tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post6289440485299290281..comments2024-03-28T13:39:03.094-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: School’s out forever?Edward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger197125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-56052593673339198102014-05-16T11:27:56.643-07:002014-05-16T11:27:56.643-07:00Rank & Jeremy:
Sorry for the lateness of my r...Rank & Jeremy:<br /><br />Sorry for the lateness of my reply. Things are busy right now. I hope to have my responses to your comments by next week, but we'll see. <br /><br />Take care.dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-8270463828463934552014-05-13T19:14:38.296-07:002014-05-13T19:14:38.296-07:00Continued...
In Land and Water, June 4, 1881, a c...Continued...<br /><br /><i>In Land and Water, June 4, 1881, a correspondent writes that, in a violent thunderstorm, near Worcester, tons of periwinkles had come down from the sky, covering fields and a road, for about a mile.(13) In the issue of June 11th, the Editor of Land and Water writes that specimens had been sent to him.(14) He notes the mysteri- [21/22] ous circumstance, or the indication of a selection of living things, that appears in virtually all the accounts. He comments upon an enormous fall of sea creatures, unaccompanied by sand, pebbles, other shells, and sea weed.<br /><br />In the Worcester Daily Times, May 30, it is said that, upon the 28th, news had reached Worcester of a wonderful fall from the sky, of periwinkles on Cromer Gardens Road, and spread far around in fields and gardens.(15) Mostly, people of Worcester were incredulous, but some had gone to the place. Those who had faith returned with periwinkles.<br /><br />Two correspondents then wrote that they had seen the periwinkles upon the road before the storm, where probably a fishmonger had got rid of them.(16) So the occurrence conventionalised, and out of these surmises arose the story of the fishmonger, though it has never been told before, as I have told it.<br /><br />Mr. J. Lloyd Bozward, a writer whose notes on meteorological subjects are familiar to readers of scientific periodicals of this time, was investigating, and his findings were published in the Worcester Evening Post, June 9th.(17) As to the story of the fishmonger, note his statement that the value of periwinkles was 16 shillings a bushel. He says that a wide area on both sides of the road was strewn with periwinkles, hermit crabs, and small crabs of an unascertained species. Worcester is about 30 miles from the mouth of the River Severn, or say about 50 miles from the sea.(18) Probably no fishmonger in the world ever had, at one time, so many periwinkles, but as to anybody having got rid of a stock, because of a glutted market, for instance, Mr. Bozward says: "Neither upon Saturday, the 28th, nor Friday, the 27th, was there such a thing procurable in Worcester as a live periwinkle." Gardens as well as fields were strewn. There were high walls around these [22/23] gardens. Mr. Bozward tells of about 10 sacks of periwinkles, of a value of about 20, in the markets of Worcester, that, to his knowledge, had been picked up. Crowds had filled pots and pans and bags and trunks before he got to the place. "In Mr. Maund's garden, two sacks were filled with them." It is his conclusion that the things fell from the sky during the thunderstorm. So his is the whirlwind-explanation.<br /> </i>Jeremy Taylornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-48230688525675776632014-05-13T19:13:52.610-07:002014-05-13T19:13:52.610-07:00Dguller,
I couldn't resist quoting this examp...Dguller,<br /><br />I couldn't resist quoting this example of a possible paranormal occurance from Charles Fort's Lo!, in his unique style. It is interesting because it seems to be comport more closely with an event which might have a new scientific theory as its explanation. Make of it what you will:<br /><br />http://www.resologist.net/lo101.htm<br /><br /><i>Upon May 28th, 1881, near the city of Worcester, England, a fishmonger, with a procession of carts, loaded with several kinds of crabs and periwinkles, and with a dozen energetic assistants, appeared at a time when nobody on a busy road was looking. The fishmonger and his assistants grabbed sacks of periwinkles, and ran in a frenzy, slinging the things into fields on both sides of the road. They raced to gardens, and some assistants, standing on the shoulders of other assistants, had sacks lifted to them, and dumped sacks over the high walls. Meanwhile other assistants, in a dozen carts, were furiously shovelling out periwinkles, about a mile along the road. Also, meanwhile, several boys were busily mixing in crabs. They were not advertising anything. Above all there was secrecy. The cost must have been hundreds of dollars. They appeared without having been seen on the way, and they melted away equally mysteriously. There were houses all around, but nobody saw them.<br /><br />Would I be so kind as to tell what, in the name of some slight approximation to sanity, I mean by telling such a story?<br /><br />But it is not my story. The details are mine, but I have put them in, strictly in accordance with the circumstances. There was, upon May 28th, 1881, an occurrence near Worcester, and the conventional explanation was that a fishmonger did it. Inasmuch as he did it unobserved, if he did it, and inasmuch as he did it with tons upon acres, if he did it, he did it as I have described, if he did it. </i><br /><br />Jeremy Taylornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-31437897983763831332014-05-13T18:46:03.496-07:002014-05-13T18:46:03.496-07:00Continued...
I'm not sure how talk of scienti...Continued...<br /><br />I'm not sure how talk of scientific theories would have much of a role. We know already what alternative naturalistic explanations would be - hallucinations, optical allusions, Orwell is lying, and the like - and we can get a reasonable picture of how likely they are. That is not to say that for some phenomena a scientific theory might account for them, but not those like this example.<br /><br />I'll try and find some other good examples, including some that might fit the new scientific theory category, if I have time. I do have a number of books on this topic. I heartily recommend those of Charles Fort and John Michell, and, to a lesser extent, Colin Wilson and Patrick Harpur.Jeremy Taylornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-78901380483281375122014-05-13T18:45:38.450-07:002014-05-13T18:45:38.450-07:00dguller,
Your query was one sentence. I didn'...dguller,<br /><br />Your query was one sentence. I didn't know you were looking for anything more. I think my reply actually was the correct depth and length in the circumstances.<br /><br />Anyway, my thoughts are that we'd investigate specific claims in detail. We'd look at all the evidence, evaluate the trustworthiness of the witnesses, and so forth. We'd then come to some kind of conclusion about the phenomena in question. It would likely be only a probable conclusion and likely be quite provisional. We might even suspend judgment.<br /><br />A scientific theory accounting for a paranormal event only seems to make sense in some, a minority, of examples. For many examples, it isn't some new scientific theory which will shed a lot of light on the event. It is simply a question of whether there is likely to be naturalistic explanation, and we can already judge which these are likely to be.<br /><br />Take the Orwell example I used in the last thread. George Orwell claimed to have seen a ghost in the churchyard of Walberswick in Suffolk in 1931. He was intrigued by the encounter and wrote to a friend about it, even drawing a map. But he concluded, being a staunch materialist, that it must have been a hallucination.<br /><br />http://georgeorwellnovels.com/letters/letter-to-dennis-collings-16-august-1931/<br /><br /><i>Above is W’wick church as well as I can remember it. At about 5.20 pm on 27.7.31 I was sitting at the spot marked*, looking out in the direction of the dotted arrow. I happened to glance over my shoulder, & saw a figure pass along the line of the other arrow, disappearing behind the masonry & presumably emerging into the churchyard. I wasn’t looking directly at it & so couldn’t make out more than that it was a man’s figure, small & stooping, & dressed in lightish brown; I should have said a workman. I had the impression that it glanced towards me in passing, but I made out nothing of the features. At the moment of its passing I thought nothing, but a few seconds later it struck me that the figure had made no noise, & I followed it out into the churchyard. There was no one in the churchyard, & no one within possible distance along the road—this was about 20 seconds after I had seen it; & in any case there were only 2 people in the road, & neither at all resembled the figure. I looked into the church. The only people there were the vicar, dressed in black, & a workman who, as far as I remember, had been sawing the whole time. In any case he was too tall for the figure. The figure had therefore vanished. Presumably an hallucination. </i><br /><br />In the link is the full letter and the drawing Orwell made. When we assess the evidence we have, on the one hand, someone who seems sane and reasonably reliable and, also, a materialist. He saw something indirectly he says, but still long enough for it not to be a momentary blur whilst turning the head (as Vaal suggested) and in detail enough to see what sort of man the alleged ghost was. On the other hand, Orwell did have a paradoxical interest in the paranormal and he was in a reputedly haunted churchyard (although it was broad daylight). I would come to the conclusion, based on the specific evidence, that we should suspend judgment. We certainly cannot dismiss this incident and say there must have been a naturalistic explanation. I would even lean very slightly to saying it seems like a genuine paranormal encounter, simply because that is what, in my opinion, the evidence best fits. As I said before, as C.S Lewis pointed out and as every historian knows, fitness - or our intuitive grasp of how the evidence is best proportioned and put together - is central to investigations of historical events and the paranormal. <br /><br />Jeremy Taylornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-41807622819411185562014-05-13T12:06:16.481-07:002014-05-13T12:06:16.481-07:00Now, sometimes one must act on the basis of unreli...<i>Now, sometimes one must act on the basis of unreliable information, and in that case, one must make due with the best of the unreliable information</i><br /><br />Which applies to the vast majority is situations in human life. This is Augustine's skeptical defense of Christianity.<br /><br /><i>Third, if you want to say that reason cannot judge the claims of religion, then what exactly can judge them without begging the question?</i><br /><br />Reason can support or attack the claims of religion. It can't prove or refute them via demonstration. That's all I was saying.rank sophisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01644531454383207175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-76441952757317278372014-05-13T12:05:55.478-07:002014-05-13T12:05:55.478-07:00I mean, did you conduct an experiment where you us...<i>I mean, did you conduct an experiment where you used your methods, as well as method A, method B, and method C, and you found that your methods led to religious truth more often than A, B or C?</i><br /><br />Experiments are not particularly reliable indicators of truth. They're vague and often subject to Goodman-esque confirmation bias, as proven by their checkered history. However, if you can supply a workable system for verifying the truth of Christianity's methods, then perhaps we can get somewhere. I personally don't think that there's any way to do it from a foundationalist standpoint like yours.<br /><br /><i>The difference is that my “secular metanarrative”, to use your terminology, is agnostic about matters that it has unreliable information about.</i><br /><br />Agnosticism is not neutral. There is no such thing as neutrality. The suspension of judgment is no more neutral than the making of a truth claim. <br /><br /><i>The journey towards that end is itself beneficial and enhances the goodness and well-being of the individual on the journey.</i><br /><br />That's New Age hogwash. Journeys are certainly beneficial, but a journey without a desination is simply aimless wandering. If there is no actual goal for you to achieve, then you aren't even <i>on</i> a journey. <br /><br /><i>You claimed that some events are so momentous and emotionally salient that they couldn’t possibly lead to memory distortion, and I provided scientific evidence that this claim is false.</i><br /><br />I claimed that miracles have a different impact on one's memory than other events. You have attempted to change the subject.<br /><br /><i>However, the fact that a necessary component of the case for the miracle’s veracity is not present, we don’t need to go any further.</i><br /><br />Who says it's necessary? You? Are you the arbiter of what makes a historical document worthy of belief now? Don't be ridiculous.<br /><br /><i>Conviction is a sign that they believed in the truth of the resurrection, but that is not a reliable indicator that the resurrection is, in fact, true.</i><br /><br />Then you're committing yourself to the ludicrous mass hallucination hypothesis, or one of its equally straw-grasping brothers.<br /><br /><i>After discussing and communicating their experiences with one another, an overall narrative was subconsciously agreed upon, major differences were forgotten, and source amnesia resulted in their belief that they themselves had experienced a risen Jesus. And given the fact that belief in a risen Jesus was a brilliant solution to the intense cognitive dissonance they experienced at his death, they believed it in fervently, to the point of martyrdom.</i><br /><br />As I suspected. Unfortunately, this is a hodgepodge of early 20th century psychoanalysis. Real people have never behaved in this way.<br /><br /><i>And yet, at least with Islam, the Prophet Muhammad had numerous followers in the decades of his prophethood, even prior to the military conquests that occurred after his death.</i><br /><br />Many religious figures have gathered large followings in their lifetimes. Look at Sun Myung Moon or Joseph Smith. My point was related to the size and expansion rate of Christianity, which Islam only managed to rival via military conquest. <br /><br /><i>If a proposition is justified by unreliable evidence, i.e. evidence that has not been shown to be usually correct in indicating the truth of a proposition, then that proposition should not be firmly believed in.</i><br /><br />Then it's a good thing that Christianity's evidence is fairly reliable. It's not demonstrative, certainly, but neither is modern science.rank sophisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01644531454383207175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-87410894507601423222014-05-13T12:05:30.725-07:002014-05-13T12:05:30.725-07:00dguller,
Before I chase this rabbit down the hole...dguller,<br /><br /><i>Before I chase this rabbit down the hole, perhaps you could specify what precise characteristics of Christian saints you find exclusively in them?</i><br /><br />In terms of self-denial, martyrdom and care for others, I would suggest that no other tradition's wise men rival those of Christianity. Not to mention that Christianity, unlike any similar tradition, has been producing wise <i>women</i> of the same caliber from the start.<br /><br /><i>In that sense, the former truth is discouraging and depressing, even though strictly speaking both truths are good to some extent due to their reality.</i><br /><br />Again, the former has no ontological truth. As a privation, it has no being, and so cannot be true. It is only when we create beings of reason related to the event that it becomes "true", and even then, in a merely derivative way. Which is, again, to say that the proposition "I am thinking about this or that instance sin" is true, but that the proposition "this or that sin is true" remains false. It's a complicated business, but I don't think it ultimately ends in favor of your position. <br /><br />Also, every truth, as a transcendental, is a pure and unquantifiable truth that reflects God. It doesn't make sense to talk of some truths being less good than others.<br /><br /><i>Each religious tradition has witnesses to its claims, and thus witness cannot be differentiating factor.</i><br /><br />Witness has a very specific meaning in Christianity, which I assumed you knew. A witness is someone who embodies the Christian life--its virtues, duties and pieties--so that young Christians and unbelievers may indirectly encounter Jesus. Since Jesus himself, Christianity has been about leading by example, and the Apostles and their successors have presented witness by imitating Jesus's life. Witness has provided most of Christianity's converts throughout history.<br /><br /><i>Each religious tradition is coherent within its assumptions, and thus coherence cannot be a differentiating factor.</i><br /><br />Or are they? I certainly wouldn't make that claim, particularly when it comes to the fusion of faith and reason. <br /><br /><i>Second, I fail to see how you can justify the claim that the efficacy and safety of vaccines is less well established than the claim that a man died and rose from the dead 2,000 years ago.</i><br /><br />The efficacy and safety of vaccines is based on a few decades of (necessarily inconclusive) studies, which could be overturned tomorrow. Christian tradition is based on miracle claims that the best historical-critical methods support, the most powerful mythology of any religion and two-thousand years of witness. I'll take that, thanks.<br /><br /><i>If you have a limited amount of time to accomplish something fundamentally important, then you would be foolish to rely upon weak and unreliable means to achieve that goal.</i><br /><br />And the methodology of religious agnosticism is no stronger (it's weaker, in fact) than that of religious belief. Religious agnosticism is based on the assertion that, if religious claims X and Y are false, then religious agnosticism is true. Unfortunately, there is no neutral "default" in this situation, and so religious agnosticism is actually another persuasion. Therefore, you're begging the question by presupposing your belief system without argument. Wasting time, indeed.rank sophisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01644531454383207175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-5035901931122566372014-05-13T12:03:52.619-07:002014-05-13T12:03:52.619-07:00"Eyewitness testimony is necessary, but not s..."Eyewitness testimony is necessary, but not sufficient, for truth"<br /><br />Surely you mean:<br /><br />Eyewitness testimony is sufficient to establish the truth of an event, but not necessary...<br /><br />or do you mean:<br /><br />For something to be true, necessarily it must be eyewitnessable<br /><br />"For example, if someone claimed to have an experiment that violated the laws of thermodynamics, then that experiment would be held to a higher degree of scrutiny than an experiment that confirmed the laws of thermodynamics."<br /><br />Why? Of course we are less credulous about things that we expect to not be true. That's a trivial bit of general human psychology. Supposin' you told a young earther that you had an experiment that conclusively proved the earth was older the 6,000 years (there are plenty of those throughout the sciences that really exist!). They'd be pretty obnoxiously incredulous, I'd wager. Why, though, ought we be skeptical of things that we expect to be false? Inevitably an account will have to be given of why, in the first place, we should have expected it to be false.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-57481946221504398022014-05-13T08:28:46.205-07:002014-05-13T08:28:46.205-07:00Jeremy:
The historical methods, witness reports, ...Jeremy:<br /><br /><i>The historical methods, witness reports, and the like. We might make use of scientific analysis, but the lion's share of the approach would be that of the historian or detective.</i><br /><br />This is all too vague and general, but ultimately it seems to come down to (1) what people claim to have observed, and (2) physical evidence in support of (1). <br /><br />I can certainly see how (1) might support a supernatural claim, because people claim to observe paranormal and supernatural events quite often. And if a large enough number of people observe the same paranormal and supernatural event, and communicated their observations to others in an independent, and yet reasonably consistent fashion, then that would add credence to their claim’s validity. However, if there were large inconsistencies in their stories, or if they were found to have discussed the matter and thus contaminated their testimony, or if there was additional evidence of a conspiracy between them for secondary gain, then their testimony would be insufficient. <br /><br />I can also see how (2) might support a supernatural claim, because if you have a physical piece of evidence that cannot be accounted for on the basis of current scientific theories, then that might corroborate a supernatural event. After all, a supernatural event is an event that cannot be accounted for solely on the basis of natural laws, and thus requires a supernatural intervention to make it possible at all. Hence, one would expect to find physical evidence that is consistent with the laws of nature in a supernatural event. For example, if someone claims to have a perpetual motion machine, and one examines the machine itself, and cannot detect, even with the most sensitive equipment, any loss of energy over an extended period of time, and the equipment itself is well-calibrated, and ideally independently examined by multiple teams, then that would be good evidence that something was occurring that violated the laws of nature, especially the laws of thermodynamics. <br /><br />But I think that the challenge here is not only that such precision has never been demonstrated in any supernatural or paranormal claim, as far as I know, but that even if such a scenario occurred, then one is faced with a few possible inferences:<br /><br />(A) A miracle has occurred, and a supernatural agent has intervened to make it happen<br />(B) A natural event has occurred, but it is one that is unaccountable by current scientific theory<br /><br />And (B) can be further divided into:<br /><br />(B1) A future scientific theory will account for it<br />(B2) A future scientific theory cannot account for it<br /><br />So, the real question in that scenario is whether to prefer (A) or (B), and furthermore how to distinguish between (A) and (B2), in particular. And if neither (A) nor (B) – or (B1) or (B2) – are possible, then perhaps the best position to take is:<br /><br />(C) It is not possible to determine whether (a) a natural event based on unknown natural laws has occurred, or (b) a supernatural event has occurred.<br /><br />Any thoughts?<br />dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-44546784803694774202014-05-13T06:36:23.228-07:002014-05-13T06:36:23.228-07:00The historical methods, witness reports, and the l...The historical methods, witness reports, and the like. We might make use of scientific analysis, but the lion's share of the approach would be that of the historian or detective.Jeremy Taylornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-16474360411869356982014-05-13T03:53:32.636-07:002014-05-13T03:53:32.636-07:00Jeremy:
Natural science deals with the quantifiab...Jeremy:<br /><br /><i>Natural science deals with the quantifiably measurable and testable. The paranormal does not readily fit into this field of inquiry. Secondly, it is one thing to say that the paranormal cannot be proven to the certainty of many entities and theories in natural science but it is quite another to say this means we can say nothing about it. You have said next to nothing about different kinds of knowledge, with their different methods and levels of probability. That the paranormal cannot be proven with the level of probability often sought after in natural science may be true, but I do not see any argument from you about why this should mean we rule it out in investigations of any such claims.</i><br /><br />How do you investigate the paranormal without using scientific methods?dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-64265491863868402542014-05-13T03:42:12.796-07:002014-05-13T03:42:12.796-07:00The question is whether the particular kind of tra...<i> The question is whether the particular kind of transformative experience offered by Christianity is available in another religion. Given the unforced conversions of so many to Christianity throughout the ages, the answer might appear to be in the negative. The only other religion whose growth and current size compare to those of Christianity is Islam, which, for many centuries, was expanded via military conquest.</i><br /><br />And yet, at least with Islam, the Prophet Muhammad had numerous followers in the decades of his prophethood, even prior to the military conquests that occurred after his death. And remember that his first taste of political power occurred following the Hijra in Medina, which occurred after 12 years of preaching while persecuted in Mecca. <br /><br /><i> Which you say from the vantage of your own supra-rational metanarrative, which states that reason in itself can judge the rightness or wrongness of religious beliefs. You're begging the question.</i><br /><br />First, you do not disagree that there are <i>reasons</i> for religious beliefs. You also do not disagree that the reasons that are cited in support of religious beliefs are inherently unreliable, which is why they are weaker than demonstrative proof, i.e. they have a higher possibility of error built right into them that puts them on a lower evidentiary level than logical proofs, for example. <br /><br />Second, my position is quite simple. The degree of conviction one has in a proposition should be proportionate to the degree of justification for that proposition. If a proposition is justified by <i>unreliable</i> evidence, i.e. evidence that has not been shown to be <i>usually</i> correct in indicating the truth of a proposition, then that proposition should not be firmly believed in. <br /><br />Now, sometimes one must act on the basis of unreliable information, and in that case, one must make due with the best of the unreliable information, while fully acknowledging the <i>deficient</i> state one is in with respect to the evidence at hand. It is <i>not</i> a praiseworthy scenario to be in. For example, sometimes I have to treat patients with medications that lack controlled trials, and thus have to rely upon anecdotal data. However, I do not act like I am doing anything praiseworthy in this situation. It is a necessity born of a tragic circumstance.<br /><br />The problem that I have with religious faith is that the evidence for its particular claims, i.e. excluding the conclusions of natural theology, is weak, because it depends upon evidence that is unreliable. Firmness of belief is neither necessary nor sufficient for truth. Eyewitness testimony is necessary, but not sufficient, for truth. Coherence is necessary, but not sufficient, for truth. And power is neither necessary nor sufficient for truth. Ultimately, having an explanation that is coherent and transformative that is supported by eyewitness, or hearsay, testimony is just inadequate, especially in support of <i>miracles</i>, which should be held to a higher standard of evidence, because of the radical consequences of their truth. For example, if someone claimed to have an experiment that violated the laws of thermodynamics, then that experiment would be held to a higher degree of scrutiny than an experiment that confirmed the laws of thermodynamics. <br /><br />Third, if you want to say that reason cannot judge the claims of religion, then what exactly can judge them without begging the question? You cannot say that a religious text is the basis for judgment, because you need a <i>reason</i> to trust the religious text. <br />dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-40645478868355749812014-05-13T03:41:16.699-07:002014-05-13T03:41:16.699-07:00Even that would not confirm its truth. It would si...<i> Even that would not confirm its truth. It would simply be more evidence of their story's consistency. The committed skeptic would not be phased.</i><br /><br />I never said it would. I only said that it was <i>necessary</i>. You are correct that it isn’t <i>sufficient</i>. However, the fact that a necessary component of the case for the miracle’s veracity is not present, we don’t need to go any further.<br /><br /><i> What you've left out is the firmness of the Disciples' belief in what they'd seen.</i><br /><br />Conviction is a sign that they <i>believed</i> in the truth of the resurrection, but that is not a reliable indicator that the resurrection is, in fact, true. I can provide numerous examples of people with firm beliefs that are utterly false.<br /><br /><i>If I remember correctly, all but one was martyred for preaching Jesus's Resurrection, and their followers faced similar persecution. Why would a lie be endorsed so firmly? Surely a charlatan would have given up his lie sooner than he would die for it.</i><br /><br />I don’t think they were charlatans. They were not <i>intentionally</i> committing a fraud. I think that a number of well-known subconscious psychological phenomena occurred to them that resulted in their devoted belief and self-sacrifice.<br /><br />I think that they were devastated by the death of their messiah, and some of them likely experienced bereavement hallucinations of Jesus, which were the source of the resurrection stories. After discussing and communicating their experiences with one another, an overall narrative was subconsciously agreed upon, major differences were forgotten, and source amnesia resulted in their belief that they themselves had experienced a risen Jesus. And given the fact that belief in a risen Jesus was a brilliant solution to the intense cognitive dissonance they experienced at his death, they believed it in fervently, to the point of martyrdom. <br /><br />Of course, this is only a hypothesis, but it nicely fits the facts of the case, and does not require a supernatural intervention. However, that does not rule out the possibility of a supernatural intervention. It just means that (a) there is an alternative natural account of what happened, and (b) there is insufficient evidence to know whether the natural or supernatural accounts are true. I typically tend to default to the natural explanation as more likely, because it is rooted in phenomena that we have a better understanding of than miracles.<br /><br /><i> You could not claim to know anything about the true political climate of ancient Rome, or the actual philosophies or religious practices of the ancient Greeks. All of our information about them was filtered through the hands of countless scribes, and much of it was claimed in the first place to have been written well after the events in question, by parties interested in furthering one cause or another. That's just scratching the surface of the implications of your position.</i><br /><br />I understand the implications of my position. I actually don’t know what actual historians would say, but I know that history is already understood to be far less rigorous that natural science, and that is based upon the inferior reliability of the historical evidence. So, saying that historical conclusions are far less reliable and are more speculative than some contemporary scientific conclusions is not so far fetched.dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-61721235147944476902014-05-13T03:40:31.071-07:002014-05-13T03:40:31.071-07:00Discovering the truth or falsehood of supra-ration...<i> Discovering the truth or falsehood of supra-rational beliefs is a difficult and merely probable exercise, but methods--again: witness, coherence, mythological power, miracle claims and so on--exist. </i><br /><br />The question is not whether methods exist, because they do, but rather whether the methods that are used are <i>reliable indicators of the truth</i>. If there are elements of the methods that are unreliable indicators of the truth, then the methods themselves will be compromised, unless there is some way to <i>control</i> for the unreliable factors. You have yet to demonstrate in any way that the methods you endorse are reliable indicators of religious truth. I mean, did you conduct an experiment where you used your methods, as well as method A, method B, and method C, and you found that your methods led to religious truth more often than A, B or C?<br /><br /><i> Even if you reject all religious claims as insufficiently substantiated, you will supplant them with a secular metanarrative that faces the same problems as the systems you attack.</i><br /><br />The difference is that my “secular metanarrative”, to use your terminology, is agnostic about matters that it has unreliable information about. I am actually perfectly happy to say that we do not know whether Jesus rose from the dead, but I would say that someone who firmly believes that he rose from the dead on the basis of the evidence at hand is <i>wrong</i> to do so. And thus, my metanarrative does not have the same problems as yours, because you are making a <i>truth claim</i> that lacks a reliable methodology to determine the truth, and utilizes information that is simply insufficient to demonstrate the truth of your claim at all. Better to be agnostic about it.<br /><br /><i> It implies that the quest for perfection is in vain, and that wisdom--no matter how long we seek it--will never be found. Settling for "relative goodness" sounds like something that Nietzsche's last men would do. It's absurd, plain and simple.</i><br /><br />It is not in vain, even if the end is unattainable. The <i>journey</i> towards that end is itself beneficial and enhances the goodness and well-being of the individual on the journey. <br /><br /><i> The question is whether these are used to support the faith, or if they are merely part of its mythology.</i><br /><br />I suspect there are differing opinions on this matter. <br /><br /><i> Which therefore precludes the vast majority of the historian's work. If you're going to be a historical skeptic, I can't stop you; but I'll expect you to stick to it in this discussion.</i><br /><br />Sure thing.<br /><br /><i> This is interesting. However, even if we allow that the methods of the study were sound (a huge assumption in today's academic world), the example still fails to be analogous to miracle claims. The explosion of the Challenger and the event of a miracle are self-evidently different in kind, given that one stems from the natural order and the other from supernature.</i><br /><br />But the underlying principle is the same. You claimed that some events are so <i>momentous</i> and <i>emotionally salient</i> that they couldn’t possibly lead to memory distortion, and I provided scientific evidence that this claim is false. The main point is that even if the disciples <i>did</i> witness a miracle, it does not follow that their memories of the event remained constant throughout their lives, which means taht their later testimony was not necessarily the same as their earlier memories of the event. <br />dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-90019047037925616712014-05-13T03:40:10.580-07:002014-05-13T03:40:10.580-07:00Rank:
You seem to have assumed without argument ...Rank:<br /><br /><i> You seem to have assumed without argument that the Christian saints and the wise men of other religions are on the same level. I'd like to see you back that up.</i><br /><br />Before I chase this rabbit down the hole, perhaps you could specify what precise characteristics of Christian saints you find <i>exclusively</i> in them?<br /><br /><i> Hence truth can't be said to fail to be uplifting or ennobling when understood properly, as an instance of being.</i><br /><br />I agree that being is coextensive with truth and goodness, and thus anything that exists at all is necessarily true and good <i>to some extent</i>. However, there are degrees of goodness, and thus there are degrees of truth, which means that some truths have more goodness than other truths. I would also argue that if truth T1 is coextensive with degree of goodness G1 and truth T2 is coextensive with degree of goodness G2, and G1 >> G2, then T2 is more discouraging and depressing than T1. For example, the truth that my child was raped and murdered has less goodness than the truth that my child was not raped and murdered. In that sense, the former truth is discouraging and depressing, even though strictly speaking both truths are good to some extent due to their reality.<br /><br /><i> Christianity is not defended by the worst probable arguments. In fact, its defense is sturdier than that of a lot of natural science, such as the vaccination business you brought up. The full effects of vaccination (and of any medical treatment) on the body are a mystery. Even top scientists are merely guessing, often with the aid of probability-based studies whose results are never clear. I'll take witness, coherence and power over that any day.</i><br /><br />First, you still haven’t explained to me how you know that witness, coherence and power are reliable indicators of the authenticity of a revelation. Each religious tradition has witnesses to its claims, and thus witness cannot be differentiating factor. Each religious tradition is coherent within its assumptions, and thus coherence cannot be a differentiating factor. And if power is largely the transformative impact of a set of ideas upon human beings to mold them in a particular direction, then I don’t see how it is a reliable indicator of truth. I can certainly see how it is extremely useful to better understand human psychology and what transforms our beliefs and behavior, but unless you have non-question begging way to know that the particular direction in question is reliably correlated to the truth, then you are just begging the question here.<br /><br />Second, I fail to see how you can justify the claim that the efficacy and safety of vaccines is less well established than the claim that a man died and rose from the dead 2,000 years ago. The former claim is supported the empirical study of hundreds of thousands of people over the past several decades. The latter claim is supported by a written text dated decades after the event in question that was not even written by an eyewitness at all. In fact, we do not even know the chain of transmission between the authors of the texts and the witnesses of the event. <br /><br /><i> Then your argument is trivially true: "We have X amount of time, so we'd better spend it on things that matter." This logic can be applied to anything by anyone</i><br /><br />True, but it also implies the <i>seriousness</i> of the task at hand. If you have a limited amount of time to accomplish something fundamentally important, then you would be foolish to rely upon weak and unreliable means to achieve that goal. <br />dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-27206870264688484112014-05-12T22:59:44.108-07:002014-05-12T22:59:44.108-07:00George,
I see what you're saying now. If we t...George,<br /><br />I see what you're saying now. If we take the evidence as the first proposition of a syllogism, thereby presupposing its truth, then certain conclusions necessarily follow. This would be a way of giving the evidence demonstrative rather than probable power. I'm not sure what I think--I'd have to read more about the nature of rhetoric, and what exactly separates a demonstration from a probable argument. This is a new subject for me. Good thought, though.rank sophisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01644531454383207175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-23423639002645444872014-05-12T21:54:03.322-07:002014-05-12T21:54:03.322-07:00an event or claim must be investigated to the full...<i>an event or claim must be investigated to the full rigours of natural science </i><br /><br />I don't think I used the correct term here (investigated). I didn't mean to suggest paranormal claims shouldn't be rigorously investigated, simply that they don't have to be, and rarely can be, subjected to the full methods of natural science. Jeremy Taylornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-46267354550362895262014-05-12T21:49:44.092-07:002014-05-12T21:49:44.092-07:00@rank:
You're missing my point. Of course the...@rank:<br /><br />You're missing my point. Of course the evidence itself can be questioned, and in itself can be only morally certain. But the arguments made are really of the form of "If you accept the evidence, it follows that these explanations, given by (the prosecution, Marxist or Whig historians, etc.) are untenable. And certain others are established*. That is, given the evidence -- if you believe it -- then the conclusion follows. This seems quite closely parallel to the arguments you acknowledged concerning scripture. The reliability of our texts, for instance, can be questioned, as dguller does. But if they are accepted, and believed to be revealed truth, then scripture can the basis from which you argue.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-90937091840889583142014-05-12T21:04:05.070-07:002014-05-12T21:04:05.070-07:00Jeremy, why do you think double blind tests are so...<i>Jeremy, why do you think double blind tests are so often employed in science? It's a recognition of the inherent bias of both the person being tested AND the experimenter. Why are hypotheses tested under strict controls? Why is repeatability of results demanded, performed by others who may be interested in proving you wrong? Why do most regular "natural" scientific hypotheses get rejected? Because the rigor I'm talking about applying to miracle claims is the rigor ALREADY BEING APPLIED TO NATURAL CLAIMS! It's a consistent application of empirical reasoning, so all these "question-begging" charges of yours are just non-sequiturs. </i><br /><br />So, are you arguing that scientific knowledge is the only form of knowledge? This would seem to rule out historical knowledge or common sense knowledge? You give vague allusions above, talking about pragmatic scales, or whatever, but I do not see a proper argument can make your scientism consistent with these other kinds of knowledge (and therefore not absurd).<br /><br /><br /><i>If YOU wish to suggest we ought to drop the empirical bar lower when investigating extraordinary claims of the supernatural vs what we demand in other areas of science, then YOU have to explain how you do that without special pleading or question-begging. And when and why you would switch to "it was supernatural.</i><br /><br />Firstly, this assumes that the paranormal falls under the field of scientific inquiry. I dispute this. Natural science deals with the quantifiably measurable and testable. The paranormal does not readily fit into this field of inquiry. Secondly, it is one thing to say that the paranormal cannot be proven to the certainty of many entities and theories in natural science but it is quite another to say this means we can say nothing about it. You have said next to nothing about different kinds of knowledge, with their different methods and levels of probability. That the paranormal cannot be proven with the level of probability often sought after in natural science may be true, but I do not see any argument from you about why this should mean we rule it out in investigations of any such claims.<br /><br /> As I said, you seem to love these black and white dilemma: an event or claim must be investigated to the full rigours of natural science or it can be excluded from our knowledge entirely. But this is fallacious thinking, a false dichotomy, which blatantly ignores different kinds of knowledge and fields of inquiry, with different levels of probability.Jeremy Taylornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-81030615331335619732014-05-12T21:03:00.061-07:002014-05-12T21:03:00.061-07:00Vaal,
Your post was just riddled with replies tha...Vaal,<br /><br /><i>Your post was just riddled with replies that just ignored my answers</i><br /><br />This is because you often don't answer properly; you just say the same things in slightly different ways.<br /><br />Anyway, I'm really not sure what point you think you are making on the coin flipping. Do you really think that if I admit there are secondary, corporeal causes that operate regularly without paranormal intervention, this means much for you argument? Of course, I admit that. I would have thought it was obvious.<br /><br /><br /><i>Yet I have continually explained to you: Epistemology is driven by pragmatic concerns, and we don't demand all the rigours of science in everything we do because it's impractical. We practice a scale of "looser to more rigorous empiricism" where phenomena that is a general, uncontroversial feature of our experience, like driving to work or going to a friend's house, are ideas we can accept more readily. But the more sure we want to be about something, the more we want to push the boundaries of our knowledge, or the more a proposition challenges our understanding of "plausible/normal" experience, the more care we bring to bare in investigating it. This pragmatic empirical scale may slide from the amount of effort we'd put into finding the source of a leak in the house, to buying a car, up to the amount of sceptical control an rigour for medical research and, on to finding whether Higgs boson exists or not…or for that matter, whether people can tell the future or rise from the dead. </i><br /><br />This is vague and unclear. What do you mean by empiricism here? What is the relationship of scientific knowledge to empiricism as a whole? What is the definition and the field of inquiry of scientific knowledge? Where do philosophical, historical, common sense, and other kinds of knowledge fit in?<br /><br /><br /><br />Jeremy Taylornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-61092939703912433552014-05-12T20:29:48.838-07:002014-05-12T20:29:48.838-07:00Jeremy,
And then there is this:
"As for Sai...Jeremy,<br /><br />And then there is this:<br /><br /><i>"As for Sai Baba, "people can be fooled, deluded, biased, stretch truth, engage in cognitive dissonance reduction, group think" when it comes to the naturalistic as well. I see no attempt to properly differentiate these in your comments about him, which makes your argument look like question begging."</i><br /><br />I can't believe that comment comes in reply to a post where I addressed EXACTLY that charge! <br />Did you not read this part?:<br /><br />ME: <i>"This doesn't only apply to the supernatural; it's a consistent application of the SAME strictures applied to scientists themselves. Those types of anecdotes are "not good enough" for scientists either. It's a crucible of skepticism, and as any scientist knows, most of their hypotheses do not survive the crucible. A scientist feels lucky if one or two of his hypotheses ever survive the crucible of scientific scrutiny.<br />So it's not like just supernatural claims are being unfairly asked to pass such skeptical bars."</i><br /><br />Jeremy, why do you think double blind tests are so often employed in science? It's a recognition of the inherent bias of both the person being tested AND the experimenter. Why are hypotheses tested under strict controls? Why is repeatability of results demanded, performed by others who may be interested in proving you wrong? Why do most regular "natural" scientific hypotheses get rejected? Because the rigor I'm talking about applying to miracle claims is the rigor ALREADY BEING APPLIED TO NATURAL CLAIMS! It's a consistent application of empirical reasoning, so all these "question-begging" charges of yours are just non-sequiturs.<br /><br />If YOU wish to suggest we ought to drop the empirical bar lower when investigating extraordinary claims of the supernatural vs what we demand in other areas of science, then YOU have to explain how you do that without special pleading or question-begging. And when and why you would switch to "it was supernatural." (I already gave examples of what type of evidence I'd accept for miracles).<br /><br />The problem is, for you to even begin such an answer you'll actually have to be addressing exactly the issues I have been raising - understanding and acknowledging why we use certain empirical principles - what epistemological issues they are there to address in the first place. If you could start putting these problems together into some coherent method, I'd be all ears, but it's been like pulling teeth. <br /><br />Anyway, I'm not expecting this to go anywhere so that's that I think.<br /><br />Vaal Vaalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14896147903257500224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-62600557720680452152014-05-12T20:29:20.619-07:002014-05-12T20:29:20.619-07:00I don't have time to get to everyone else toda...I don't have time to get to everyone else today (hopefully back tomorrow).<br /><br />Jeremy<br /><br />Well, this is just going in circles again. <br /><br />Remember, in the case of the claim of a coin-flipping miracle, I asked you specifically: <b> "please tell me the reason why you needn't believe it was a miracle…and in what way you distinguish this from "normal" coin flips that are not miracles."</b><br /><br />Can you answer that, please? It's central to the debate, to get at whether either of us are actually question-begging.<br /><br />Replying that you don't think the "paranormal" is involved in coin flipping is too vague and just avoids answer the question. WHY DON'T YOU attribute supernatural intervention/agency to coin flipping? What is the basis you've used to infer "normal" coin flipping is "not supernatural intervention" vs when something IS supernatural intervention? How do you do this without, on your own logic, "question-begging? What would YOU mean by "natural" vs "supernatural?" or, as I said, supply your own words and explain the distinctions you want to make. <br /><br />Your post was just riddled with replies that just ignored my answers. For instance this:<br /><br /><i>"You did not do this properly previously, nor deal with the absurdities which would seem to arise from such a claim, like not being able to say we know where our friend's house was."</i><br /><br />Yet I have continually explained to you: Epistemology is driven by pragmatic concerns, and we don't demand all the rigours of science in everything we do because it's impractical. We practice a scale of "looser to more rigorous empiricism" where phenomena that is a general, uncontroversial feature of our experience, like driving to work or going to a friend's house, are ideas we can accept more readily. But the more sure we want to be about something, the more we want to push the boundaries of our knowledge, or the more a proposition challenges our understanding of "plausible/normal" experience, the more care we bring to bare in investigating it. This pragmatic empirical scale may slide from the amount of effort we'd put into finding the source of a leak in the house, to buying a car, up to the amount of sceptical control an rigour for medical research and, on to finding whether Higgs boson exists or not…or for that matter, whether people can tell the future or rise from the dead. <br /><br />This is the heuristic I keep explaining we all use for why extraordinary claims require stronger lines of evidence, and why we do not require this of "ordinary" claims for which we already have plenty of experience and evidence for their plausibility. Vaalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14896147903257500224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-13155267114490716862014-05-12T19:48:11.438-07:002014-05-12T19:48:11.438-07:00George,
Hearsay is when A tells what B said and t...George,<br /><br /><i>Hearsay is when A tells what B said and the like; not direct witnesses' testimony.</i><br /><br />I slipped into informal language for a moment, unintentionally. I'd forgotten the legal distinction between hearsay and eyewitness testimony. Apologies.<br /><br /><i>If I have 3 others who will testify that I was playing bridge with them, in Richmond, from 6 to 12, then I cannot have shot someone in Washington. That is conclusive proof.</i><br /><br />Except that there's no way to prove that they aren't lying. You can say that it's an unreasonable doubt given the circumstances; but you certainly haven't proven your case.<br /><br /><i>Another point I have to make is that your account sounds a bit Protestant, in the emphasis on scripture alone. Both Catholic and Orthodox take scripture as part of, and only reliably interpreted within, Church Tradition. The conclusions of the Counsels was made in terms like "This is the Faith which was handed down by the Apostles", "It seemed to the Holy Ghost and to us", or "Peter has spoken through Leo."</i><br /><br />If I came across like this, it was an accident. I've argued with dguller before about the primacy of the holy tradition over the scriptures, given that the tradition gave rise to the scriptures. He's aware of my historicist position on the importance of traditions in general--and, indeed, I've made references in that direction during this very argument. My beliefs on the matter are similar to those of Alasdair MacIntyre. That should be enough to clear up the Protestant confusion.<br /><br />Scott,<br /><br /><i>You've omitted eyewitness testimony right along with expert witnesses—and, for that matter, conclusive physical evidence.</i><br /><br />Evidence is inconclusive by default. That's what it means to be evidence rather than proof. There are different degrees of inconclusiveness, certainly, but nothing beyond that. As for the hearsay comment, as I said to George, that was sloppy usage on my part. My point was that no testimony can be conclusive, even if it may be convincing. And the testimony of eyewitnesses and experts will of course be more convincing than typical hearsay.rank sophisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01644531454383207175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-16227007929888158102014-05-12T19:06:32.536-07:002014-05-12T19:06:32.536-07:00dguller,
"Third, the truth of the Fall depen...dguller,<br /><br /><i>"Third, the truth of the Fall depends upon the truth of the Bible itself. You would have to first show that the Bible is a reliable and truthful document, and only then could it be used as the basis for any explanations. However, since the Bible is an ancient text whose records occur millennia after the events in question, it simply cannot be held to be a reliable text regarding ancient history, unless corroborated by compelling and independent evidence."</i><br /><br />This is a bit unclear. It is entirely possible to accept the Bible as being true in some sense, without necessarily being wholly literal about the doings of Adam & Eve & the serpent. Of course, some sense of reliability is required.<br /><br /><i>"All we have are written texts that were (a) recorded decades after the event in question, and (b) lacking any reliable chain of transmission between the event in question and the recording of the event. Those two factors make it virtually impossible to know what actually happened prior to the written texts themselves. Maybe there was an actual resurrection, which was observed by the disciples, and who communicated their experience to others, who meticulously communicated their testimony, through an unbroken and reliable chain of transmission to the written recording of the event. Or maybe something else happened. The point is that there are a number of possible antecedent historical events that are consistent with (a) and (b), and there is no way to distinguish between them at all. And at the very least, we should remain agnostic about what happened."</i><br /><br />You seem to be setting a standard which no historian would accept. The NT, as we have it, is far better founded, by this standard, than the campaigns and battles of Alexander or Caesar. (Well, we do have archaeological evidence about the siege of Tyre.) Are we to treat the battle of Arbela with such disregard? The conquest of Gaul?<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com