justincase on May 17, 2009 at 3:58 PM

It’s been a while since I went to Sunday School–I remembered the story as saying he was literally turned into a wild ass. There are a number of non-supernatural causes for going temporarily insane. Me, or someone I could observe, being literally turned into a wild ass would convince me that something was afoot.

Even if I were convinced that something were afoot, though, I would not necessarily be convinced of the truth of any particular religion. In most of the theology debates I have on HotAir, the other side makes the following argument: X is true; therefore God exists; therefore every word of the Bible is confirmed as true. To get from proof that God exists to proof that one specific scripture is 100% accurate requires far more evidence. Thomas Paine, in The Age of Reason, argued that in order for him to accept a revelation as valid, it must be revealed directly to him himself; what is revelation for another man is to him only hearsay.

What if a prophet DID submit to a rigorous investigation of what was claimed as a miracle and his arch-enemies could only agree that it wasn’t magic or trickery?

Remember the story of Moses going before Pharaoh? Pharoah’s magicians cast their staves down on the ground and they turned into snakes, then Moses’ staff turned into a snake and ate theirs. The moral was that there are many gods that can work miracles, but that the God of the Hebrews could work the most powerful miracles. Some sects of Christianity (including the sect I was raised in) allege that witchcraft is real, whereas mainstream Christianity now denies this. If rigorous investigation revealed that something abnormal was going on, it still would not prove that it was an act of God and not a miracle on the part of Satan.

For further reading on questions of epistemology, I recommend the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Karl Popper. His approach is the one used by most modern scientists.

I think I hear you saying that you can only believe something “miraculous” if it happens directly to you. Is that what you’re saying?

I went back and read that account after you mentioned it and Nebuchadnezzar talks about losing, and later being given back, his sanity. Daniel says the king was given the mind of an animal and thus lived as one. I wonder if Nebuchadnezzar knew he was insane in the middle of all that, or if he only recognized it once he snapped out of it. I wonder what exactly snapped him out of it.

Does that instance – if it’s true, as it would be if it happened to you – seem convincing to you because of the exactness of the detail, the timing, or what? He could have been given a hallucinogen or something that made him insane, couldn’t he? – a parlor trick? And even if it wasn’t a drug or something natural that caused the insanity, couldn’t the timing have been coincidence?

I’m not asking this to be stupid or contentious, but because I want to understand what kind of evidence is credible for you.

If a prophet says he/she knows that numerous, specific predictions will come true because he/she was told that by a deity, and then those specific predictions come true, would that explanation of how he/she knew be enough for you to believe that he/she really heard a “voice”? (Oh, I went back and read that the means would have to be accessible to more persons than just himself. Would you have to be one of those persons? Would it make any difference if another person – in a totally different situation – also says they eard the same thing through a “voice” as well? Would corroboration between two or more independent prophets increase the believability that it truly was prophecy rather than coincidence?)

I’m trying to answer that for myself and it kinda goes back to the story about the guy who claims to have come back to life and who in the process acquired knowledge nobody knew before. I was in quite a pickle because I had argued with others that someone rising from the dead should be reason enough to believe them. I found myself changing my story to say that it would be reason enough to believe that a soul can leave and re-enter a body. But how do we know if that soul is lying to us? It showed me that my real epistemology was different than I thought it was. Made me question whether my own belief really is falsifiable.

So I know there are a lot of variables that are different with every situation, but you seem very reasonable and I’m just curious about your thoughts.

What if a prophet DID submit to a rigorous investigation of what was claimed as a miracle and his arch-enemies could only agree that it wasn’t magic or trickery?

I enjoy your writing. You explain things well.

One OT question I have for you – since you obviously have some knowledge and might be able to help me. If the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, could that affect what have always been assumed to be constants – like gravity, polarity, rates of decay, etc?

Your epistemology sounds pretty reasonable to me, depending on what the standard of evidence is. A friend of mine who was a prof at MIT keeps talking about a mathematical proof that “proves” (lol) that we can’t prove anything without first accepting at least one assumption on faith. I’ve spoken with people who would only even consider a religious or historical claim if it could be proven – which can never happen. So their agnostic/atheist belief could never be falsified, for all practical purposes. To have convinced them of a miracle would be a greater miracle than the miracle in question. lol

justincase on May 17, 2009 at 1:41 AM

Your question about the constants of physics changing over time is a tricky one. Everything we think we know about the far-flung reaches of the universe is based on the assumption that the laws of nature are the same everywhere; that the conditions in a particle accelerator on earth today are the same as they were 10 billion years ago in a young galaxy 10 billion light years away from our present location. This may not be true, but we have no way of testing it. We have no reason to believe that the laws of the universe change with time, and if they do, then we can know nothing, so we assume they remain constant. The Hume link Speakup gave talks to this point.

It’s been a while since I studied philosophy or math rigorously, but I too recall a conjecture that no system can be proven from within itself–something must be taken axiomatically. Taking something axiomatically is not necessarily the same thing as taking something on faith. Aristotelian philosophy, at least as interpreted by Ayn Rand, rests on three axioms: Existence exists, Perception is the act of perceiving that which exists, and A thing is itself and acts in accordance with its own nature. The opposite of this, of course, is Plato’s claim that the world we do not and cannot perceive the world as it actually exists. For me, the Aristotelian axioms do not require faith to accept–the mere fact that I exist and that I can act with efficacy in the world speak to their truth. But to prove them, one must first accept them, then discover the rules of logic (as Aristotle did), and then return to prove them–it’s a circular, question-begging argument to prove anything entirely from within. That does not mean that nothing can be proven; it just means that there is always at least some room for intelligent men to disagree in good faith.

Regarding the extraordinary claims of prophets, I probably wouldn’t even believe them with my own eyes. Ever watch Cris Angel on E!? He’s an amazing street magician, but he’s just an actor in a carefully-planned performance. If he were to say that he were performing miracles instead of magic tricks, I could not disprove it unless he consented to a rigorous investigation of his methods, and what self-styled prophet would submit to an insult like that?

Nor would an accurate prediction of a cataclysm be adequate for me to believe–people make such predictions all the time, and the law of large numbers suggests that sometime someone will get it right. To decide after the fact that, because a particular prophecy came true, therefore the prophet knew rather than guessed, is to engage in the logical fallacy of Confirmation Bias. To be believed, a prophet would have to make numerous, specific predictions, and to say not just that he knows they will come true, but also how he knows they will come true, and the how will have to be through a means accessible to more persons than just himself.

What would it take for me to believe in a particular religion? Its God would have to turn me into a wild ass for a few years, as the God of the Hebrews allegedly did to Nebuchadnezzar–just about every other miracle listed in the Bible, assuming they actually happened, could conceivably have been coincidence or parlour trick.

It makes sense that a more extraordinary claim would require closer scrutiny because it matters more. Like the dark matter thing – you don’t want to have to shift a whole paradigm over something you have little evidence for. Sometimes paradigms do need shifting – like heliocentrism – and sometimes it’s little nagging things that add up to provide the convincing evidence.

What kind of evidence seems strongest to you? You mentioned the claims of various “prophets”, several of whom lived a long time ago. What kind of evidence would most rouse your interest and make the claim credible to you?

Yeesh. Seems like you have a better grasp of physics than I will ever have. I’m impressed. I love the physics professor’s poster. Ain’t that the truth! I understand the complaint about ID not making predictions. I see ID more as a critique of the sufficiency of Darwinism to explain all the data, kind of an admission of what we don’t know rather than a statement of what we do know. In that regard it’s not really science. Maybe more of history and probability. If there really are more dimensions beyond our observation as string theory suggests, it makes sense that there aren’t any predictions.

One OT question I have for you – since you obviously have some knowledge and might be able to help me. If the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, could that affect what have always been assumed to be constants – like gravity, polarity, rates of decay, etc?

Your epistemology sounds pretty reasonable to me, depending on what the standard of evidence is. A friend of mine who was a prof at MIT keeps talking about a mathematical proof that “proves” (lol) that we can’t prove anything without first accepting at least one assumption on faith. I’ve spoken with people who would only even consider a religious or historical claim if it could be proven – which can never happen. So their agnostic/atheist belief could never be falsified, for all practical purposes. To have convinced them of a miracle would be a greater miracle than the miracle in question. lol

I once wrote down all my objections to a particular religion’s claims and then went over each objection and applied it to my own beliefs. That was really interesting. Helped me understand where my agnostic and atheist friends were coming from.

This thread may get far enough down on the page that we can’t access it any more. If that happens, please know that I’ve enjoyed our conversation and would love to learn all kinds of stuff from you if we meet up again in another thread.

Never would I suggest that Christians are stupid…Why can’t Bernie reciprocate? posted at 9:15 pm on May 15, 2009 by Allahpundit

Never Aye Aye…
Beyond your personal predilections though, the comparison Bernie is highlighting is the hypocritical behavior that the MSM continually exhibits viz Socialist-Conservative, Athiest-Christian, Democrat-Republican pairs. The point of Bernie’s message is that he’s an eye witness to the selective and biased process of News dissemination (manipulation) by the folks that control the Media. To expect “reciprocation” from Bernie here, is an invitation to ply poker, where the dealer is using a stacked deck.

“Let’s Roll”

David Hume
First published Mon Feb 26, 2001; substantive revision Fri May 15, 2009

justincase on May 16, 2009 at 1:46 PM

(Sorry; I had some real life stuff to do for a while.)

Re the first bit: The more strange and unusual the claim, the more direct the evidence I require. With regard to things like resurrection from the dead, I demand a much higher standard if proof than with regard to, say, the assertion that New York strip is on sale at the corner grocer. Specifically as regards theology, one must remember that Muhammed and Joseph Smith did as good a job of convincing their contemporaries they were prophets as Jesus. A standard of proof set low enough to lead one to believe of the religions would lead one just as well to believe several others besides.

Yes, it is because of unexpected gravitational attraction that dark matter was proposed–the alternative was to rewrite the theory of gravity, and completely altering our understanding of the Big Bang. (Thermodynamics predicts that the big bang would have yielded a certain ratio of photons and neutrinos to massive particles, and the ratio we observe is the same as that predicted. If dark matter exists in the hypothesized quantities, then we’ll have to rethink just about all of cosmology.) Because it would require a rethinking of most of astronomy, dark matter will not be accepted as a theory without some additional evidence for it.

As regards quantum mechanics, one of my physics professors had a poster on his door that read: “Insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting different results. Quantum Physics is doing the same thing twice and getting different results.” String theory attempts to explain the oddities observed at the quantum level in a more sensible fashion, but (kind of like ID) it adds no predictions.

Gravity, btw, does operate at the quantum level; it is just 1×10^36 weaker than the electric force. It is only because the universe has a roughly neutral electric charge, and because gravity is always attractive, that we can observe its effects at all.

Back to the question of epistemology you raised, I am always considering new evidence to re-evaluate my position on everything–I am not interested in believing falsely that I know what is right; I am interested in knowing what is right. I may well change my mind about so-called supernatural phenomena later as more evidence comes in. But I will not believe in it without adequate evidence. And if any “supernatural” claim is true, then by definition the phenomenon is natural after all.

I had to laugh in “Expelled” when Richard Dawkins was saying he thought maybe life on earth came from aliens from a different universe who had naturally evolved to the point where they could create life on earth.

justincase on May 16, 2009 at 4:26 PM

I saw that movie just this past week. The irony of Dawkin’s alien theory is that by offering it he is proving the very point Intelligent Design is trying to make…that all the evidence points to an intelligent force as the source of life on Earth rather than a blind watchmaker. Basically, Dawkins is willing to concede that life on Earth may have come from an intelligent force if that intelligence is an alien from another planet. But if the intelligent force is God then that just can’t be. He is so blind to his bias against religion.

I had to laugh in “Expelled” when Richard Dawkins was saying he thought maybe life on earth came from aliens from a different universe who had naturally evolved to the point where they could create life on earth.

He doesn’t get it. He just doesn’t get it.

Logically speaking, there has to be something eternal which has brought this universe – or any other universe – into existence since any other answer begs the question of first cause.

justincase on May 16, 2009 at 1:00 PM

That’s exactly right justincase. Atheists try to claim that science has answered all the questions that religion used to answer. But the reality is that all science does is push the questions further back. You eventually come to a dead end where you either believe matter and energy popped into existance from nothing, or you accept that there is an eternal intelligent force which is above and beyond all that we can ever know.

“When you say “radical right” today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye. ”

firepilot on May 16, 2009 at 2:32 PM

Please name one example of someone trying to make the Republican party a religious organization. You can’t compare the Republican party of 1964 to the Republican party of today because that was before the courts changed the social landscape of America. The hot button issues of social conservatives today (abortion, gay marriage, school prayer) were non issues in 1964. Most of these changes did not come from the democratic process but by liberal court fiat. Social conservatives are just trying to undo what was forced on us by a liberal activist court. Isn’t that a Republican value… the respect for states rights, the democratic process and judicial restraint?

Barry Goldwater

I suspect that a lot of “religion” in Medieval times was actually just a human quest for power.

justincase on May 16, 2009 at 2:03 PM

The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind to filch wealth and power to themselves. They, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ.
- Thomas Jefferson

Rather like Al Gore (another thread) today.

A lot of what organized religion says is actually pretty far away from what the Bible itself is like.

The humanists didn’t invent critical inquiry. They unburied it from its takeover by the political church. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to learn the thing the Medieval times should have shown them: that man is very fallible. We can work to better ourselves but there are limits to what we can accomplish because human nature is still human nature.

I suspect that a lot of “religion” in Medieval times was actually just a human quest for power. If you read the writings of the early church – first and second centuries CE – most of it is evidence-based. It’s when religion joined with political power that religion was massively corrupted.

Religious people and “enlightened” people are both still people, and prone to corruption. That’s the one truth of the Bible that I doubt anyone could seriously question, unless they are entirely amoral.

It was when the Roman church gave absolute trust to a single person (the pope) above their reliance on the record of Scripture (much of which had to be validated in the real world just to be included in Scripture) that evidence-based reasoning went by the wayside.

At least that’s my understanding. I could be wrong on that.

and start losing every election. You’re basically saying ignore the Reagan Revolution and go back to the same Republican party that was soundly trounced in the 60’s and 70’s.

No thanks.

ThereGoesTheNeighborhood on May 16, 2009 at 2:30 AM

No, not at all. What I have been espousing is what Reagan campaigned on. Reagan did not make social conservatism the centerpiece of his campaign at all. He campaigned on

limited government, lowering taxes, strong national defense

.

That is what he wanted the GOP to be about. Reagan did not call people a RINO, Democrat-lite, or tell them to leave the party, for not being socially conservative enough. He was glad to have them around, as long as they believed in that the GOP stood for. He did not place some litmus test on how socially conservative one was in order to be a good Republican.

Its rather galling that the Evangelicals are trying to tell the non-evangelicals to basically to take a hike and find someplace else to go, if we arent going to place their religious values above what the Republican Party was tradionally about.

Secularism is not the same as atheism, of course, both Grosseteste and Aquinas were priests. But they helped us to escape from the overbearing medieval view that the world has meaning and pattern only in relation to God [or Allah].
- Peter Watson

MB4 on May 16, 2009 at 1:35 PM

How did secularism bring meaning to the world? Perhaps it freed us from the bad excesses of the medieval world view (as a Christian I concede that many foolish things have been done and believed in the name of God). However, what we certainly lost with it was the belief that there is any transcendent meaning at all in the universe. The only meaning that can exist in a secular atheist world is the meaning each person chooses to give it. So Hitler’s view of the world was just as valid as yours or mine I suppose.

If so, I totally agree. We can have great ideals but we never live up to them. It’s like there’s a speck in our eye. Our eye knows how it’s supposed to be, it feels that something’s wrong, but we can’t make it right.

It’s kind of fun checking into what different people say and the evidence they give. Ultimately, everything that I don’t observe myself leads to questions of the observer’s accuracy. Right now it’s really hard to know wno to believe because anybody – anybody – can either be mistaken or outright lie. So I understand your hesitance. Often the discussions I’ve had with agnostics has come down to the issue of whether the evidence was convincing enough. Good reason for intelligent people to come up with different conclusions. I might still have some of the links about that stuff so let me know if you have trouble finding it.

The second paragraph was about whether knowledge counts as an observed phenomenon. If a person knows something that doesn’t fit our current theory, should that call the theory into question?

For instance, one atheist I was talking to was Buddhist. He basically said “So what?” to my evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. He said others have risen from the dead. When I asked him for evidence he sent to me a site about a guy who was clinically dead and when he “came back” he was healed of his disease. But he also had knowledge that led him to some great discovery. It was challenging to me because he also said New Age-ish things that don’t fit with Christianity. So what do I do with what he says – particularly if some of what he “learned” in the experience panned out? For me, I can’t just say he’s nutso because he had to have gotten that knowledge from somewhere, just as surely as if he had “come back” with a big X carved into his chest. Knowledge is a tangible thing. I still don’t know exactly what to make of that information. Stuff like that keeps me humble. lol.

So anyway, my question is if you consider knowledge a tangible physical piece of evidence that has to be accounted for.

I think the dark matter was proposed because of the gravitational effects we observe that can’t be explained by the small amount of matter that we observe. I thought it was a similar thing with string theory but between that and the quantum stuff I have to admit it’s pretty confusing.

And not just to me either. I was talking with one materialist about the quantum stuff and neither one of us could understand what causes the macro effects we see (that appear as laws) since they come as a sum result of fairly random movement at the quantum level. Since the big objects always follow gravity, we could assume that’s because the quantum particles follow gravity. But they don’t. The smaller particles do things that we don’t observe on the big level – like entanglement. Why does entanglement happen sometimes but not always? If for some reason all the subatomic particles in an object were entangled, would the object itself be entangled? If so, that would cause really freaky observable events that defy what we call “laws”, like gravity.

Sorry this is so long. The world is a fascinating place.

Never would I suggest that Christians are stupid or superficial for believing as they do. — Allah

…insinuate?? daily. Have the guts to actually say it- never.
Beta, remember?

ExTex on May 16, 2009 at 8:54 AM

Exactly. Allah posts and gloats whenever the atheists bash Christianity or Christians or even any theist, and then criticizes Goldberg for fighting back! Sorry, Allah, doesn’t wash.

hicsuget on May 16, 2009 at 11:25 AM

You show your total lack of understanding of our precepts, doctrine and faith by your shallow references to historical events as though they have anything to do with our Creator and/or His relationship with us through our Savior Jesus Christ…

sabbott on May 16, 2009 at 1:17 PM

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.
- Mark Twain

The rise of the West had much less to do with democracy than with the rise of secularism. The West’s advance was chiefly related to the decline in the influence of religion that sought the truth by “looking in” to see what God had to say, and its replacement by looking out, deriving authority from observation, experimentation and exploration.

The original figures to draw attention to this were Bishop Robert Grosseteste, early in the 13th century, the first person to imagine the experiment, and his contemporary, St Thomas Aquinas, the first man to imagine a secular world, a world without God directing everything. Secularism is not the same as atheism, of course, both Grosseteste and Aquinas were priests. But they helped us to escape from the overbearing medieval view that the world has meaning and pattern only in relation to God [or Allah].
- Peter Watson

so hicsuget…. A., B., or C.?!

lobosan5 on May 16, 2009 at 1:27 PM

B. Neither A nor C would be much fun to be around all the times when a car isn’t spinning out of control.