This post is to move a discussion from Sandbox(4) at Entropy’s request.
Over on the Sandbox(4) thread, fifthmonarchyman made two statements that I disagree with:
“I’ve argued repeatedly that humans are hardwired to believe in God.”
“Everyone knows that God exists….”
As my handle indicates, I prefer to lurk. The novelty of being told that I don’t exist overcame my good sense, so I joined the conversation.
For the record, I am what is called a weak atheist or negative atheist. The Wikipedia page describes my position reasonably well:
“Negative atheism, also called weak atheism and soft atheism, is any type of atheism where a person does not believe in the existence of any deities but does not explicitly assert that there are none. Positive atheism, also called strong atheism and hard atheism, is the form of atheism that additionally asserts that no deities exist.”
I do exist, so fifthmonarchyman’s claims are disproved. For some reason he doesn’t agree, hence this thread.
Added In Edit by Alan Fox 16.48 CET 11th January, 2018
This thread is designated as an extension of Noyau. This means only basic rules apply. The “good faith” rule, the “accusations of dishonesty” rule do not apply in this thread.
There’s nothing to justify. What I need to hypothesize is up to me. It isn’t up to anybody else.
I agree it’s not up to anyone what you hypothesize. It’s a free country
However the claim is that you don’t need God to justify things like knowledge. That claim needs to be supported.
Since it’s a free country you can choose to leave the claim unsupported if you wish.
However if you do that you can expect folks to point out that you are making a claim that is not in any way supported.
We have a right to ask for that support before we grant the truth of the claim.
peace
It’s not really a claim. I’m not trying to persuade anybody.
You are the one making a claim, for you are trying to persuade — repeatedly. Maybe you are only trying to persuade yourself; that I cannot tell. But you are trying to persuade.
As far as I am concerned, knowledge requires neither justification nor truth nor belief. My knowledge exists in the form of causal connections to reality. And I do not see any need to be able to quantify that (as in “how much knowledge”).
Then why did you bring it up?
No what I’m trying to do is to get people who claim things like “God does not exist” or “Christianity is irrational” or “I don’t need the God hypothesis” to take a minute to reflect before they make claims like that.
As far as the repetition goes,
I have never started a thread to talk about religion. I have many times said I would rather not talk about religion here.
I only discuss it when the topic comes up or when people make claims that need to be justified.
Is that just your opinion or do you claim to know it?
How can you know you have “causal connections to reality”?
What exactly in your worldview that would lead you to expect that you might have “causal connections to reality”?
I don’t see any need to quantify it either.
I do see a need to justify it. if you claim to know something.
peace
Once again:
What are your evidence and logic supporting the idea that your god must exist in order for the law of “noncontridiction” to be valid and for our powers of reasoning to be generally reliable? Stop trying to avoid supporting your claims.
Do you have any support for that claim?
I know no such thing. You’re wrong. Continuing to claim that I do know that is against the rules. Why do you refuse to follow the rules here? Is that kind of rudeness encouraged by your religion?
Do you disagree that God if he exists could reveal stuff so that I could know it? If you do please just say so and we can discuss it further
Does truth exist? Do you know it exists?
peace
No, the observation is that you haven’t supported your claim that your god is needed to justify things like knowledge.
This site is dedicated to rational discussion. You made a claim and instead of supporting it you’re trying to evade responsibility and get other people to disprove it. You’re not right by default, you need to support what you say.
Asserting that you need a god to justify things like knowledge is not remotely the same thing as demonstrating it.
Live up to your own standards.
Once again I only assume that God must exist for those things to true because no one has offered an alternative justification for them. I will withdraw the assumption just as soon as a sufficient alternative justification is offered.
here is the syllogism
P1) If God exists then the law of “noncontridiction” is valid
P2) God exists
P3) therefore the law of “noncontridiction” is valid
notice that is not the same as
P1) God must exist for the law of “noncontridiction” to be valid
P2) God exists
P3) therefore the law of “noncontridiction” is valid
Do you understand the difference??
peace
Attack ideas, not the people who have them!
In order to point out that there are people who do not agree with your claims.
It should have been obvious that “I don’t need the God hypothesis” is an expression of personal subjective opinion, so not a claim. I have never asserted “God does not exist”, and I doubt that I have ever asserted “Christianity is irrational”.
What I said (and you quoted) began with “As far as I am concerned”. That might be a clue as to whether it is opinion.
My ability to cope with the world.
Amen!!!
I might be an ogre.
But that does not make you right.
If you think that my assumption is incorrect don’t just complain that it sounds mean. offer a sufficient alternative justification and I will gladly withdraw it.
peace
If truth did not exist, then we would have to invent it. And that’s about what happened — we invented it.
Did you really think that needed to be brought up on this forum?
Ok Then,
In my opinion that opinion is completely wrong and totally irrational 😉
It’s interesting that we have such a strong disagreement on something so central to existence as knowledge.
Do you agree that given the plausibility of Boltzmann brains what you perceive to be your ability to cope with the world is very likely to be nothing but your imagination?
peace
So it does exist then!!!!!!
if we invented God what exactly does that make us?
quote:
Thus says the Lord GOD: “Because your heart is proud, and you have said, ‘I am a god, I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas,’ yet you are but a man, and no god, though you make your heart like the heart of a god—
(Eze 28:2)
end quote:
peace
Neil Rickert,
Neil I like you a lot I am very uncomfortable having this sort of discussion with you.
I was wrong when I thought you were claiming that you did not need to hypothesize God in order to justify knowledge.
I apologize.
Now, are you sure you want to have a discussion on the origin of truth?
peace
Just about
Human
I have no idea what you mean by that. I’ve seen both Kantian Naturalist and Entropy, at least, note the problems with your claim that “truth exists”. You should answer them before repeating the claim.
My view is that I can make a statement like “fifthmonarchyman refuses to support his claims.” and characterize that as “true” because of the evidence from your comments in this thread. I don’t see, even with that, how “truth exists” is meaningful.
Kantian Naturalist is better trained to address this with you. You should respond to him.
Once again, you have failed to support the implicit claim that your god provides justification for them.
That’s not how rational discussion works. You need to support your claims, not require others to refute them. You don’t win by default. It’s a dishonest argument style.
You have not supported that claim with evidence and logic.
You have not supported that claim with evidence and logic.
I know you’re going to say that those aren’t claims, they’re assumptions. Assuming your conclusion is a logical fallacy. If you’re not interested in rational discussion, you shouldn’t be here. Honor the rules and purpose of the site.
Once again,
You have already implicitly agreed that God (if he exists) could reveal stuff so that I could know it. If you disagree please say so and we can discuss it further.
When I make a claim that you don’t accept I will support it.
I don’t need to support tentative assumptions unless given reason to doubt them.
It’s not a claim it a premise to a syllogism.
If you disagree with my premises state your case.
I’m not assuming my conclusion. My conclusion follows necessarily from my premises. that is what makes is a valid syllogism.
Assuming your conclusion would look something like this
P1: I verify my reasoning by using my reasoning
P2: My reasoning is valid if verified
Conclusion: therefore my reasoning is valid
Do you see the difference??
peace
It is really a disagreement about the meaning of “knowledge”. I take meaning to be unavoidably subjective.
I do not accept that “given”.
I do not have any plans to start a thread on that topic. Professional philosophers have been making a mess of it since forever. It is not easy to discuss without getting sidetracked into pointless word games.
I don’t think that the question/challenge “how do you know stuff given your worldview?” has any clear meaning as a question.
For one thing, I don’t really know what a worldview is. I have no reason to believe that I have one.
For another, I think this question trades on a conflation of causal processes and normative assertions. One could give a conceptual analysis of the concept of knowledge; one could explain whether one identifies “knowledge” with “justified true belief” or with something else; and likewise the explication could be unfolded in other ways. Or one could give an account of the causal mechanisms: what is going on, neurologically, psychologically, or sociologically, in the process of learning, remembering, and knowing?
If the question is, “what is your theory of knowledge?”, then that could be undertaken conceptually or mechanistically. I actually don’t like the ‘standard’ definition of knowledge as “justified true belief”. I think that it locates the problem of knowledge in the wrong place and fails to understand it correctly even then.
The ‘standard’ definition comes from Plato’s Meno. But there, if one looks at the text, what we find is something more like “correct understanding with an account”. That is, one both discerns correctly and is able to give an account, evaluated and approved by others, of what it is that one discerns correctly. And as the dialogue itself suggests, the adequacy of the account involves teaching. The suggestion then turns out to be that true knowing involves the ability to convey one’s correct understanding to one who lacks it.
(There are then deep philosophical puzzles that are purportedly solved by positing the doctrine of recollection, which I won’t go into here.)
Now, I do think that Plato was onto something of profound importance that has been misunderstood by most subsequent philosophers, and it is this: the ability to give an account that conveys correct understanding is not the definition of knowledge, but the most developed kind of knowledge. Insisting on this as the definition of knowledge implies that one does not know anything if one cannot give an account of it, and that raises the bar impossibly high — so high that Skepticism is the only sustainable position.
Interesting,
Why not? here is a summery of the idea
quote:
A Boltzmann brain is a hypothesized self-aware entity that arises due to random fluctuations out of a state of thermodynamic equilibrium. The idea is named after the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, who advanced an idea that the Universe is observed to be in a highly improbable non-equilibrium state because only when such states randomly occur can brains exist to be aware of the Universe. The idea that a disembodied brain seems to require a smaller—hence more probable—fluctuation than intelligent beings similar to humans was proposed by Lawrence Schulman in 1997, and the term for this idea was coined in 2004 by Andreas Albrecht and Lorenzo Sorbo.
end quote:
from here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain
Given your worldview, what part of the argument do you find to be unconvincing?
peace
Ok fine, Feel free to ignore the question then.
It’s only meant as a guide to help focus the discussion so that we don’t get bogged down into discussions about the genius of Plato compared to Aristotle.
If you like you can just offer a justification for things like knowledge that aren’t subject to further regress.
It should be simple to do.
I’m not interested in your theory of knowledge I’m simply interested in a reason to grant that knowledge is possible if God does not exist.
peace
One could do any of those things if one liked but it would not be offering a justification for knowledge.
What one needs to do is explain how knowledge is possible if God does not exist.
peace
Grant it or not. Either way, there is no purpose served by your repeatedly bringing it up in discussion — especially since you do not have a convincing argument.
(Note that this is about Boltzmann brains).
I don’t accept it, because I don’t accept “brain in a vat” arguments.
Brains don’t think. People think.
Brains don’t perceive. People perceive.
Brains aren’t intelligent. People are intelligent.
Are people more than brains and the associated tissue in your worldview?
peace
The purpose is merely to demonstrate that the claimer has no justification for what he is claiming if God does not exist.
This is especially relevant when the thing being claimed is supposed to cast doubt on Gods existence.
peace
1) what argument?
2) convincing to who?
peace
Too vague a question.
I am not arguing for an elan vital.
Thinking is thinking about behavior. A brain in a vat does not behave in any ordinary sense.
Ordinary according to who?
If the idea behind Boltzmann brains is sound then the behavior of a Boltzmann brain is ordinary behavior. Correct?
If the majority of persons in your experience is a brain in a vat then a brain in a vat behaves very ordinary. Correct?
What is wrong with that logic?
peace
I am not understanding the question.
What does it mean to “behave in an ordinary sense”?
peace
Moving limbs, rolling eyes, eating, etc, etc. In particular, I distinguish between that and merely emitting neural signals.
No, I most certainly have not. Do not put words in my mouth. It is rude and dishonest.
It’s not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing. It’s you evading supporting your claim.
I have made it very clear what claim I’m asking you to support. Does it bring glory to your god to run away?
Here it is again:
What are your evidence and logic supporting the idea that your god must exist in order for the law of “noncontridiction” to be valid and for our powers of reasoning to be generally reliable?
Again, that is not how rational discussion proceeds. This site is dedicated to rational discussion. If you don’t want to participate, you shouldn’t be here. Stop breaking the rules.
I am challenging you to support the claims in your premises.
You most certainly are. You assume everything central to your position. Calling them premises doesn’t fool anyone. You lack the ability and the honesty to support your claims. Is that the kind of person your god rewards?
I have repeatedly asked that if you disagree with me on this point to please just say so and I would discuss it further with you. You have not responded. How am I supposed to react????
I’ll ask again…….. Do you agree that God (if he exists) can reveal stuff so that I can know it?
If you disagree just say so and I will discuss it further with you.
Answering yes or no is not difficult
This is not a trap it’s simply an effort to narrow the focus the conversation and let me know where I need to go.
peace
You’ve never demonstrated any such thing because you continuously refuse to support your claim that your god is necessary for any of the things you say it justifies.
ALurker,
You refuse to explain why anyone should trust their beliefs, in a world without God. What is truth is one rejects the idea that there is something that knows ultimate truth?
I’m having a real hard time understanding your point.
What exactly is the ontological difference between “moving limbs” and “emitting neural signals” that result in the movement of limbs?
Is a person with locked in syndrome not a person in your worldview? Does he not think?
peace
You are supposed to stop with this ridiculous evasion and support your claim. What are your evidence and logic supporting the idea that your god must exist in order for the law of “noncontridiction” to be valid and for our powers of reasoning to be generally reliable?
Until you do that, everything you post is just public squirming. Start participating according to the rules.
Do you actually know this or is it just an opinion?
How do you know how rational discussion proceeds? How can you know something like that given your worldview?
peace
the claim is…….. God (if he exists) can reveal stuff so that I can know it.
Do you accept this? Yes or know.
If you don’t let me know and I will proceed to support it.
If you do I won’t waste your or my time
it’s pretty simple
Peace
More evasion. The guidelines for a rational discussion are available in numerous places. Here’s one with an easy flowchart for you: https://thoughtcatalog.com/brandon-gorrell/2011/03/how-to-have-a-rational-discussion/
The thing is, you know what’s expected you just refuse to do it. You are deliberately violating the rules of this site. Not only is that rude to other participants and rude to the site owner, it demonstrates a flawed character. You want to spew your unsupported claims here unchallenged. Is that really how you think your god wants you to behave? Does it really want you to ask dishonest questions in a weak attempt to avoid supporting what you say?
Again for probably the 20th time
That is not my claim.
why is this so hard for you to understand?
peace
No, it isn’t. You have no honest reason to say that because I have repeatedly posted the claim under discussion. Here it is again:
What are your evidence and logic supporting the idea that your god must exist in order for the law of “noncontridiction” to be valid and for our powers of reasoning to be generally reliable?
You made the claim that your god must exist in order for the law of “noncontridiction” to be valid and for our powers of reasoning to be generally available. Support it.
Are these the official guidelines or just the ones you happen to agree with?
If they are official what exactly makes them official?
I solemnly affirm that I am not deliberately violating the rules of this site
Does your assertion to the contrary mean that you are calling me a liar?
If so don’t you think that is rude?
peace
please link to where I made that claim
peace