Jews are religious believers too. At least the ones who are not atheists.
Rumor has it that there are more atheist Jews in Israel than religious Jews.
And thank G-d Jews in the US aren’t allowed to vote.
“The Skeptical Zone” is decidedly anti-Christ.
Is it equally anti-Jewish?
If not, why not?
No, it’s a working assumption. It’s negotiable, although its indisputable effectiveness is such that I don’t see any need to enter into negotiations. Contemporary evidence is so strong that “prior evidence” is no longer relevant. As I said somewhere near the beginning of this discussion, we start in the middle and work out from there.
FMM:
LOL!
Slightly rearranging:
“There is milk in the fridge, it seems to me”
“There is milk in the fridge, unless I am mistaken”
The propositional content of each statement is identical. It concerns the contents of your refrigerator.
“It seems to me” qualifies your confidence in your proposition.
“Unless I am mistaken” also qualifies your confidence in your proposition.
No difference.
But given the above, perhaps you can, after all, discern whether you’ve experienced an actual revelation from God, or only thought you did but were mistaken, by carefully examining the sentences you construct to express your putative knowledge.
Riiiiight…
Why is this even interesting?
dang
well then we are back where we started
what criteria did you use to determine is was the best method? How do you know it’s a viable means for accessing truth?
IOW how do you know stuff in your worldview?
peace
We all presuppose something we have to start with axioms.
Godel and incompleteness and all that
peace
Back to the ‘bot. So it goes.
no this is incorrect. The first statement is about my feelings my beliefs. I could be a Boltzmann brain and it would still seem to me that there is milk in the fridge.
However I would be mistaken about there actually being milk in the fridge
peace
Like the energizer bunny
The bot goes till he gets to an actual basis for knowelege in your worldview. When he does my hypothesis will be falsified till then it stands.
That is how science works 😉
peace
Real life is not a logic system.
FMM:
You’ve lost the thread. My original assertion was that in each instance (milk present, milk absent) an identical cognitive process considering the same information would arrive at the same belief, regardless of the state of affairs in the refrigerator, with or without revelation.
If you are a Boltzman brain there is no information and no cognitive process yielding a belief, not to mention no milk and no refrigerator about which it can be said there are states of affairs. So your Boltzman brain is irrelevant to my point.
“However I would be mistaken about there actually being milk in the fridge” fails for the same reason – there are no states of affairs concerning either milk or the refrigerator, so there can be neither true nor mistaken statements about such states of affairs. You’re left with seeming only. The statements remain equivalent.
At any rate, it’s my little thought experiment, so I can restate it’s conclusion:
Interesting to consider your view of “knowledge” in each instance (milk present, milk not present). Assuming that you aren’t a Boltzman brain (in the Matrix, a brain in a vat etc.)* the cognitive process is identical in each case, deriving the same conclusion from the same information (the night before there was milk in the fridge). What differs is the state of affairs in the refrigerator. Yet it is your claim that In the instance of “milk present” God also reveals to you that milk is present (you can’t know anything otherwise). In the instance of “milk not present” there is no revelation.
Given that the underlying process and resulting belief is identical in each case, what, exactly, does revelation contribute?
*An irrelevant elaboration inserted to anticipate an irrelevant objection.
FMM, BTW:
In my scenarios you have identical information (there was milk in the fridge the night before) as you form your belief. The scenarios only diverge when you open the fridge and see the actual state of affairs.
Why would you arrive at “it seems to me there is milk in the fridge” in one instance and “There is milk in the fridge unless I am mistaken” in the other?
ETA: your actual statements, rather than my slight paraphrase of same.
Good question, my contrarian nature?
Before the ‘I’ can start to do anything, it has to exist. You have to presuppose that you exist before you can ‘start with God’.
fG
How can animals learn? Does God reveal things to them as well?
fG
How do you know this?
Are you saying that real life is not logical?
peace
How do you know that the scenarios diverge when you open the fridge? Perhaps you are a Boltzmann brain and it only seems that you are seeing the actual state of affairs.
peace
Exactly,
How do you know that there is milk and a refrigerator? For that matter how do you know anything in your worldview?
peace
You also don’t have any protection from that, other to stamp your feet and say it’s simply not possible you are mistaken because Jesus.
No, One difference is that I know I’m not a Boltzman brain.
How do I know this? Because I presuppose that the Christian God exists.
peace
Yes, because it’s impossible a Boltzman brain could exist that also presupposed the Christian God exists.
Except it’s not, is it?
Yes,
check out Job chapter 38 and 39
peace
fmm, do animals go to heaven?
You don’t understand
1) It’s impossible for both the Christian God and a Boltzman brain to exist simultaneously .
2) It’s impossible to know anything if the Christian God does not exist
3) I know I exist
Therefore I am not Boltzman brain
peace
I missed where you demonstrated the truth of this. Can you link?
No,
Heaven is not a physical place so no one “goes” to heaven
peace
simple
Boltzman brains arise spontaneously.
The Christian God is sovereign so nothing in the universe arises spontaneously.
peace
Yet reality contradicts you. E.G. radioactive decay.
You just have to believe in the Boltzman God, which arose from presuppers’ definitions.
Glen Davidson
Radioactive decay is only random from our limited temporal perspective inside the universe It would not be from the perspective of a timeless God,
peace
No The Christian God does not arrive spontaneously he does not arrive at all he is eternal and timeless.
And that claim came from–oh yeah, presuppers’ definitions.
Glen Davidson
Again it’s not a claim. I am making no claims.
It is simply a presupposition that I use to evaluate the validity of claims.
How do you know stuff in your worldview?
peace
How do you fail to know things in your worldview?
Glen Davidson
Lots of ways willful rebellion, physical limitations, limited resourses.
etc etc
The Christian God has none of these issues that explains his omniscience …. And part of his value as a basis for knowledge
peace
Too bad you remain obtuse.
Glen Davidson
There is a difference between being unintentionally obtuse and purposely trying to overlook petty insults
peace
You manage to do both, however.
Glen Davidson
How do you know that? If fact how do you know anything in your worldview?
Are you merely saying that is seems to you that I manage to do both but you actually know nothing?
peace
By being open-minded.
It’s not for the obtuse, however.
Glen Davidson
What criteria did you use to determine that you are open-minded and that being openhanded was a valid way to gain knowledge that was not accessible to the obtuse?
peace
I looked at people like you who won’t think things through, and decided that I had to be the opposite. I can’t go around writing “openhanded” as if it meant the same as “open-minded,” nor asking the same stupid questions over and over after getting the answers.
It’s a matter of taste, and intellect.
But hey, you can ask the same stupid questions yet again to make yourself think that you’re accomplishing something.
Glen Davidson
eliza
FMM:
OK. We can dispense with this:
And return to this:
In the milk scenario your cognitive process is identical in each case (milk present versus milk absent), and you reach the same conclusion from the same information. The scenarios don’t diverge until you open fridge. It is your belief that in the “milk present” scenario God also reveals to you that milk is present (you can’t know anything otherwise). In the instance of “milk not present” there is no revelation.
What, exactly, does revelation contribute? And why would you arrive at “it seems to me there is milk in the fridge” in one instance and “There is milk in the fridge unless I am mistaken” in the other?
How do you know that using taste and intellect to evaluate a proposition is a reliable way to find truth?
I am accomplishing something
I’m testing a hypothesis it will be falsified as soon as you share an actual basis for knowledge in your worldview. Till then it stands.
We are fast approaching the 5 sigma threshold.
peace
Again It provides access to objective reality outside my own mind
In the one instance I begin with me and therefore can never get beyond “seems to me”
In the other instance I begin with God and God can if he chooses reveal something to me in such a way that I can know it.
Do you see the difference?
peace
And then what? What exactly happens then? Will it be of some use to someone other than you? Somehow I doubt it. And that’s just what you don’t get, these “revelations” are not interesting, nor is the backstory. If you could actually *do* something out of the ordinary because of all that, that would be interesting. But apparently all your god chooses to “reveal” to you is if there is milk in the fridge or not, not something useful like a way to bypass the speed of light. oh nooo. So you’ll go away happy the atheists don’t and can’t know anything without Jesus the lard! That is until those doubts come creeping back (is there, after all milk in the fucking fridge or not! Wait a minute, I’ll go and check) and you come back for another dose of “silly atheists don’t know anything and that makes me feel good”.
And yes, there was milk in the fridge. I think it may be fast approaching it’s end of life. I’m Six Sigma Blue belt sure of it!
What about if there was an empty carton of milk in the fridge? That does happen from time to time, right!
Does it go from “revealed – there *is* milk in the fridge” to “oh, it only seemed revealed – the carton was empty after all”?
I think you are asking the wrong question, fmm. The issue is not how we have a basis for knowledge. The right question would be: how could we, as beings that live in and are part of a real world, not have any knowledge? We would not last very long if we had zero knowledge of the world around us. Even babies that have just been born know how to find their mother’s teat.
Having knowledge is part of being alive. We start with a little and gain more as we develop, through the processes already mentioned by others above. God or no God.
fG
1) How do you know that there is anyone other that you?
2) It will be of use to lurkers to know that you guys got nothing and your worldview is built on air and whatever truth you can steal from mine.
peace
I asked if animals go to heaven. Let me rephrase.
People commonly speak of “going to heaven”. While Heaven is not a physical place, so no one “goes” to heaven, do animals “go to heaven” in the same sense that we mean when we say “people go to heaven”?
If animals don’t ‘go to heaven’, why does god bother to reveal things to them?