tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post8256724488151434447..comments2024-03-18T15:57:33.286-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: Walter Mitty atheismEdward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger283125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-22466827820346356722023-05-08T07:16:00.851-07:002023-05-08T07:16:00.851-07:00Here is what Public Enemy #1 of Nazi Germany had t...Here is what Public Enemy #1 of Nazi Germany had to say about this. (src: time dot com slash Einstein-England)<br /><br />Relevant Einstein quotes.<br />"I'm not a Communist but I can well understand why they destroyed the Church in Russia. All the wrongs come home, as the proverb says. The Church will pay for its dealings with Hitler, and Germany, too." <br /><br />"You know what the Herdenmenschen (men of herd<br />mentality) can do when they are organized and have a leader, especially if he is a spokesmen for the Church. I do not say that the unspeakable crimes of the Church for 2000 years had always<br />the blessings of the Vatican, but it vaccinated its believers with the idea: 'We have the true God, and the Jews have crucified Him.' " (Einstein: anti-vaxxer? ;) )<br /><br />Hitler's religion is almost besides the point, because 97.5% of Nazi Germany was Christian after he unified the Protestants into the German Evangelical Church. (They were 54%, Catholics 40%, 3.5% were non-denominational Christians.) This is according to the official census in 1939. To think that an atheist duped everyone is silly; even at 70% the USA could never have a non-Christian POTUS. The reason our country hates socialism so much is that it has become "the Jew" or scapegoat for Nazi blame. Hey- its in the acronym itself, right? Well, try to explain pastor Martin Niemoller's "first they came for the socialists", written during his 7 years in the camps after rebuking Hitler. Or Einstein's "Why socialism?" essay. He was Public Enemy #1 of Nazi Germany, so you would think he would be a good judge of socialism, and of the church. See above quotes. <br /><br />I will mention it is specifically because most Western historians are Christian that he is regarded as an atheist. Die hard neo-Nazis have troves of videos and writings of his that "prove" he was Christian. Nothing he has ever said in a public speech or in Mein Kampf could be construed as anti-Christian, while there are nearly 100 references to God in Mein Kampf. Further: the Holocaust is almost exactly word-for-word following Martin Luther's instructions within his book "The Jews and their Lies".<br /><br />From WIkipedia:<br />In the treatise, he argues that Jewish synagogues and schools be set on fire, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes burned, and property and money confiscated. Luther claimed they should be shown no mercy or kindness,[2] afforded no legal protection,[3] and "these poisonous envenomed worms" should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time.[4] He also seems to advocate their murder, writing "[W]e are at fault in not slaying them".[5]<br />The book may have had an impact on creating later antisemitic German thought.[6] With the rise of the Nazi Party in Weimar Germany, the book became widely popular among its supporters.<br />During World War II, copies of the book were commonly seen at Nazi rallies, and the prevailing scholarly consensus is that it may have had a significant impact on justifying the Holocaust.[7] Since then, the book has been denounced by many Lutheran churches.[8]"<br /><br />Anyways- Real Christians don't even exist anymore. If you love your enemies, turn the other cheek, resist not evil, judge not- then you are a Real Christian. I think only John qualified. He and Jesus had a special thing going- he is the only one of the apostles who loved Jesus, really. The rest didn't even show up to see Jesus off! Some friends THEY were. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-38411889575938667882023-05-08T06:49:27.515-07:002023-05-08T06:49:27.515-07:00John, this isn't an echo chamber. If it was, t...John, this isn't an echo chamber. If it was, then everybody would be agreeing about stuff. Instead, there are a large spectrum of perspectives here. You are correct to say that echo chambers (and bubble filters) have extremely negative characteristics; they make virtual monocultures, and monocultures tend toward extremism / totalitarianism because there is no dissenting view. Take, for instance, Nazi Germany, with its 97.5% Christian populace [according to the official census in 1939] or the largely Shinto population of Imperial Japan in the same era. The soldiers of the first group murdered 27 million people, largely civilians, and the second group's numbers are estimated at around 20 million, according to Wikipedia. Nazi apologists (read: Christians) tend to respond with whataboutisms regarding Mao's "Great Leap Forward" and Stalin's "Holodomor" - it is true that many died on their watch, I won't deny that. 8 nations out of all 200 consider those to be genocides, though- because no evidence could be found that they were intentional. Instead, they were a result of an attempt to modernize and build rifles/tanks to prepare for Hitler's invasion. Not enough farms were kept while converting to factories, and a perfect storm was created after the stock market crash / drought. It wasn't easy in the USA, either- google Dust Bowl. In any case, Communism as it existed in those days was also a monoculture- essentially a religion. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-32139508983495173532015-10-24T20:42:32.171-07:002015-10-24T20:42:32.171-07:00...
He tried to derive from classical theism more......<br /><br /><i>He tried to derive from classical theism more specific expectations (just as I keep saying you need to do) for instance, that classical theistic arguments imply we ought to expect revelation, and that it would be most fitting in the context of a "resurrection."</i><br /><br />Well, if he's relying on something like your argument to claim that classical theism has to argue for more specific expectations, then I think he's wrong, because your argument seems to me confused. But of course he is not relying on something like your argument, so that's beside the point.<br /><br />My approach here is also somewhat consonant with his. Part of the fittingness of the resurrection is that it's something we have good reason to believe has no naturalistic explanation, whereas remission of cancer, for instance, is different. Classical theists also hold that there's something to say about human anthropology and the relation of humanity to God, even on purely philosophical grounds; thus one might be more inclined to expect a miracle in a context that has a substantial impact on human conduct, and less inclined to expect a freak violation of Coulomb's law in a distant, lifeless solar system.<br /><br />I don't think the latter sort of argument is necessary. For that matter, I don't even think classical theism is necessary, though it helps. (And I imagine Professor Feser would agree with me: he doesn't think that the only rational Christians are those who have comprehended and accepted the arguments for classical theism.) I think the contemporary literature demolishing neo-Humean arguments against miracles is quite robust.Gregnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-62871949428305553022015-10-24T20:42:14.350-07:002015-10-24T20:42:14.350-07:00...
These kinds of claims remain puzzling:
The l......<br /><br />These kinds of claims remain puzzling:<br /><br /><i>The lottery ticket analogy is better because we are familiar with the fact that even granting "the existence of a ticket" that "winning the lottery" is incredibly unlikely, and hence owning a ticket, while *necessary* to win a lottery, still leaves winning the lottery extremely improbable. And thus even a ticket-holding person believing "I will win the lottery" is unjustified. They are two separate propositions, the second still requires a lot of justification not supplied by assuming the first. That keeps the problem much more in sight, than your car analogy.</i><br /><br />There's no attempt here to construct an event remotely analogous to the resurrection. There is no analog of evidence, for example. The outrageousness of your general use of examples like this is that, to be credible, it has to imply the probability <i>doesn't</i> change when you condition the hypothesis on the evidence. Suppose the lottery has been drawn but you haven't seen the number. A reliable friend of yours, as well as several of your family members, knows your number, and they all insist that you've won; you also have reason to believe they would not be pulling your leg. Now, P(R|E) is considerably higher than P(R); but if your argument can't accommodate this basic fact about probability, it's worthless.<br /><br />The bizarreness continues:<br /><br /><i>Put all those extraordinary claims in the past now. Does accepting the proposition "God exists" justify believing a claim that any of those miracles occurred YESTERDAY?</i><br /><br />Well, the obvious answer is <i>it depends</i>. As you say, we need an "empirical methodology" here; picking out descriptions of events with low expectations and ignoring the evidence on which they could be conditioned does not an apt empirical methodology make. Your cat and the crazy sounding guy on the street corner might be receiving revelations, but it's hard to imagine what evidence you would condition those on. I can't tell what meowing sounds like a divine revelation and what doesn't.<br /><br />For other examples, I think the answers to your question is possibly yes. If a childhood cancer ward is suddenly cured, and we know a lot about cancer and biology, and many doctors there testify that they regard it as a biological impossibility that they could not have played a substantial role in, then yes - the probability of a miracle is higher.<br /><br />Again, the bizarre implication of your argument is on display. Of course the probability of an arbitrary cancer ward of winding up cured tomorrow is low. Likewise, our expectation that God will cure an arbitrary cancer ward tomorrow is low. But suppose there is testimony that some cancer ward is now cancer-free. You've admitted that the probability in both cases is positive, but obviously the probabilities are not <i>equal</i>.<br /><br />...Gregnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-1378689631787187912015-10-24T20:41:41.424-07:002015-10-24T20:41:41.424-07:00@ Vaal
The finding of my car outside is supposed ...@ Vaal<br /><br />The finding of my car outside is supposed to be analogous to testimonial evidence for the resurrection. Admittedly that analogy is not airtight, since testimonial evidence is defeasible in a way my immediate perceptual experience is not. Nevertheless the defect you claim to find in my argument does not vindicate yours.*<br /><br />The problem is easily removed by modifying the example: <i>I</i> am not the one who finds my car outside. Someone else does and reports it to be; I know him to be of good character and disinclined to joke. We can also say that he has strong incentives to deny that my car was found outside, or to say nothing to me, but he nevertheless testifies that my car was found outside. (You can tell a story about damage that was done to my car or something of the sort, if you like.)<br /><br />This example cannot be claimed to assume that the miracle has occurred. The general point is that when there is testimonial evidence that something that does not occur naturally has occurred, even universal inductive evidence from past experience does not determine the probability conditioned on the fact of the testimony.<br /><br />* I deny that my argument begs the question; I think the difference is that I am using an ontological notion of a miracle, according to which a miracle is an event for which there is no natural explanation. Thus "God resurrected Jesus" is a miracle, and its analog is "My friend moved my car". Finding my car outside can't be the miracle since it might happen by non-miraculous means. Maybe I <i>did</i> move it and I, along with my family, have forgotten. Or maybe there was some quantum fluctuation and it moved through the wall on its own, which speculation was the source of this example. These unlikely non-miraculuous explanations are supposed to be analogous to "The Romans faked Jesus's execution" etc. So I think that P(R|E), as I've defined it, is really what we are interested in; since E contains the claims like "I found my car outside" and "The Apostles testified to having seen Jesus", there's no begging of the question to be seen here; those are evidence for the miracle, which is the <i>causing</i> of the interesting events by an intelligent agent.<br /><br />Your argument is, frankly, all over the place. An example is here:<br /><br /><i>See how you have just begged the question, skipped right past my argument to assume what I'm asking you to argue for? It's the "how do we establish it happened in the first place?" that you are being asked to answer. The question isn't "How did assuming your friend can move your car justify your final conclusion he moved your car." The question is "Assuming your friend can move your car, by what method will you establish that your car has indeed been moved?" </i><br /><br />You'd just accused me of begging the question "<i>that I now find the car outside</i>"; but here you accuse me of begging the question that "[my friend] moved [my] car". These are distinct events, which were kept distinct in my presentation of the example. But you elide the distinction and shout checkmate.<br /><br />...Gregnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-68318297051498475582015-10-24T19:00:24.503-07:002015-10-24T19:00:24.503-07:00And I want to be quite clear about this, so I will...And I want to be quite clear about this, so I will set it apart by itself: almost every claim you have made about probable reasoning is not only incorrect but <i>obviously incorrect</i> on <i>every</i> significant account of real-world probable reasoning of which I am aware. I honestly have no clue what theory of probable reasoning you are assuming to be true in making any of your claims; it is not one that I seem to have ever come across, and it is not clear to me how it would handle any of the situations I have explicitly raised as problematic for your claims.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-60213343580858684542015-10-24T18:49:12.521-07:002015-10-24T18:49:12.521-07:00And "the right evidence" is the WHOLE PO...<i>And "the right evidence" is the WHOLE POINT. If on the assumption "God exists" then any particular miracle is of extraordinarily low probability, then<br />that proposition is not going to be what helps you know any miracle occurred.<br /><br />The "right evidence" therefore won't derive from "god exists," it will derive from your empirical methodology to determine IF A MIRACLE OCCURRED.</i><br /><br />Again, this is simply false, for reasons I have explicitly stated before that you have not bothered to address in your eagerness to repeat yourself like a broken record.<br /><br />(1) The example was given was simply <i>one of the many ways in which your explicit claims about probabilities are <b>provably</b> false</i>. There was no claim that this is the only way things can go; the point was explicitly that your arguments repeatedly make false claims about probability, and that you have done nothing to establish your claims because they are repeatedly based only on arguments making claims that have easily identified counterexamples.<br /><br />(2) And they continue to do so, because your above statement is not even accurate as a statement of what is happening in the example scenario; as explicitly noted, the "empirical methodology" does not necessarily establish anything on its own -- it is the combination of the two. This kind of situation is one of the most common kinds of situation in any epistemology involving probabilities, because (as I explicitly pointed out already) it is precisely this kind of scenario that is needed to handle the way physics handles probabilities. Only an <i>idiot</i> would claim that the laws of motion contribute nothing to the assessment of the probability that a given particle will be in a given region because all the initial conditions must be established empirically -- this is quite clearly not how they work, since the initial conditions on their own don't establish the probability, nor do the laws of motion on their own establish the probability. It is the <i>combination</i> of the two that establishes such probabilities. So why are you here going around giving the exact analogue of the idiot's answer in this situation, as if this, one of the most common kinds of situations in probable reasoning, were impossible? You have never bothered to establish your claims about probable reasoning here despite the fact I have <i>more than once</i> pointed out that precisely these claims have extensive counterexamples?<br /><br />I have <i>repeatedly</i> asked you to give the account of probable reasoning under which these <i>apparently nonsensical</i> claims about probabilities would make any sense, and you have <i>repeatedly</i> failed to give any. I have given counterexamples that note that almost all the claims you have made about probabilities are wrong in some situations -- and not, it should be said, really weird or esoteric situations, but situations which are extremely common and very familiar to anyone who works a lot with probable reasoning -- and you have <i>repeatedly</i> ignored them as if they were not given, preferring to repeat dogmatically claims about probable reasoning that people have already shown are problematic. I put it to you again: On what coherent account of probable reasoning do any of the claims you've made make <i>any</i> sense at all? Don't just repeat yourself again: tell us why these claims are true rather than pretending that they are not, in fact, the entire issue under discussion.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-40358274430813253912015-10-24T17:16:19.643-07:002015-10-24T17:16:19.643-07:00Brandon,
Scott already pointed out to you that ev...Brandon,<br /><br /><i>Scott already pointed out to you that even a very low probability in the general case makes it in principle possible to establish the occurrences of the miracles in combination with the right evidence.</i><br /><br />And "the right evidence" is the WHOLE POINT. If on the assumption "God exists" then any particular miracle is of extraordinarily low probability, then<br />that proposition is not going to be what helps you know any miracle occurred.<br /><br />The "right evidence" therefore won't derive from "god exists," it will derive from your empirical methodology to determine IF A MIRACLE OCCURRED.<br /><br />The only way "God exists" could HELP in vetting miracle claims is if, from that proposition, you could derive reasons to narrow down what type of miracle claims were significantly more probable (or that we might expect, given classical theism). Again, Prof Feser has essentially acknowledge this by outlining how this might be achieved in previous posts (and I didn't think it looked promising).<br /><br />This leaves the New Atheist critiques of the method by which Christians claim to know Christianity is true, to be perfectly untouched by the assumption of classical theism (unless the classical theist can produce the argument showing otherwise…and I haven't seen a remotely successful one made yet)<br /><br />But, this being the internet, it's no use trying to continue until we agree :-)<br />That was my last attempt to focus on my argument, and at this point I'll have to throw in the towel.<br /><br />Thanks folks,<br /><br />Vaal<br />Vaalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14896147903257500224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-89837449871921066042015-10-24T17:15:47.499-07:002015-10-24T17:15:47.499-07:00Brandon,
As Scott previously pointed out to you, ...Brandon,<br /><br /><i>As Scott previously pointed out to you, one of the issues is, in fact, your absurd claim (among several others) that divine intervention is not made more probable by the existence of God than it would be if God did not exist;</i><br /><br />I can't see the use in spending my time telling you, or Scott, yet again I've made no such argument. What I've said from the first is that I'm not taking the position "God does not exist," rather I can assume (for sake of argument or hypothesis) "God exists" and then see what follows. And in particular, "Granting God exists"…how will we determine that any miracle happened?<br /><br />Everything in your reply utterly misses this argument. Your example of government bugging your phone misses it too. Like Greg's analogies, yours seems aimed at showing how it is justified to conclude "God was the CAUSE of an extraordinary occurrence (e.g. a miracle)," but my arguments concern "how will you know that an extraordinary occurred in the first place?" <br /><br />If your Government analogy is to have any relevance to this, your finding the bug on your phone has to be analogous to a "miracle happened (an extraordinary occurrence not possible in the natural order)." In other words: including that you know your phone was bugged is the same as saying we know Jesus rose from the grave, which begs the question against the actual argument I've been making.<br /><br />So: IF you could establish the Jesus rose from the grave, and could exclude all other natural-order explanations, then, ok, classical theism allows you to say God Did It. (Though I'd dispute that in a different argument, I'm granting it for this argument). Note that this already allows the type of evidential connection you seemed to be arguing for in your bugging scenario. Yes, I can agree.<br /><br />But my argument isn't concerned with how "God exists" confirms "God did a miracle" AFTER you've established a miracle occurred! My argument is concerned with the question: what methodology will you use to establish a miracle occurred in the first place? E.g. what methodology will you use to establish Jesus rose from the grave, which will eliminate alternate possibilities within the natural order? The assumption "God exists" doesn't tell you the answer to that! Leaving you with some other method to vet all possible miracle claims.Vaalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14896147903257500224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-16409746824821012032015-10-24T17:08:54.712-07:002015-10-24T17:08:54.712-07:00Greg,
So, again, granting the existence of a God ...Greg,<br /><br />So, again, granting the existence of a God who can perform miracles:<br /><br />Does this give us justification to believe that tomorrow:<br /><br />- My cat will start meowing a new divine revelation from God?<br />- One childhood cancer ward full of kids will be cured?<br />- A dinosaur will materialize at a Walmart with a new commandment written on it's side?<br />- The crazy sounding guy on the street corner will be channeling God?<br />- My Evian water will turn into wine?<br /><br />No. The list of "possible" miracles compatible with "God exists" is almost endless. It doesn't help focus justification that any specific miracle will occur.<br /><br />The same problem goes for miracle claims for the past. Put all those extraordinary claims in the past now. Does accepting the proposition "God exists" justify believing a claim that any of those miracles occurred YESTERDAY? Or any of the innumerable such claims that could be made? No. It doesn't give you any help in terms of sifting through those probabilities. <br /><br />And THIS is the gap between classical theism and the justification for accepting specific Christian miracle claims I'm pointing at. "God exists" still leaves a vast gap in terms of justifying specifically Christian beliefs. Prof Feser has written on this before, and he made an effort to sketch an outline of how one might employ classical theism in support of Christianity. He tried to derive from classical theism more specific expectations (just as I keep saying you need to do) for instance, that classical theistic arguments imply we ought to expect revelation, and that it would be most fitting in the context of a "resurrection."<br /><br />In previous posts, Prof Feser clearly understands and has tried to address (at least partly) the problem I'm arguing, and it's strange to see this obvious problem so resisted here. Prof Feser suggested that the arguments for classical theism can narrow probabilities and explanations so the type of miracles we would expect are more consistent with Christian claims than with other religions. EXACTLY what I'm saying you need to do!<br /><br />(Unfortunately Prof Feser punted to the evidentialist arguments of guys like W.L. Craig for the resurrection, and so he left that gulf he was building uncrossed, IMO. Atheist critiques of the empirical reasoning used by Craig and other apologists for the Resurrection are valid critiques).<br /><br />So as to your second post:<br /><br /><b>It isn't a question of my friends existence, but how <i>my knowledge of his existence</i> influences the way I judge the probability that my friend moved my car <i>conditioned upon</i> the fact that my car<i> did</i> move, and whatever other evidence I had.</b><br /><br />As before, since you have formed your own analogy that would beg the question (by including the fact of the car moving), your analogy is irrelevant to my argument. Whatever point you wish to make, it is not arguing against the one I'm making :-)<br /><br />Cheers,Vaalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14896147903257500224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-56661674844884649072015-10-24T17:03:45.013-07:002015-10-24T17:03:45.013-07:00Greg,
To see why your car analogy isn't apt, ...Greg,<br /><br />To see why your car analogy isn't apt, and doesn't undermine what I've argued, you need to remember my argument grants the existence of a God who can do miracles, but is concerned with "given this, HOW will we know when God has done a miracle?" That is: What methodology will we use to vet any claim that something miraculous has happened?<br /><br />Now go back to your car analogy. Insofar as it would be relevant to my argument, your "finding the car outside the garage" would be analogous to "a miracle happened" (an extraordinary event impossible in the natural order). And your "friend" plays the role of God who can cause this event to happen. <br /><br />Now note in your analogy, you include this proposition:<br /><br /><b>"But <i>given that I now find the car outside, </i>it is reasonable to ascribe high probability to my friend's having moved it."</b><br /><br />In other words, your analogy ASSUMES the "miracle" has been established! It's analogous to saying <i>"Given we find that Christ had risen from the dead…."</i> (and all other possibilities have been excluded). And then, gee, we can say God did a miracle!<br /><br />See how you have just begged the question, skipped right past my argument to assume what I'm asking you to argue for? It's the "how do we establish it happened in the first place?" that you are being asked to answer. The question isn't "How did assuming your friend can move your car justify your final conclusion he moved your car." The question is <i>"Assuming your friend can move your car, by what method will you establish that your car has indeed been moved?"</i> <br /><br />Does the existence of your friend establish THAT your car was moved? <br />No, it doesn't at all. The argument showing your car was moved will necessarily be a different argument about empirical methodology for vetting improbable claims!<br /><br />And this is why, with apologies, I think your car analogy is poorly formed to grasp the point, because finding a car outside a garage is such a mundane proposition it makes it hard to keep in mind the type of extraordinary improbability associated with a miracle. The lottery ticket analogy is better because we are familiar with the fact that even granting "the existence of a ticket" that "winning the lottery" is incredibly unlikely, and hence owning a ticket, while *necessary* to win a lottery, still leaves winning the lottery extremely improbable. And thus even a ticket-holding person believing "I will win the lottery" is unjustified. They are two separate propositions, the second still requires a lot of justification not supplied by assuming the first. That keeps the problem much more in sight, than your car analogy.Vaalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14896147903257500224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-1574671342678605502015-10-24T10:08:32.205-07:002015-10-24T10:08:32.205-07:00@Vaal
But remember the lottery ticket example. Ca...@Vaal<br /><br /><i>But remember the lottery ticket example. Can Fred move the probabilities of his winning the lottery "slightly?" Sure. He can buy a ticket. Or two. Or a bit more…three. But having moved the odds only this much, has he justified his belief that he will win the lottery? Clearly not, right? He has to go much further than that to show his belief in the extraordinary unlikelihood of his winning the lottery is a rationally justified belief. Just holding a ticket doesn't do this.<br /></i><br /><br />I agree with you but I think the analogy that you are using where you equate the existence of a ticket with the existence of God does not follow in my humble opinion. Instead as I mentioned earlier the analogy with the existence of the creator of the PowerBall lottery is better equated with the existence of God.<br /><br /><br /><i>Unfortunately your re-formulation of the analogy presumes a legitimate occurrence of revelation, and so it just begs the question.<br /></i><br /><br />That is exactly my point. If we re-formulate your analogy then asking whether the existence of the PowerBall creator does not raise the probability of Fred winning the lottery is fairly obvious. A better question would be to ask whether the letter to Fred (revelation) is legitimate or not. That is exactly the case with the existence of God. If you say that God exists then it is fairly obvious that the probability of a miracle increases as Scott, Brandon and Greg have shown. An interesting thought experiment to the analogy is that even if Fred gets the letter that says that he will win the lottery he still has to go buy the ticket and do his part in the process.<br /><br />As a side note I am not a metaphysician by any stretch and am still in the process of learning it. I appreciate very much not only this blog and Dr. Ed but also people like Scott, Brandon and Greg that have helped me so much by writing their comments on this blog. Keep up the great work and thank you.Jasonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00179407397126820786noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-88034375791260419242015-10-24T07:54:30.920-07:002015-10-24T07:54:30.920-07:00Vaal: "adding God does not raise the odds of ...Vaal: "adding God does not raise the odds of gravity being altered"<br /><br />Forgive me for butting in here. I'm not a trained metaphysician, and am not capable of following some of the deeper reasonings going on, but to my simple mind that statement is obviously false. If God does not exist, then nothing exists that can alter gravity and the claim that gravity was altered must be false because it is an impossibility. If God exists, then something exists that can alter gravity and the claim that gravity was altered may not be false because it is a possibility.Liberteurhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17878796551917615050noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-51445984570990049752015-10-24T04:56:33.884-07:002015-10-24T04:56:33.884-07:00...
In responding to this, you seem to be (as you......<br /><br />In responding to this, you seem to be (as you like to say) "moving the goalposts":<br /><br /><i>Whatever justifications you had for believing your friend exists and had the key, however good those are, they do NOT help in justifying the *different* and by definition extraordinarily improbable claim that your car was moved. Remember, again, the question isn't "does God exist" it is "does granting that God exist help justify the belief that God did any particular miracle."</i><br /><br />In both cases, our interest is P(R|E). In the car case, R := "my friend moved my car", E := "my car had been moved in the morning, my friend has a key, I did not move it, etc.". In the miracle case, R := "God resurrected Jesus", E := "Jesus was seen to have died, Jesus was later seen to be alive by such and such witnesses, etc.".<br /><br />It isn't a question of my friends existence, but how <i>my knowledge of his existence</i> influences the way I judge the probability that my friend moved my car <i>conditioned upon</i> the fact that my car <i>did</i> move, and whatever other evidence I had. Even if the expectation of my friend moving my car is low, which in this context just means he has never done it in the past, the probability that he moved my car might be high. I will judge this probability to be nontrivially higher when I know that my friend exists and has a key; likewise, I will judge the probability of the resurrection to be nontrivially higher when I know that God exists and resurrection is within his power.Gregnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-92149367140865569492015-10-24T04:56:16.653-07:002015-10-24T04:56:16.653-07:00@ Vaal
in order for your scenario to be analogous...@ Vaal<br /><br /><i>in order for your scenario to be analogous to what I'm arguing, the probabilities we are talking about aren't only those of how the physics of your car operate; they also concern the probabilities of your friend moving your car. <br /><br />As I've argued, even IF we grant that God exists: the expectations built up by our experience, as exemplified most rigorously in science, are in effect tests of God's nature. If God sustains the way things are, and all our experience and understanding of, for instance gravity, keeps telling the same story, then our experiments concerning gravity amount to concluding "It is not in God's nature to intervene in the attraction of mass." (i.e. suspend gravity miraculously).<br /><br />Thus we have the same empirical expectations either way, and adding God does not raise the odds of gravity being altered.<br /><br />So to be truly analogous, we have to say that though your friend may have a key, you have an overwhelming amount of evidence supporting the conclusion that your friend will not move your car when you aren't looking. Akin to how strong our expectations are that gravity will not be altered. Your friend moving the car is so improbable as to constitute a miracle. Hence the claim the car has been moved outside the garage not by yourself but by your friend (with no other possible explanation) should have to meet the most rigorous standards of scrutiny reserved for accepting that anything utterly anomalous to our experience has occurred.</i><br /><br />I'm aware you've given this argument; my car story is intended as a counterexample.<br /><br />In the example, I do not know much of anything about "the probabilities of [my] friend moving [my] car" prior to his doing so. I know that they are positive. In an appropriately elaborated story, I can also ascribe arbitrarily <i>high</i> probability to the proposition that the car won't move outside unless either me or my friend is involved (this is analogous to our knowing that people don't resurrect by natural means: I might know that my friend is still alive, keeps the key in a secure place, etc.). Likewise, I can ascribe arbitrarily high probability to the proposition that I didn't move my car outside (I do not remember doing so and have a good memory, my keys are where I remember setting them down the day before, my family all testify to my not doing so, etc.).<br /><br />I don't know what you mean by "an overwhelming amount of evidence supporting the conclusion that your friend will not move your car when you aren't looking". We can say that I gave my friend the key years ago and, every night since, he has not moved my car outside. But <i>given that I now find the car outside</i>, it is reasonable to ascribe high probability to my friend's having moved it. If my car <i>did</i> move overnight and other explanations are excluded with high probability, then - as Brandon has illustrated by another example - the probability of the remaining explanation (conditional on the evidence) can be made high - even if the bare expectation is low. This is just how probability works.<br /><br />...Gregnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-3975311021533242062015-10-23T20:52:41.771-07:002015-10-23T20:52:41.771-07:00Again, please remember: the issue isn't whethe...<i>Again, please remember: the issue isn't whether God exists and makes extraordinary miracle events possible, it's whether God makes them more probable. If miracles, even given God, remain extraordinarily improbable, then you are left justifying your belief that something extraordinarily improbable happened on OTHER arguments. </i><br /><br />First, this discussion is not about miracles. This discussion is about your failure to provide a coherent (much less plausible) account of probabilistic reasoning that makes any sense of your repeated claims about reasoning about miracles. Second, this is not how probabilistic arguments work, since an argument establishing that X is possible even if improbable in itself and an argument establishing that certain other conditions have occurred may combine to yield in a single argument to yield the conclusion that X probably did occur despite its low probability. Third, you are incorrect about the 'issue' even in your own terms. As Scott previously pointed out to you, one of the issues is, in fact, your absurd claim (among several others) that divine intervention is not made more probable by the existence of God than it would be if God did not exist; and, as he also pointed out to you, once it is established that classical theism raises the probability of miracles, even if it leaves them very improbable, that raises the question of whether there is evidence that can combine with this fact to make it reasonable to believe that some miracle or other has occurred. Remember, much of this discussion started out with your claims that classical theism was a 'red herring' in this context; that believers in addressing certain critiques were engaging in what looked like a disingenuous trick; etc. All of this, again, seems to be backed by an utterly incoherent view of probable reasoning -- at least, people have been pointing out the problems with your claims about reasoning, and you have simply gone on reiterating them.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-55183492405446909612015-10-23T20:52:31.466-07:002015-10-23T20:52:31.466-07:00We have to talk about "expectation" give...<i>We have to talk about "expectation" given classical theism, if classical theism is to be adduced in support of specific Christian claims. The only REASON to adduce CT in supporting belief in Christian miracles is IF Christian miracles become more expected on classical theism than without classical theism. </i><br /><br />No, this is, again, simply false. Indeed, it is trivially easy to see that it is nonsense. To take just one example, even using your absurd reduction of probabilities to expectations (and in your examples purely psychological experiences of expectation, to boot!), one reason why one would adduce a claim or set of claims (A) in supporting belief in another set of claims (C) even though the latter (C) do not become "more expected" on the former (A) is if the (A) claims provide a framework of inference so that other evidential claims (B) in combination with the (A) claims make the (C) claims "more expected". This is an extraordinarily common epistemological situation; one finds it regularly in the sciences -- physical equations, for instance, almost always function in this way in actual scientific explanation, since they work by making it so that other claims (about initial conditions, for instance) raise the probability of this or that event.<br /><br />The point can be made without talking about expectations, of course, which is a good thing because (in any case) your attempt to reduce probabilities to expectations, particularly in the sense in which you use the term in your examples, is a highly dubious way of thinking through probabilities at best.<br /><br /><i>Yes, but the issue is: If on "X" the occurrence "Y" remains an extraordinarily low probability, then "X" can not be used to show that Y is anything other than extraordinarily improbable!</i><br /><br />Again, this is false, and inconsistent with extremely common situations in probabilistic reasoning. Suppose, for instance, that I have a proof that it is really possible, although still very unlikely, that government agents are spying on my phone calls; and suppose I add to this that someone found a bug in my phone. The mere existence of the bug in my phone does not on its own raise the probability of government agents spying on me unless I already know that government agents are a possible, even if very low probability, cause of telephone bugging; but when the two are combined, the probability that government agents are actually spying on my phone calls is raised. If other evidence is added, the probability may be raised quite considerably. There are many more natural situations in which this kind of situation arises. Investigators into the causes of disasters regularly deal with causes that are provably unlikely on their own; but the very claims that establish that they are unlikely on their own combine with other evidential claims in such a way that, conditional on the combination, the likelihood of their actually having caused the event is quite high. Scott already pointed out to you that even a very low probability in the general case makes it in principle possible to establish the occurrences of the miracles in combination with the right evidence.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-25184278490056714912015-10-23T20:16:22.266-07:002015-10-23T20:16:22.266-07:00Jason,
Yes you got the basic analogy right. I ap...Jason,<br /><br />Yes you got the basic analogy right. I appreciate that.<br /><br />Unfortunately your re-formulation of the analogy presumes a legitimate occurrence of revelation, and so it just begs the question. <br /><br />Cheers,Vaalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14896147903257500224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-86695507499483730392015-10-23T20:15:52.659-07:002015-10-23T20:15:52.659-07:00Re classical theism:
It only needs to raise, even...Re classical theism:<br /><br /><i>It only needs to raise, even if only slightly, the probability of interventions in general.</i><br /><br />No, that's wrong for the reasons I've already given. I'm saying that the New Atheists can validly critique the methodology Christians use to accept specific miracle claims whether classical theism is true or not, since classical theism does not make those miracle claims significantly more probable. "Significantly" in terms of moving the beliefs in those miracles toward "justified." As in "New Atheist critiques of christian revelation fail because they don't address classical theism = If we add classical theism THEN the beliefs in Christian miracles become justified." <br /><br />But remember the lottery ticket example. Can Fred move the probabilities of his winning the lottery "slightly?" Sure. He can buy a ticket. Or two. Or a bit more…three. But having moved the odds only this much, has he justified his belief that he will win the lottery? Clearly not, right? He has to go much further than that to show his belief in the extraordinary unlikelihood of his winning the lottery is a rationally justified belief. Just holding a ticket doesn't do this.<br /><br />Similarly, moving the odds "slightly" in the direction of divine intervention - just showing it's possible - is of no use if that "slightly" doesn't raise the odds enough to to figure strongly in making the case a miracle DID occur. If the odds of a specific miracle happening remain incredibly low on the assumption "god exists" then justifying "that this extraordinarily improbable event occurred " will have to appeal to some other method of justification - e.g. strong empirical methodology establishing that the event occurred. And if your methodology doesn't hold up to critique, you aren't justified in believing Christianity, whether God exists or not. And appeal to classical theism can't help you.Vaalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14896147903257500224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-13411838685934745242015-10-23T20:14:58.720-07:002015-10-23T20:14:58.720-07:00Brandon,
We have to talk about "expectation&...Brandon,<br /><br />We have to talk about "expectation" given classical theism, if classical theism is to be adduced in support of specific Christian claims. The only REASON to adduce CT in supporting belief in Christian miracles is IF Christian miracles become more expected on classical theism than without classical theism. <br /><br /><i>As already noted, to talk of expectations is to treat it as a high-probability event, which is not just incorrect but logically incoherent in this context. But in practical life and in rational inquiry we treat even low-probability events in a different way than no-probability events.</i><br /><br />Yes, but the issue is: If on "X" the occurrence "Y" remains an extraordinarily low probability, then "X" can not be used to show that Y is anything other than extraordinarily improbable!<br />So adducing X into your expectations doesn't make it any more reasonable to believe that Y will, or has occurred. <br /><br />Again, please remember: the issue isn't whether God exists and makes extraordinary miracle events possible, it's whether God makes them more probable. If miracles, even given God, remain extraordinarily improbable, then you are left justifying your belief that something extraordinarily improbable happened on OTHER arguments. <br /><br />And the method of vetting the claim will be rigorous empiricism. Hence a conversation about "whether the miracle happened or not" will be an empirical methodological argument, NOT one about "whether God exists" since that doesn't help solve the question. Which is why…I'll say it again…the New Atheist remain fully justified critiquing the methodology underlying beliefs in SPECIFIC CHRISTIAN MIRACLE CLAIMS, without having to have shown first that God doesn't exist.Vaalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14896147903257500224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-84590528314800626232015-10-23T20:14:29.677-07:002015-10-23T20:14:29.677-07:00Greg, (Thanks for the very interesting comment bt...Greg, (Thanks for the very interesting comment btw.)<br /><br /><i>Now also suppose that I know my friend has keys to my garage and my car. How does this alter the probabilities derived from Completed Physics? It doesn't;</i><br /><br />Yes, but make sure you are clear: that in order for your scenario to be analogous to what I'm arguing, the probabilities we are talking about aren't only those of how the physics of your car operate; they also concern the probabilities of your friend moving your car. <br /><br />As I've argued, even IF we grant that God exists: the expectations built up by our experience, as exemplified most rigorously in science, are in effect tests of God's nature. If God sustains the way things are, and all our experience and understanding of, for instance gravity, keeps telling the same story, then our experiments concerning gravity amount to concluding "It is not in God's nature to intervene in the attraction of mass." (i.e. suspend gravity miraculously).<br /><br />Thus we have the same empirical expectations either way, and adding God does not raise the odds of gravity being altered.<br /><br />So to be truly analogous, we have to say that though your friend may have a key, you have an overwhelming amount of evidence <br />supporting the conclusion that your friend will not move your car when you aren't looking. Akin to how strong our expectations are that gravity will not be altered. Your friend moving the car is so improbable as to constitute a miracle. Hence the claim the car has been moved outside the garage not by yourself but by your friend (with no other possible explanation) should have to meet the most rigorous standards of scrutiny reserved for accepting that anything utterly anomalous to our experience has occurred.<br /><br />And therefore notice how the justification for belief your car was moved becomes dependant upon empirical methodology, NOT upon any odds that your friend moved it.<br /><br />Whatever justifications you had for believing your friend exists and had the key, however good those are, they do NOT help in justifying the *different* and by definition extraordinarily improbable claim that your car was moved. Remember, again, the question isn't "does God exist" it is "does granting that God exist help justify the belief that God did any particular miracle."<br /><br /> And if it passes that scrutiny, congratulations, a miracle. <br /><br />So granting your friend exists and has a key and could move your car is an entirely different question than asking "Did your friend actually move the car?" Same thing with the fact "God exists" does not help justify a belief that any specific miracle occurred. <br /><br /><i>I still will not tinker with my equations from Completed Physics in my ordinary day-to-day life, but (just as if my friend were part of the furniture of the world) I will be willing to entertain hypotheses in which he figures as a cause, in the face of evidence.</i><br /><br />Sure, and I can put myself be in the same position as you. I'd be willing to entertain the same hypothesis in which he figures as a cause.<br />That's what hypothesizing is often about: accepting (for sake of speculation) propositions and suggesting what we should see if those propositions are true. And looking for evidence to support the hypothesis. And by analogy, the God of classical theism doesn't seem to affect this method of operating, so if someone (e.g. a New Atheist) is criticizing an empirical inquiry (e.g. of a resurrection) on consistent, empirical methodological grounds, then adducing that God doesn't help the situation at all!<br />Vaalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14896147903257500224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-75572865767772920942015-10-23T12:51:38.447-07:002015-10-23T12:51:38.447-07:00@Vaal
If Fred's only claim were that having a...@Vaal<br /><br /><i>If Fred's only claim were that having a ticket made it "possible" to win<br />the lottery, there wouldn't be much to argue about. But Fred is trying to use the existence of his ticket to justify a totally different, extraordinary claim: his belief that HE SPECIFICALLY will win the lottery.<br />If that's Fred's claim, then his raising the probability from "zero" to "non-zero" is laughably insufficient. He hasn't shown how the existence of his ticket raises probabilities SIGNIFICANTLY ENOUGH to justify his belief he'll win, given the probabilities AGAINST his winning. <br /></i><br /><br />I totally agree with your point here. I think it is what we are saying too but correct me if I am wrong that the assumption you are making in this analogy is that “existence of the ticket” is equal to the existence of God and that the winning of the lottery is a “miracle”. <br /><br />Keeping in view your own analogy I would like to change something to the analogy to show what a Christian theist mean. Now the change is that Fred is not placing his “faith” in the existence of the ticket but the existence of the creator of the PowerBall lottery (a person) who has sent Fred a letter saying that he is going to win the lottery. Now keeping this new information in view I think it would be very reasonable to think that it raises the probability that Fred win’s the lottery and his “faith” in the existence of the creator of PowerBall lottery and the letter is justified.Jasonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-25414623263619910792015-10-23T04:41:36.597-07:002015-10-23T04:41:36.597-07:00Unless one can show how classical theism raises th...<i>Unless one can show how classical theism raises the probability of some specific instance of intervention, it's impotent in regards to their empirical expectations. </i><br /><br />This (and the paragraph it concludes) is simply incorrect, and is again an example of your incoherent handling of probabilities.<br /><br />(1) You are supposed to be arguing about what happens even if classical theism is true. But if classical theism is true all regularities in the world, including those described in the equations, depend on God's existence. Therefore, on that supposition, which you claim to be conceding for the sake of argument, empirical expectations that are fully coherent and rational will are only possible on classical theism.<br /><br />(2) You are again incoherently pretending that recognizing the existence of a possibility that is by definition of extremely low probability requires treating it as if it were a sufficiently high probability event to be <i>expected</i>. This, again, doesn't even make elementary logical sense.<br /><br />(3) It is simply false in this context that classical theism needs to raise "the probability of some specific instance of intervention". The role of classical theism here is, by the very nature of the case, no different from recognizing any other presuppositions we may need in order to apply our equations correctly. It only needs to raise, even if only slightly, the probability of interventions in general. Any rational person will recognize that their applications of their equations will not necessarily yield the right answer if a cause outside the system being described interferes; this is an elementary principle of rational modeling. (This is also another way in which your relating of probabilities and expectations is incoherent; you are confusing the probability conditional on the equations being applicable and the probability of the unusual event in itself, and you are ignoring the fact that when 'expectations' in these cases usually only means the former, not how people take into account every higher-than-zero-even-if-still-extremely-low probability that they recognize as a possibility.)<br /><br />(4) As I think Greg pointed out to you before, your thinking in terms of expectations leads you to treat probabilities as only having effect predictively -- you repeatedly slip into this in your examples. But probabilities also have effect retrodictively in the tracing of causes of events that we have evidence have already happened. This is precisely the area of probabilistic reasoning in which interference of causes outside a modeled system and in which the real possibility of extremely low probability events has the most effect.<br /><br />So, again, your argument does not seem to be based on any coherent account of reasoning with probabilities.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-85040112944012209222015-10-23T04:18:49.828-07:002015-10-23T04:18:49.828-07:00That someone falling off a cliff may pray on the w...<i>That someone falling off a cliff may pray on the way down is a red herring. The question is whether the mountain climber would be rationally justified in an extraordinary EXPECTATION of being saved. </i><br /><br />As already noted, to talk of expectations is to treat it as a high-probability event, which is not just incorrect but logically incoherent in this context. But in practical life and in rational inquiry we treat even low-probability events in a different way than no-probability events.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-88234199134358295642015-10-22T22:51:15.645-07:002015-10-22T22:51:15.645-07:00@ Vaal
Take any equation predicting the trajector...@ Vaal<br /><br /><i>Take any equation predicting the trajectory of an object.<br />Now add "God exists." <br /><br />Now show how "God exists (who could intervene) should alter ANY POINT of the equation, to alter the probabilities derived from that equation. </i><br /><br />I am somewhat puzzled that you are drawing on examples of this form. Consider the Historic Valet I mentioned on October 19, 2015 at 3:05 PM. We can model the "trajectory" of my car with whatever equation you like; stipulate that we can describe it with Completed Physics.<br /><br />Now also suppose that I know my friend has keys to my garage and my car. How does this alter the probabilities derived from Completed Physics? It doesn't; but when we condition it on evidence that in the morning the car turned out to be outside, our judgment of the probability depends on our knowledge that there exists a being within whose power it was to put my car outside.<br /><br />Now suppose that my friend is actually a Cartesian Ego, whom I know by some metaphysical argument to exist and to be capable of interacting with the world. What does this change? I still will not tinker with my equations from Completed Physics in my ordinary day-to-day life, but (just as if my friend were part of the furniture of the world) I will be willing to entertain hypotheses in which he figures as a cause, in the face of evidence.Gregnoreply@blogger.com