. Of course, if you start from the view the resurrection could not have happened because dead men don't rise, then you have ruled out the possibility that your worldview may be incomplete. There was quite a good discussion of this on the Ship round about Easter

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quote:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@PreCambrian. The question is how you support the assertion that God does not exist. This doesn't depend on how the concept of God is expressed. You're saying that however the concept is expressed, the notion that God exists is unsustainable. There must therefore be some underlying reason for this assertion that would hold true whatever concept of God is proposed. What is that reason?

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Of course it depends on how the concept of god is expressed. (And perhaps you could show me where I made the statement you ascribe to me in your third sentence.) Why would I or anyone else wish to say that we don't believe in a god that no one has ever proclaimed in the first place? It would be completely pointless.

Equally I would be very surprised if you would say that your belief in God holds true whatever concept of god is expressed, although given that your latest statement is made in the context of my reference to Poseidon, Quetzalcoatl and Baal you do seem to be saying that those three are simply different expressions of the concept of God, which might surprise Elijah for a start.
 

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Posted by anteater (# 11435) on :
 
Since this thread is inevitably ending up with

God exists
Oh no he doesn't
Oh yes he does
etc

Can I ask if any of us really know what we mean when we say God does (not) exist?

Turning again to ethics (and do they exist?) I would say that ethical discourse is essential to human existence, and is not reducible to any other discourse. And I would say the same about God. That discourse about and knowledge of God is essential to human existence, and is not reducible to any other for of discourse.

Does that mean God exists? Pass.

Some eminent theologians have questioned whether existence is a valid category for God. But that doesn't stop you being a believer.

[ 20. June 2012, 12:59: Message edited by: anteater ]
 

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Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :
 
squibs

I've sent a pm to you in response to your question, as it's a bit of a ramble!
 

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Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Justinian:
I would prefer not to use the same word for ideas existing as I do for physical reality existing as an idea existing because they are fundamentally different.
[

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quote:

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Originally posted by Russ:
I have some sympathy with this. It's necessary to be able to distinguish propositions such as:
- you can't copyright anything to do with a Loch Ness monster because the concept is already in the public domain
- the Loch Ness monster is part of Scottish culture, and culture is a real and important part of people's lives
- there is a real physical being corresponding to the concept of a Loch Ness monster.

But I was particularly interested in what such a framework would say about moral values, for comparison with what theists believe. Are such values only high-falutin' ways of expressing personal preference ? Labels we stick on behaviours we approve or disapprove of ? Or are there real moral standards that we should try to live up to ?

If we can't talk in terms of moral values existing, what's a better terminology for framing such questions ?

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Originally posted by Justinian:
Premise: The physical world is real
Observation AND disproof by contradiction: No one can know everything.
Observation AND logical inference: Everyone has a different perspective and can communicate some of this
Unstated premise: Knowing and understanding things is good whatever your goal.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
(Note that your first premise is irrelevant to the argument. The argument would work as well with Berkeleyan idealism.)
Anyway, even assuming that the argument from observation one can be filled out in such a way as to get to where you want to go...

Observation: I simply do not have time to listen to everyone to find out whatever they can communicate from their different perspective - let alone to sort out the wheat from the chaff.
Conclusion: the Golden Rule only applies to those from whom I am at least likely to have time to learn and sort out the wheat from the chaff.

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Further, the unstated premise you need for the argument to work is not merely 'knowledge and understanding are good whatever my goals' but the much stronger 'knowledge and understanding are good in such a way as to override all my other goals'.

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Originally posted by Russ:
Your version of the Golden Rule may get as far as the Sixth Commandment in giving me a reason not to kill my neighbour. But it doesn't seem to prevent me torturing him to extract those details of his unique worldview that he's unwilling to share with me...
Best wishes,
Russ

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:

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Originally posted by Squibs:

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But I can't see humans giving up trying to understand as much as possible though!

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No one suggested otherwise.

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Wait, wasn't that the whole point about the supposed superiority of theistic epistemology? That it provides answers beyond human understanding? Answers which, having been provided deus ex machina (deus ex regula?), we would no longer have to look for?

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Originally posted by SusanDoris:
squibs

I've sent a pm to you in response to your question, as it's a bit of a ramble!

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Originally posted by George Spigot:
Still thinking about the OP's excellent question. I'd love to gave one atheists viewpoint but it's not easy for me to answer, nor are a lot of the arguments given in the thread easy for me to follow as I have never stuided philosophy.

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Originally posted by Justinian:
Torture leads to really crappy communication full of false inferences and being told what you want to hear rather than the truth. So torture is always a bad choice for gaining information.

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Originally posted by Russ:
]I'd question the "always". Starting from knowledge as a value, seems to me that one would conclude that torture is justified when the information thus gained exceeds the information available by other methods (allowing for quality as well as quantity of data).

Accepting your assertion that those instances may be fewer than one would think because of what one might call data quality issues, one might conclude that torture is often a waste of time.

But would you say that torture is morally wrong ? And on what basis ?

Best wishes,

Russ

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Originally posted by Squibs:
I merely proposed that the physical universe might well be stranger than the human mind can ever comprehend. And even if we weren't doomed to die on an individual level or as an entire species in a universe that will some day itself die, then I don't see why we should expect our minds, presumably birthed out of the chaos of blind natural forces, to be able to comprehend the more bizarre aspects of the universe.

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
@Hugh: If you want some serious reflection on the resurrection, a good place to start is Gary Habermas, the Case for the Resurredtion of Jesus. NT Wright also wrote a ver long and detailed book on the issue. Both Wright and Habermas look at the resurrection as an historical problem. Wright in particular asks why people with the disciples's world view would conclude Jesus had risen.

As with any historical puzzle it's best to look at the evidence and see where it leads. What's the *best*'explanation of the evidence?

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Originally posted by Ramarius:

quote:

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Originally posted by George Spigot:
Still thinking about the OP's excellent question. I'd love to gave one atheists viewpoint but it's not easy for me to answer, nor are a lot of the arguments given in the thread easy for me to follow as I have never stuided philosophy.

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No one will shoot you for a personal reflection (as opposed to a philosophical argument). How about starting with this. We all sometimes feel a tension between what we feel we *ought* to do and what we *want*'to do. Why do you think we feel that tension and how do you personally resolve it? (Interested in what you have to say, but also an open question for anyone on the thread).

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
No one will shoot you for a personal reflection (as opposed to a philosophical argument). How about starting with this. We all sometimes feel a tension between what we feel we *ought* to do and what we *want*'to do. Why do you think we feel that tension and how do you personally resolve it? (Interested in what you have to say, but also an open question for anyone on the thread).

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I don’t really feel much tension between ought and want at all.

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Blimey! A saint!!

Well let me think. It all depends on what you mean by "want" to do. At a fantasy level, I may want to do all sorts of things that are as predictable as they are unsuitable.

Do I really want that? I can see how you may say no to that. For example, I am quite self-centred, and part of me would like to just do WTF I fancy with no regards for others. But this may be a very small part of me.

I'm sure this would make me miserable.

But if we leave aside the cheap imitations of pensioners-behaving-badly, I still have a real desire for many of the more refined luxuries of life, without any conviction that this is what is ethically best. So I think I should use more of my resources in bettering the low of others instead of enjoying the pleasures of life.
 

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Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :
 
I raised the question of the 'tension' between shoulds and wants with an old friend. Since we're both confident, old women we decided fairly quickly that the tension doesn't arise - we just get on and take the most practical, sensible decision!

She did, however, add one comment. When she was an FE teacher, she ran Assertion Training Courses for several years and she'd say to the students (usually older women who lacked confidence and wanted to rejoin the work force for example), that they should remember this sentence:'I will not should myself today.' At the start of the course, the first thing they had to do was to write down what it was they wanted; not what they thought their family/husband/friends told them they wanted. This often took a great deal of discussion and thinking.
 

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Posted by Ramarius (# 16551) on :
 
@Hugh. The specific question is how we account for the diaciples' belief that Jesus rose from death against the background of their core beliefs in the time when they lived. As Wright points out, they *didn't* expect Jesus to return from death and had real problems in believing that he did. Individuals in first century Palestine (or first century anywhere for that matter) were much more familiar with death than we are, with much higher infant and young adult mortality rates, frequent military conflict and very public executions. The idea that it was easy for people to believe that dead men come back to life just doesn't fit the evidence. As a rule, dead people don't come back.

Mainstream New Testament scholarship accepts four essential facts around the end of Jesus's life and the beginning of the Christian movement - Jesus died, was buried, a day and a half later his tomb was empty and within weeks of his death large numbers of people claimed to have seen him alive. The historical question is how we account for this evidence of this event.

The idea that people lacked critical facilities to understand what happened doesn't really stack up. All they had to understand was that Jesus was dead, and that later he wasn't dead anymore. His executioners as well as his burial party could be given enough credit to understand what death looked like. Roman soldiers killed people for a living.

The suggestion that maybe Jesus didn't ever exist is as laughable to mainstream New Testament scholarship as creationism is to biologists. I've attached a couple of non Biblical sources for interest.

If you want to examine the evidence I've given you a start and recommended some further reading. If there's other reasons why you don't embrace Christianity that's another discussion. But if you want to reject the central claim of the Christian faith on the ground of lack of evidence, you might want to give the evidence some more serious consideration. As you said yourself in your reply, you don't immediately have an answer for why the disciples came to believe in the resurrection. Not to mention the generations of people since then, fully armed with critical tools to assess evidence, who have concluded that the best explanation for the evidence is that Jesus did, in fact, rise from the grave.

Best regards,

R


Cornelius Tacitus (55-120 AD)

"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed."

Flavius Josephus (37-97 AD), court historian for Emperor Vespasian:

"At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive." (Arabic translation)

Julius Africanus, writing around 221 AD, found a reference in the writings of Thallus, who wrote a history of the Eastern Mediterranean around 52 AD, which dealt with the darkness that covered the land during Jesus' crucifixion:

"Thallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away the darkness as an eclipse of the sun--unreasonably, as it seems to me." [A solar eclipse could not take place during a full moon, as was the case during Passover season.]
 

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Posted by HughWillRidmee (# 15614) on :
 
@ Ramarius @Hugh. The specific question is how we account for the diaciples' belief that Jesus rose from death against the background of their core beliefs in the time when they lived. But we don’t know that they (if they existed) did so believe – we only have a selected group of later writings which claim that they did – and disagree about much of the detail as I recall.

Mainstream New Testament scholarship accepts four essential facts around the end of Jesus's life and the beginning of the Christian movement - Jesus died, was buried, a day and a half later his tomb was empty and within weeks of his death large numbers of people claimed to have seen him alive. The historical question is how we account for this evidence of this event. you use words like “facts” and “evidence” as though they were justified – none of the four “facts” are a thing that is known or proved to be true and your “evidence” amounts to third/fourth hand repetition of gossip – not something you would want allowed in court if you were on trial for a murder you didn’t commit.

The idea that people lacked critical facilities to understand what happened doesn't really stack up. All they had to understand was that Jesus was dead, and that later he wasn't dead anymore. His executioners as well as his burial party could be given enough credit to understand what death looked like. Roman soldiers killed people for a living. They didn’t have the scientific method and they did inhabit a world where many events could not be explained without recourse to the supernatural (thunder, volcanoes, mental and physical illness – clearly the work of a god or gods?). I suggest that, on average, they were much more pre-disposed to accept stories of the miraculous than we are today.

The suggestion that maybe Jesus didn't ever exist is as laughable to mainstream New Testament scholarship as creationism is to biologists. I've attached a couple of non Biblical sources for interest. You demonstrate that some people thought that a man called Jesus was wise and virtuous and that people called Christians were scapegoated – that’s a long way from proving the existence of that Jesus let alone ascribing any divinity. Saying that mainstream NT scholarship accepts the existence of Jesus (depending upon your definition of “mainstream”) is circular reasoning? – you may not consider Biblical scholar L. Michael White, to be mainstream of course but White writes that, so far as we know, Jesus did not write anything, nor did anyone who had personal knowledge of him. There is no archeological evidence of his existence. There are no contemporaneous accounts of his life or death: no eyewitness accounts, or any other kind of first-hand record. All the accounts of Jesus come from decades or centuries later; the gospels themselves all come from later times, though they may contain earlier sources or oral traditions. The earliest writings that survive are the letters of Paul of Tarsus, written 20–30 years after the dates given for Jesus's death. Paul was not a companion of Jesus, White writes, nor does he ever claim to have seen Jesus before his death. Wikipedia – it’s quick.

If you want to examine the evidence I've given you a start and recommended some further reading. If there's other reasons why you don't embrace Christianity that's another discussion. But if you want to reject the central claim of the Christian faith on the ground of lack of evidence, you might want to give the evidence some more serious consideration. There are many reasons for not embracing Christianity – the behaviour of many of those who do so – the damage done to individuals and society by teaching belief as fact and encouraging the acceptance of unreason over reason (it was penicillin not prayer that saved my life) – the multiplicity of christianitys (all, perhaps bar one, must be, to greater or lesser degree, wrong.) The errors, contradictions and inventions in the Bible which force every christian to pick-and-mix their preferred text (or worse, delegate that choice to someone else) – the sheer silliness of combining concepts such as a loving/caring/moral god with original sin/salvation through faith in something so wreathed in obscurity that many rational people could never accept it/natural disasters (surely a caring god could have provided some sort of early warning system couldn’t it?). And all overshadowed by the great omission – there is no proper, demonstrable, undeniable (nor frankly even close to it) evidence for anything supernatural – not Santa, not the Easter bunny, not homeopathy, not chi, not therapeutic touch, not the gods of Ancient Greece or the Norse deities, not Islam. And equally, not Christianity. What do they all have in common – they require the acceptance of a lesser standard of evidence than the scientific method (hearsay, tradition, claims of authority and the absence of disproof are not evidence for anything) and require a massive dollop of belief. Belief may be OK – but how should one decide when it’s appropriate and when it’s not? Why Christianity over Islam (I don’t think there is any doubt that Muhammad existed) or a Cargo cult (the realities of the planes and their cargoes are undisputed) – heck Santa used to bring me presents and leave the mince-pie crumbs he dropped in his haste.

As you said yourself in your reply, you don't immediately have an answer for why the disciples came to believe in the resurrection. I don’t have an explanation as to why people believe that Muhammad is the last prophet of God or why others think that Xenu existed – does that mean that you think I should accept those ideas as true?

Not to mention the generations of people since then, fully armed with critical tools to assess evidence, who have concluded that the best explanation for the evidence is that Jesus did, in fact, rise from the grave. As with your N T Wright quote previously - if you start 90% of the way towards a spurious finishing post you are likely to achieve a dubious conclusion. Irrespective of that - any ideological argument based on superiority of believer numbers is no argument at all – so I won’t bother to point out that the number of people have not believed in the Christian ideology is much greater than the number of those who have done so.

You may be right in some or all of your beliefs, but if so that automatically means that many others (who are/were equally convinced of the rightness of their beliefs) are/were, in fact, wrong. Given that their strength of conviction was probably often at least equal to yours it would appear that your chosen belief is no more likely to be correct than anyone else’s belief (or lack thereof). Without decent evidence that any faith system is valid you, apparently, have taken a gamble – and may have had the good fortune to do so successfully; I learnt from Prince Monolulu not to back horses unless I knew they were going to win (as it seems he, at least once so did - and at 20/1 no less!).
 

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Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :
 
HughWillRidmee
Super post! It's a pity we do not have evidence of what the sceptics said at the time the stories started, because surely there must have been quite a few of them.
 

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Posted by Dinghy Sailor (# 8507) on :
 

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Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
The idea that people lacked critical facilities to understand what happened doesn't really stack up. All they had to understand was that Jesus was dead, and that later he wasn't dead anymore. His executioners as well as his burial party could be given enough credit to understand what death looked like. Roman soldiers killed people for a living. They didn’t have the scientific method and they did inhabit a world where many events could not be explained without recourse to the supernatural (thunder, volcanoes, mental and physical illness – clearly the work of a god or gods?). I suggest that, on average, they were much more pre-disposed to accept stories of the miraculous than we are today. [/QB]

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Originally posted by Justinian:
The passage you cite from Josephus is almost certainly a forgery and probably one perpetrated by Eusebius in the 4th Century AD

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
It's almost certainly not by Eusebius. The text we have is corrupt at the point where Josephus describes Herod's death. Eusebius' text had been emended by a Christian scribe who thought he could use Acts to work out what it should have been. So our text of the Testimonium Flavianum must be independent of Eusebius' text.

I've seen this idea propounded by atheists on the internet: I don't think it would be countenanced by any serious classicist.

A rather better explanation (imo) of the state of the text as we have it is that it's the result of mixed authorship: marginal scribal annotations have been incorporated into the text on copying. It's comparable to the text of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 which clearly started life as an annotation in the margin and was then incorporated into the main text after verse 33 by one copyist and after 14:40 by another. If you read the text it looks very much as if it's written by two people - there's stuff in there that look as if it's by someone who thinks Jesus was an ordinary Jewish prophet.

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Originally posted by Justinian:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
The text we have is corrupt at the point where Josephus describes Herod's death. Eusebius' text had been emended by a Christian scribe who thought he could use Acts to work out what it should have been.

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And what evidence do you have that "our text of the Testimonium Flavianum must be independent of Eusebius' text"?

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
I like the way Wright concludes his piece I linked to above '..as far as I am concerned, the historian may and must say that all other explanations for why Christianity arose, and why it took the shape it did, are far less convincing as historical explanations than the one the early Christians themselves offer: that Jesus really did rise from the dead on Easter morning, leaving an empty tomb behind him.  The origins of Christianity, the reason why this new movement came into being and took the unexpected form it did, and particularly the strange mutations it produced within the Jewish hope for resurrection and the Jewish hope for a Messiah, are best explained by saying that something happened, two or three days after Jesus’ death, for which the accounts in the four gospels are the least inadequate expression we have.'

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Originally posted by Pre-cambrian:
Sorry "antithesis", but it is also antipathetic to proper historiographical method.

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Originally posted by Ikkyu:
Like translating with divine aid nonexistent gold tablets coming from an nonexistent culture.
But people who saw him when he was alive died for believing he did such things. Just look at the history of persecution of the LDS church.
This is the same kind of evidence that is claimed as supporting the resurrection.

<snip>

The Historical argument for the resurrection is
not stronger that the historical argument for the LDS claims or the claims of Islam.

If you claim that it is you should explain what is different. All tree claims rely on eyewitness testimony of people who died for their faith and whose beliefs are followed by millions to this day.

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Originally posted by Johnny S:

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Originally posted by Ikkyu:
Like translating with divine aid nonexistent gold tablets coming from an nonexistent culture.
But people who saw him when he was alive died for believing he did such things. Just look at the history of persecution of the LDS church.
This is the same kind of evidence that is claimed as supporting the resurrection.

<snip>

The Historical argument for the resurrection is
not stronger that the historical argument for the LDS claims or the claims of Islam.

If you claim that it is you should explain what is different. All tree claims rely on eyewitness testimony of people who died for their faith and whose beliefs are followed by millions to this day.

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I don't think it is quite the same though.

Joseph Smith and Muhammed claimed personal divine revelation. That is a subjective experience which they (presumably) sincerely believed.

However, Christians base their claims on eye witness accounts of the resurrection of Jesus. Therefore either it happened or it didn't.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
Joseph Smith claimed he showed his neighbors the gold tablets that later "vanished" and got them to swear they had seen them.

You may think this establishes a fact, I don't.

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@Croesos. You wrote '. But either God interacts with the Universe, in which case we should be able to observe that interaction, or He doesn't, which is functionally the same as non-existence.'

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@Croesos. You wrote '. But either God interacts with the Universe, in which case we should be able to observe that interaction, or He doesn't, which is functionally the same as non-existence.'

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Originally posted by Johnny S
To be clear, I'm not saying this proves anything. (There is always the possibility that the gospels were entire fabrications that have no oral tradition behind them at all.) Just that I don't think the evidence for the resurrection really is the same kind of evidence as for Joseph Smith.

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
@Hugh......Bit surprised by your remark:

'There are different ways of arriving at evidence for truth – one is to start with the evidence and discover the, sometimes unwanted and/or inconvenient, truth, another is to start with the truth and discover the evidence; generally science uses the former and religion (including Wright from the bits you’ve quoted) the latter. '

........The idea that scientists start from conclusions (sic) and Christians work back from them is too simplistic. Evidence can both lead people to faith and reinforce faith. Similarly scientists can refuse to abandon pet theories in which they have a strong a personal stake, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. You can find examples of both.

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Originally posted by Ikkyu:
Why does actual eyewitness testimony by people who were there in the case of John Smith is worse evidence than accounts written years after the fact by people who were not there in the case of Jesus?

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'There are different ways of arriving at evidence for truth – one is to start with the evidence and discover the, sometimes unwanted and/or inconvenient, truth, another is to start with the truth and discover the evidence; generally science uses the former and religion (including Wright from the bits you’ve quoted) the latter. '

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Originally posted by Johnny S:
3. I was arguing that the resurrection falls into a different category though - if (and it is a big if because it requires the assumption that there were historic events standing behind the gospels, regardless of how accurately there were reported) hundreds of disciples reported seeing Jesus alive after he was definitely dead . . .

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Originally posted by que sais-je:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@Croesos. You wrote '. But either God interacts with the Universe, in which case we should be able to observe that interaction, or He doesn't, which is functionally the same as non-existence.'

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It isn't logically the case that interactions must be observable. Consider a divine but infinitesimally small interaction in a chaotic system - no human agency could necessarily observe the change, the range of possible outcomes could be the same. God knows that which outcome will occur has changed, we still don't. (This assumes a widely held view that 'God doesn't compute - He knows').

More generally it would be odd to assume that the author of the universe is bound by its laws - including for example the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
Speaking of which... Crosses - you seem to be haing some problems with your maths here. The Synoptics and John are four reports not two (they are underpinned by different memories although all agree on the central point). Acts gives another report, Paul claims to have seen the risen Jesus and refers to over 500 other people who made similar claims. He names some, and makes the point that others were, when he wrote, still around to quiz.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
I repeat: "The text we have is corrupt at the point where Josephus describes Herod's death. Eusebius' text had been emended by a Christian scribe who thought he could use Acts to work out what it should have been."

Clearly that's not clear enough.

We've got two versions of Josephus for the Herod passage: Eusebius' quotations and a medieval manuscript text. Now Eusebius gives an account of Herod's death that largely agrees with Acts. The medieval manuscript gives a corrupt account of Herod's death that, anyway you amend it, is not what you get in Acts.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
Speaking of which... Crosses - you seem to be haing some problems with your maths here. The Synoptics and John are four reports not two (they are underpinned by different memories although all agree on the central point). Acts gives another report, Paul claims to have seen the risen Jesus and refers to over 500 other people who made similar claims. He names some, and makes the point that others were, when he wrote, still around to quiz.

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Paul isn't really a credible witness, given that we have no indication that he ever saw Jesus prior to his death and supposed resurrection. In other words, Paul didn't recognize Jesus, he just accepted the claim of whoever it was that he was Jesus. Similarly, the difficulty Jesus' close associates have in recognizing him in his post-resurrection state seems a bit suspicious, and more than a bit like group hysteria.

"Well, I thought it was the gardener at the time, but now I'm sure it was really Jesus who talked to me about the hedge plantings."

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
You mean Paul mistook Jesus for someone else who rose from the dead?

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Originally posted by Justinian:You've obviously missed some of the imports of my posts on this thread - I've demonstrated that it is theoretically impossible for any entity that is an active part of this universe to understand it all.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
You mean Paul mistook Jesus for someone else who rose from the dead?

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That wasn't what I was considering, but it's at least a possibility, given that testimony you consider reliable.

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originally posted by: Ramarius @Hugh. Anteater makes good points when he says the real test of a theory is less how you came by it and more how it stands up to scrutiny.

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originally posted by: Ramarius Acts gives another report, Paul claims to have seen the risen Jesus.

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originally posted by: Ramarius And I'm still waiting for someone on this thread to 'follow the evidence' and come up with a more convincing alternative to the church's claim that it began because Jesus was dead and came back to life.

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Originally posted by Johnny S:
3. I was arguing that the resurrection falls into a different category though - if (and it is a big if because it requires the assumption that there were historic events standing behind the gospels, regardless of how accurately there were reported) hundreds of disciples reported seeing Jesus alive after he was definitely dead then:

either they were,

a) Deluded - unlikely for all of them to be deluded at the same time (ISTM). Especially since there was nothing in Judaism at the time that would make them very susceptible to the idea.

or

b) Deliberately lying - but then they wouldn't be willing to die for what they knew wasn't true.


To be clear, I'm not saying this proves anything. (There is always the possibility that the gospels were entire fabrications that have no oral tradition behind them at all.) Just that I don't think the evidence for the resurrection really is the same kind of evidence as for Joseph Smith. [/QB]

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Is it just me, or has this thread completely reversed direction? From an OP which asked for an epistemology for atheists, it appears to have changed into a defence of the resurrection!

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Originally posted by anteater:
So I don't know if I missed the post where An Atheist actually articulated there epistemology, and applied it to ethics.

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Justinian on torture:
Of course I'd call it wrong! I'd call it wrong on the basis it non-consensually degrades and harms the victim with no positive result*.

I'd further, echoing John Woolman, call torture wrong because it degrades and harms the torturer to treat another human being that way and deny their status as a human being worthy of care.

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Originally posted by Russ:
Seems to me that the game is played a bit like this:

1) I ask you more "why" questions - why are human beings worthy of care ? what's wrong with being degraded and harmed ?

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2) Eventually we get down to some set of propositions to which you can give no further "why" - in other words statements you just accept as axioms.

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3) Some Christian shipmate says that behind these axioms there are for him or her further reasons, leading back to religious axioms such as "God is good".

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but we may not even make it that far...

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
@Justinian. If this is true:

'4: Because no one can know exactly what everyone else does, everyone's part of the truth is valuable and therefore everyone is inherently worthy of being protected and helped.'

...then my 'part of the truth' - that there is an omniscient God, and that we can meet him through Jesus Christ - is 'inherently worthy of being protected and helped.'

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Originally posted by Justinian:

Also if you hadn't noticed then your omniscient God is directly in contradiction to your point 4. An omniscient God is someone. And does know everything. So there is no reason to protect people for their fragments of truth - all the truth is in God's hands. So the whole moral argument simply doesn't work if God exists.

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
@Hugh. How do your scientific tests apply to theories about the origin of the universe?

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Originally posted by coniunx:
That depends on what you mean by 'one', doesn't it? In the context of your original statements, I would take that as 'one within extant reality' (since your point 1 was 'reality exists, seemingly defining your universe of discussion); yet the omniscient God doesn't fit that 'within'; so it isn't contradicting the statement as originally predicated.

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Furthermore, that point 4 only actually works as a justification for anything if it is assumed that the value of a being is limited to its value in holding ideas as part of an overall pool of knowledge. If one accepts the omniscient God, one also may accept the loving God, and thus a far wider set of reasons for individual value.

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Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
@Hugh. How do your scientific tests apply to theories about the origin of the universe?

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Big Bang Theory. The link leads to a page which includes the following and rather more. ...depends on two major assumptions: the universality of physical laws, and the cosmological principle. The cosmological principle states that on large scales the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic.

These ideas were initially taken as postulates, but today there are efforts to test each of them. For example, the first assumption has been tested by observations showing that largest possible deviation of the fine structure constant over much of the age of the universe is of order 10−5 Also, general relativity has passed stringent tests on the scale of the Solar System and binary stars while extrapolation to cosmological scales has been validated by the empirical successes of various aspects of the Big Bang theory.

If the large-scale Universe appears isotropic as viewed from Earth, the cosmological principle can be derived from the simpler Copernican principle, which states that there is no preferred (or special) observer or vantage point. To this end, the cosmological principle has been confirmed to a level of 10−5 via observations of the CMB. The Universe has been measured to be homogeneous on the largest scales at the 10% level

We may never know what preceded the singularity (assuming that preceded is a possibility, there may have been no time prior to the singularity).
NB the preceding statement does not constitute evidence for any of the many creation myths/explanations/facilitators which human beings have imagined over millenia.

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Originally posted by Ramarius:

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Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
We may never know what preceded the singularity (assuming that preceded is a possibility, there may have been no time prior to the singularity).
NB the preceding statement does not constitute evidence for any of the many creation myths/explanations/facilitators which human beings have imagined over millenia.

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Last statement's a bit sweeping Hugh. You need to be a tad more discriminating than that. Plato held that the universe was made out of pre-existent matter. Aristotle saw the world as the centre of an eternal universe. Hindu cosmology sees the universe going through endless repeating cycles. Canaanite religion held that the earth was made out of the material sections of dead deities. It's quite true that none of that fits with the standard cosmological model.

Nor for that matter does the standard scientific model that preceded the Big Bang theory. Under the influence of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton, belief in general reverted to the notion of a universe infinite in both age and extent.

But even prior to the ancient Greeks, the Hebrews believed that time was linear and the universe - everything that exists - had a beginning. And Christian thought is very clear about this - there was a point the universe didn't exist since 'God created everything through Christ, and nothing was created except through him' (John 1:3).

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The idea that the universe had a beginning from nothing was originally a religious idea - science has caught up through investigation, what the Hebrews knew over two and half thousand years ago by revelation.

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
The idea that the universe had a beginning from nothing was originally a religious idea - science has caught up through investigation, what the Hebrews knew over two and half thousand years ago by revelation.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
The idea that the universe had a beginning from nothing was originally a religious idea - science has caught up through investigation, what the Hebrews knew over two and half thousand years ago by revelation.

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Doesn't this contradict Genesis, which holds that "the waters" existed in the primordial state, and that these waters had a surface which the Spirit of God could "hover over" [NIV] or "move upon" [KJV]?

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There may be no tradition in Judaism, but the Dying God was a pretty common idea in many religions that Jews would have been familiar with; Greeks, Romans, Phoenecians and Egyptians. The was a lot of mingling during the Roman Empire.

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Originally posted by Justinian:
if they do that they demonstrate once again that they have not been following my logic. If there exists an omniscient God then the entire train of logic about the inherent value of any human falls apart. Because there is no value in the breadth of experiences when we have the Omniscient to rely on.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
A lot of the Christ myth stuff is parallelomania. I suppose it's fun; it's just got nothing to do with scholarship.

On Genesis as science - they also had a 3-tiered universe, with water underneath the earth. Not quite right, but not a problem, except for literalists.

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Originally posted by Ramarius:
@Justinian. How do you define 'truth'?

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Originally posted by anteater:
Justinian:

OK I did note your post but do not see where or how you apply it to ethical questions, unless you believe that "everyone is inherently worthy of being protected and helped" is sufficient.

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Of your steps, of course, 4 is the most contentious, so I'm not clear whether you are taking this as an axiom or deducing it from point 3.

As an axiom it's fine, and could stand then with no justification. But because you have seemingly deduced it as following on from "everyone's part of the truth is valuable" then you need to justify this. Plainly it does not follow from 3 ("The piece of understanding of reality I have is different from anyone else's, and by extension everyone's piece is different to everyone else's."). That's just a non-sequitor, and in the ethically trying cases of those with no meaningful mental capacity, you would be hard put to establish it.

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And that's before you start trying to convince me \that a psychopathic torturer has a valid ethical perspective that I need.

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If it works for you, fine. And of course, I think it a worthy ethical stance. But it rests on know evidence. Since I've no idea whether you subscribe to Sam Harris' agenda of getting from scientific fact to ethical value, this may, of course, not be relevant to you.

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Originally posted by anteater:
Justinian:
I fear we may now be talking past each other, since you seem to be making statements that are, to me at least, self-evidently false.

For instance:

I accuse you of a non sequitor and you deny it. I am saying that "everyone's part of the truth is valuable" does not follow from "The piece of understanding of reality I have is different from anyone else's, and by extension everyone's piece is different to everyone else's."

How does it follow that a piece of understanding of reality is valuable just because it is different to mine?

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Why may it not be useless stupidity?

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Then again, you object to me saying you have presented no evidence for your viewpoint. But where it is? I think you have framed your position to be unprovable and unfalsifiable.

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To falsify it I would have to find at least two, and preferably more, people whose understanding of reality in all it's details, is the same.

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To prove it, I would have to prove a value judgement, and this is normally considered infeasible. I.e. I would have to prove that everybody's view of reality, including (as I have pointed out) the mentally incapacitated, the just plain evil, etc is valuable with no rigorous definition such as would allow a test to be made.

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I'm not demanding evidence but equally I can't see any.

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Does the above help?

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Originally posted by anteater:
First: Your case is based on the idea that other people may have actual nuggets of understanding that we need to preserve because nobody has it all. So it's irrelevant to point out that some things are not, in principle, knowable, because nobody will have these nuggets.

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Second: You are now, I see, using the word "understanding" to refer to what is actually true. This has to be, since when I challenged you that an "understanding" may be stupid, you replied that it can't be, because "understanding" = "truth".

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Fair enough, but then I am far from convinced that you could not get a subset of the human race that contains all the truth that is of value.

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If you include the internal thoughts and imaginings of each person on the planet as valuable, then you may have a point.

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However, unless it is obvious that a person's understanding is of some value, you would need to set that against the downside of keeping that person in existence. This could be because they are perpetrators of evil actions, or it could just be on ecological cost grounds. Your argument would rule out any consideration, say, of cutting down on excessive healthcare for the aged and inform, because these people still have there valuable piece of understanding even if it is costing a fortune to keep them alive.

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And you still haven't addressed the issue of mental incapacity.

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Can we get any further?

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