What would it take to make you believe in a supernatural entity?

Northclare wrote: »

Who said anything about second class citizens, body parts,

The bible's views on women

planning peopled lives or living in torment forever that's way off the scale.

The bible's views on unbelievers.

Amtmann wrote: »

You might enjoy this clip of Richard Feynman, in which he describes his thinking on the meaning of existence and the idea of purpose. The whole thing is well worth watching, but especially from 1:41.

Great video. There's such a great sense of openess, honesty, childish curiosity, joy and sincerity, listening to the likes of Feynman, Sagan, DeGrasse Tyson and Dawkins. (to name but a few)

But when I see any Pastors or Preachers talking they all seem like disingenuous, greedy, small minded, bigoted, shifty con-men. Priests tend to look more miserable than those mentioned above.

From Dogma 1999: "You people don't celebrate your faith; you mourn it".

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Which means that it does relate to something, which means that we can empirically observe it, by observing the thing it relates to. Which would make god empirically observable, yadda yadda yadda, I said this already. You have to make a choice, either god does relate to something in reality, or reality itself, which means we can scientifically examine it by observing reality (your claim would still be flawed), or it doesn't relate to anything in reality and therefore has no relation or effect on us whatsoever.

When you make this statement, are you still working from a definition of “reality” which stipulates that everything real is empirically observable?

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Its illogical because its based on a demonstrably invalid assumption (as demonstrated by inserting literally anything else instead of god into the claim and getting the same result).

State the assumption and explain how your demonstration shows its invalidity, so.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

You do understand what is meant by observe in science right? It doesn't necessarily mean "look at", in fact nearly everything in science is observed by inference. We see an effect, and infer by the effect what is actually occurring. So if something cannot be in any way inferred to exist (because there is no measurable effect on anything in existence that can be attributed to it alone) then it might as well not exist, because it has no effect on existence.

“Observe” doesn’t mean “look at”, but it does mean “observe empirically”. Inference has an important role to play in the scientific method but, to be valid, scientific inferences must proceed ultimately from empirical data. Which means that no scientific inferences - including the inference of non-existence - are possible about things which are not empirically observable. (Which is why the empirical observablity of all things has to be an assumption for the purposes of the scientific method, not a conclusion derived from it.)

It simply nonsense to say that the god postulated in the god-claim we are discussion “might as well not exist because it has no effect on existence”. The god-claim postulates that it is the cause of existence. Clearly, you cannot make this statement until you have refuted the god-claim. Given that we are agreed that it cannot be scientifically refuted, how are you refuting it?

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Its logical until you define it . . .

Meaning, I think, that you are abandoning your previous claim that untestable claims are inherently illogical.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Its logical until you define it . . ., and then you need to need to reassess it.

You can reassess it all you like; it will still be logical. If it arrives at a wrong conclusion, that will be because it proceeds from a false premise. But a false premise is not illogical; it’s just wrong. It’s perfectly possible to reason logically from a false premise.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

The god claim fails this reassessment because part 1. is an invalid assumption to make.

What exactly do you mean by “part 1”?

Mark Hamill wrote: »

You dont empirical observations in an abstract, human defined system such as maths.

Good man. Thought I’d lost you there for a minute. Mathematics does not proceed from empirical observations, which is why it isn't science.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Except that theology doesn't examine the logical conclusions of the statements it makes and it doesn't experiment on its hypotheses (conjectures), so its not really anything like maths or science. We only need empirical observations for empirical systems. Maths is an abstract system, so we don't use empiricism, we still use logic, deduction and experimentation though.

Non-empirical experimentation? It’s an interesting concept! Can you elaborate?

No offence, but your claim that theology doesn’t examine the logical conclusions of the statements it makes suggests that you haven’t read a great deal of theology. (Which is not an attack; there is no reason why you should.)

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Its not unscientific reasoning to accept a fundamental assumption of science as you can't perform scientific reasoning without accepting. It is fundamental to scientific reasoning to accept the assumption, which is itself a perfectly valid scientific assumption to make, as it supported by available observational, empirical and logical evidence we have.

It’s not unscientific to accept it as an axiom employed in the scientific method. It is unscientific to treat it as a statement of objective truth, since it hasn’t been scientifically arrived at and is, indeed, unfalsifiable.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Why not? We know that unfalsifiable claims are bad, but every system of knowledge requires one, so we make the one assumption that actually makes sense and then don't make any more because we know they are bad. It makes sense to say "Everything real is empirically observable" because if something wasn't empirically observable (ie had no effect on anything in existence, that could be used to uniquely infer its existence) then it might as well not exist for all the effect it has on existence and our human defined system for examining it. It simply doesn't matter if something exists but can in no way at all interact with anything else (assuming its possible for something to exist without interacting with anything at all). The other beauty of science is that every test and experiment tests the assumption anyway.

Still, if you can come up with another way to reliably examine stuff, without any assumptions, then I'll drop science like a ton of bricks.

For the love of God, don't. I’ve already said I believe that there are no such ways, Mark, and the last think I would encourage anyone to do is to drop science.

But I also think we need to be true to science and to recognize that science is precluded from offering any conclusions, positive or negative, about unobservable things, not even a conclusion as to whether they exist or not. If we want to take an axiom adopted for the purpose of constructing the scientific method and treat is as a true statement about objective reality, then we need a reason - necesessarily, not a scientific reason - for doing so. The only issue is, do we acknowledge and articulate that non-scientific reason, or do we duck the question?

Zombrex wrote: »

Yes, I would argue that science is the only methodology that has been successful with regard to accurately assessing different claims about reality. Theology certainly hasn't, as demonstrated by the continued existence of hundreds of mutually exclusive religions, with thousands if not hundreds of thousands of different interpretations and concepts in each religion.

Science is wonderful in terms of the confidence that it can give us with regard to the claims that it scrutinizes. If it’s not unique in that regard, it’s certainly one of a relatively small number of techniques of enquiry whose conclusions are attended with such a high degree of confidence.

But there’s no getting around the fact that there is a limited class of claims that it can scrutinize. And, if we are faced with claims that science cannot scrutinize - e.g. ethical claims - then we have the option of ignoring them completely, or turning to other methodologies to scrutinize them. Those other methodologies may not give us the confidence that science can give us in relation to scientific claims, but they may give us considerably more confidence than science can give us in relation to non-scientific claims.

So, you can spend your time lamenting that not everything gives us the certainty of science, but that’s not going to help you make ethical decisions, is it?

Nor is it going to help you decide if non-empirically-observable realities can exist. You can ignore the question of whether they can exist if you want to, on the grounds that it doesn’t interest you. But if it does interest you (and your posting record on Boards.ie suggests that it does) then, sooner or later, you’ll have to move on from lamenting the uselessness of the scientific method, and start grappling with other, imperfect, but potentially modestly useful, modes of enquiry.

Zombrex wrote: »

It comes back to the original point, would you rather understand that you don't know something, or would you rather an answer without having any confidence that that answer is correct.

I may not have the luxury of choosing. If I’m faced with an ethical question, I have to chose how and whether to act, and that requires me to adopt a position, however tentative and uncertain, on the ethical issue. In that case, the answer that could be wrong is better than the paralysis of no answer of any kind.

In relation to the existence of God, you can certainly take the view that this is unknown and unknowable, and I wouldn’t criticize anyone for taking that position. It’s classic agnosticism, really. The fact is, though, that a lot of people are not satisfied with that position, and identify either as atheists (in the “strong” sense) or as theists, and justify their position by appealing to non-scientific methods of reasoning. (Some attempt to justify their position by appealing to science, but in my view such justifications must fail.)

Zombrex wrote: »

Yes but again they didn't just randomly pick empirical observations as the only things they would do. They picked empirical observations because those are the only things we can use to accurately assess the reality around us.

Sure. As I’ve said more than once, I’m not criticizing the assumption. But I think we have to recognize that empirical observations can only be used accurately to assess reality to the extent that it is empirically observable.

Zombrex wrote: »

If theology had other ways of doing this science would include them.

It wouldn’t be “science”, then. We might call it “science”, but we would be applying the word to a mode of enquiry fundamentally different to the mode which we currently call "science".

(Of course, we do this already; “science” can be and is used to refer to any organized, disciplined mode of enquiry, including philosophy and theology. But in this thread we’re using it in the narrower sense of natural science; the study of reality through empirical observation, and inference from what is observed.)

Zombrex wrote: »

It most certainly would. Science is about accurately assessing claims about reality. It is restricted to methodologies that can actually accurately assess claims about reality, such as empirical study. But if other methodologies could be used science would use them.

It would serve no purpose for science to ignore methodologies that allow for the accurate assessment of claims about reality. This again is what I mean by science is not simply randomly picking what it will restrict itself too.

I think we’re into a semantic argument here, and the best thing you can do with semantic arguments is note them, and then drop them. The question of what we can properly call “science” is really just a question of definition. The word does in fact have several definitions; my dictionary offers 19, though it assures me that the “dominant sense in ordinary use” is a narrow one - “those branches of study that relate to the phenomena of the material universe and their laws”. But there are equally very wide definitions which would embrace, e.g., theology (“a particular branch of knowledge or study; a recognized department of learning”).

The truth is that we can define "science" (or any other word) however we like, so long as we both employ the same definition. There is no objective truth about how science ought to defined. That's why semantic arguments are ultimately pointless.

But, working with the definitions that we have, reflecting the way that the word "science" is actually employed by English speakers, there’s no getting around the fact that science [narrow sense] arrives at conclusions with a degree of confidence that few other fields of study offer. But so what? If I’m faced with an economic problem, the uncertain conclusions of economists are still going to be more useful to me that the certain but irrelevant conclusions of, e.g. chemists. Same goes for social problems. Or aesthetic problems. Or philosophical problems. Or existential problems. Or the problem of whether I should really tell her whether her arse looks big in that.

I have to tackle these problems without the certainty that science provides. At some point I’m going to have to get over noting that, and tackle the problems anyway.

Zombrex wrote: »

Well no, it says that they were religious. If you want to equate that with driveling idiots, well you are on the right forum.

Giggle, giggle.

But, seriously folks, all you are saying here is that religious people cannot tell myth from actuality. Whereas my observations on this board suggest that it is atheists and agnostics who have this problem. Rejecting a myth because it isn’t actuality is a bit like rejecting an ethical proposition because it isn’t a proposition of physics.

(And, yes, treating a myth as if it was actuality is a bit like treating an ethical proposition as if it was a proposition of physics.)

robindch wrote: »

As an observation, though, it's quite accurate, eh?

Of some religious people, yes. But I think we have abundant evidence on this forum that it is also accurate of some non-religious people!