Oh, Tycho, but they are the same.  We are talking about two different things.  There is nothing wrong with believing the science or the proof behind it, so long as one understands that the science may eventually be disproven or superceded.  But those who believe that the current state of science is "all" they will believe in are certainly exactly like those who believe that what the Bible tells them is "all" they will believe in.

So I am talking about a specific type of "scientist," if you will, not all of them.  This is the scientist who will not believe in the testimonials of people who have witnessed facts such as the rising of the dead.  They do not accept such "facts," and are like doubting Thomas in this regard.  Instead, they have to understand the how and have the "how" proven to them before they will believe facts that are already proven by other means.

That is ignoring "facts" as surely as those who deny evolution, and clinging to a belief system to the exclusion of all other evidence.


That was not the point I made.  I am talking about people who refuse to put their belief in anything except science.  I am making no grand assertions about religion and science themselves.  Religion and science ultimately will be the one and the same -- science just has to catch up and religion has to throw away its bad interpretations.


Again, I agree with you.  That was not the point I made.


I disagree with this.  You are making a broad sweeping cliched conclusion.  Most religious people view belief without evidence as a "necessary" thing.  Using your analysis, scientific people are closed minded to anything they do not already have proof for.  Scientists also understand belief in something not proven is necessary.  That is what a "hypothesis" is.  Just as religious people can change their views over time as they learn more and become more "spiritual," so too can scientists discard their hypotheses once they are proven incorrect.

You make a broad assertion that religious people are closed minded, which is not generally the case.


Again, this is not accurate.  Religions don't believe their "beliefs" are unchanging; they believe the "principles" behind their beliefs are unchanging.  Don't scientists believe the same things about proven "theories"?  Newton's theory still stands, but it has been supplemented by quantum theory.  Likewise, the Law of Moses still stands, but it has been supplanted by the Law of Mercy (i.e., Christ) (at least to Christians).  So your premise is fundamentally false.


That's what is often said, but this is generally "not" the truth when the theory being overturned belongs to the scientist in question.  How many people have been killed in the name of science overturning previous science?  How many scientists have fudged data to prove their theories?

A key example of this is the observation errors in early theoretical and applied physics in order to prove, for example, that France was leading the world, when it turned out to be they were holding to their beliefs falsely and wanted to believe the observation error.


Again, this is not representative of what I was saying.  "Highly unlikely" and "impossible" are completely different.  "Impossible" means there is no chance in any way they can be true.  "Impossible" is a belief; "highly unlikely" is math and science.

The problem is that now you are discounting the quality of the evidence.  That is different from saying there is "no" evidence, which is what you previously claimed.

And by "book," I assume you meant the Bible.  There are numerous witness accounts of the resurrection.  The Bible is composed of many "books," and not all "books" are in the Bible, thanks to the Council of Nicea.  There are also more later witness accounts, such as that of Joseph Smith and several others in the early 19th century.

Now, you might not believe what they say, but again the testimonial "evidence" is not limited to just the Bible.

What you seem to demand is that in order to believe you must have a witness for yourself.  I can certainly understand that from a personal perspective and belief, but as an attorney, I have to use testimonial evidence all the time for things of which I have never been present or witnessed, and I have to draw conclusions for myself based on what I hear.  Whether I believe witnesses or not is my own opinion, but what they say is still "evidence," and I may never know for sure what did or did not happen relative to any particular case.  But do I choose to disbelieve all witnesses?  No.

And that is the difference, my friend, between religious believers and non-believers.  Believers see that there is some evidence out there and choose to believe it even though it cannot be proven with surety.  Non-believers choose to not believe until they have witnessed it for themselves (and even then may doubt).

This goes back to my original statement, which is that "belief" is a verb -- a choice.  Did O.J. Simpson commit murders?  I believe he did based on the evidence that was provided; but obviously the jury did not believe the evidence was enough.  Who is right and who is wrong?  We may never know, but the important thing is not to condemn me for examining the evidence and believing he is guilty.


Agreed as to the view of reality, but discussion on the same level can still be had.  Discussion, in fact, MUST be had or understanding will fall apart.

I think I realize where Tycho and I are talking crosswise.

Religion encompasses many things:
1) Truths and principles, which I liken to science.
2) Occurrences, which I liken more to evidence at court of what did or did not happen.

So with the resurrection, was Jesus resurrected?  As an occurrence, there is much testimonial evidence that he was.  The tomb was also empty, and there are similar circumstantial evidences.  Ultimately, without a personal appearance, we have to choose to believe or not believe based on the evidence.

Now is resurrection physically possible (as far as science), and does it really happen?  That is a different question.

Heath,

I should not have used the word impossible, I agree.

The forms of evidence that you choose to accept as valid are not valid according to many others, including myself.  It is what it is. I don't see a way forward through that except to wish you well in your life and to enjoy mine as much as I can as well.

I was the guy on your side of the fence not so long ago and so I can truly relate to the logic that goes on.  It was the only way I viewed the world.  Now my entire view of reality is different.

I don't judge you for having the views that you do, but I certainly no longer hold them as they are completely incompatible with my new view.

In reply to Heath (msg # 468):

Heath, I'm sure that as a lawyer you can realize that someone claiming that a lot of people saw what they claim to have seen doesn't make their claim any more likely to be true.  For example, if I say "I saw a giant pink unicorn flying in the sky today" you shouldn't believe me.  If I say "and 40 million other people saw it too!" you still shouldn't believe me.  If I'm lying about the unicorn, I could just as easily be lying about all the people.  Now, if you talk to other people, and they all back me up, that's another thing.  But when you say 500 people say Jesus after the died, you have't got the testimony of those 500 people.  You just have someone claiming that 500 people saw it.  That's a big difference.  Imagine in a court case someone saying "I couldn't have done it, I was in a Nevada with my wife and her parents at the time," and then no one bothering to actually ask the wife and in-laws if this was true.


I'm not sure if you understand how science works after hearing you say this, Heath.  It's most definitely not "if someone says X happened, then we have to believe them."  Skepticism of large claims is a key part of science.  Just because someone says something, we shouldn't automatically believe that it's true (again, as a lawyer I'm sure you're very familiar with this in situations outside of religion).


I think you're far too focused on what science or religion say is true, and not nearly focused enough on the process of how they reach those views.  The two paths are very different, regardless of whether or not the final conclusion is the same.  If you don't see that, you're really missing something very important about science (and religion, I suppose).


Every religious person I've know has treated faith as a positive virtue.  They saw people with "strong faith" in a very positive light, and people with doubts or skepticism as failing to one degree or another.  Just look at your allusion to Thomas above.  It seemed fairly clear that your intended message was that people who are like Thomas are 'doing it wrong', and would be better if they would believe the claims without demanding proof.


I'd say "skeptical" rather than close minded, and "evidence" instead of proof, but otherwise it's fairly close.  But another important aspect is that the amount of evidence (or strength of evidence) needs to be proportional to the claim.  If you tell me you've got a quarter in your pocket, I'll probably believe you, because I know quarters exist, people frequently have them in their pockets, and I don't know of any reason that you'd lie about it.  If, on the other hand, you say you've got Barrack Obama's passport in your pocket, I probably wouldn't believe you.  Not because I don't think it exists, but because it seems very unlikely that you'd have it.  In order for me to believe that, I'd probably need to see it.  And even then, I'd probably be very skeptical, since as far as I know, it seems more likely that you could get a fake passport than to actually have the president's passport.  It's not just about impossible versus possible, but rather a question of how likely a claim is to be true, and the amount/strength of evidence you need to be convinced of it.  That's not "close mindedness" in my view, but rationality.


These are very different processes, and you're ignoring/avoiding the important differences.   The reason you make a hypothesis is to test it, not to be something believed in without proof.  It's a trial answer to a question to see if it's true.  Religious people can change their faith, but they almost always tend to think what they believe is absolutely true at any given moment.  They don't have faith as a "hypothesis" to be tested, but rather an answer that they usually consider it rude/offensive to question.


In some ways yes, but in someways just the opposite.  It is usually considered wrong/bad/evil/the work of the devil/whatever to try to make someone question their faith.  That, in my view, is close-mindedness.  On the other hand, the point Doulos is making is that religious people can be very quick to accept things as true that other people consider impossible, even when there is little to no evidence to justify this.  That could be viewed as being too open minded (or probably better put as insufficiently skeptical).


I'd argue that many religious people would consider the idea of their religious beliefs changing in a very negative light.  If you asked them "do you think your religious beliefs will be different in 5 years," I think you'd get answers like "I sure hope not!"  Most religious people view the idea of changing their religious views as a failure, because like you say, they believe the principles are unchanging, so their views should be as well.  There are surely some who expect their beliefs to change over time, but I'd argue that most religious people are usually convinced that they've got the principles down already, so won't need to change their beliefs on them at all.  It's very, very rare for a religious person to say "I imagine that some of my religious beliefs about God/Morals/Good/Evil/etc are wrong."  They might say "oh, I could be wrong about some minor detail that doesn't matter much," the idea that they'd be wrong about anything important would be viewed in a very negative light.


You're trying to argue this both ways now.  Do scientists change their views or not?  You can't say they're dogmatic and refuse to change their views about old theories in one paragraph, when you just used the fact that they DO change their views as evidence that "impossible is meaningless" in the last one.  Scientists do change their views about fairly fundamental things.  Again, you're trying to equate religion and science, and are ignoring the important differences.  Scientists will say that while Newton's view of the universe is still useful today, it was factually incorrect.  Wrong.  Good, but not actually true.  If you find a christian who will say that about the law of Moses, maybe you'll start changing my mind.  But pointing out two very different things that have one or two aspects in common and saying "see, the same!" is misleading, in my opinion.



First, I think it's important to bear in mind the distinction between "science" and "scientists" here.  Yes, scientists are fallible humans that often don't live up to their own ideals.  Individual scientists sometimes fail to do science properly.  That doesn't mean that's "what science is", or that all scientists do this all the time.  Sometimes scientists do form beliefs without sufficient evidence, but that's considered a BAD thing to do in science.  It's considered a GOOD (and necessary, as you say) thing to do in religion.  I really can't stress that difference enough here.

As for people being killed in the name of overturning previous sciences, I'm not actually sure what event(s?) you're referring to.  Scientific debates can get pretty heated, but I can't think of any off the top of my head that have ended in killing people (Tycho Brahe did lose his nose in a duel over one of his theories, though, so I'll grant that case).


That's not 'science', though, but nationalism corrupting scientists.  Again, scientists can act badly, but the ideal behavior in science is to follow the evidence dispassionately.  That's not the same as the ideal in religion, where people who ask for evidence are disparaged, and those who believe without evidence held up as examples to follow.


Most people use "impossible" as shorthand for "so unlikely as to be discounted."  There are things that are so unlikely ("maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and be a giant termite!") that we can call them "impossible" without much risk.  We could go around prefacing every statement with a textbook worth of caveats ("...assuming I exist, and the sensations I feel actually represent an existing, physical universe, in which forces of gravity, electromagnetism, etc. are in operation, and in which..."), but it really doesn't add much.  When people say "that's impossible," they mean "I don't think that can happen."

Tycho, I have to disagree with you.

You seem to be claiming that "proof" and "evidence" are the same thing.  As a lawyer, I actually discount the idea of "proof" as an absolute.  One of the first things lawyers learn in law school is whether something is "relevant" or not.  It is relevant if it tends to make something at issue more or less true.  If it does, it is evidence.  Next you look at the credibility/reliability of the evidence.  People will have different outcomes on that.

You are creating a straw man argument by claiming that nonsensical claims are the same as witness accounts from many sources.  The visitation of the over 500 people by Jesus is in multiple sources.

But we are losing track of the point here.  The point is whether something is evidence or not; you are jumping to the conclusions made.  That is skipping a step.  If you say that you saw a giant pink unicorn, then that is your testimonial evidence.  Next, we look at the rest of what you said.  Have you ever lied before?  Are you delusional, etc.?  Are you just trying to be absurd?

These would give us a good reason to Since most of the New Testament facts are accepted by scholars as true (even if you discount such things as miracles and just rely on the other facts), then there is no reason to disbelieve the other parts.  That does not mean they are true, just that the only thing to make us disbelieve them is our own will to believe or disbelieve.


This is one reason why I lose interest in debating you, Tycho.  You turn things into an attack on what they other person knows or doesn't, even though you can't possibly know what the other knows.  I was premed before turning to law and read at least two science magazines a month.  I have a solid understanding.

But again, you are not focused on my point, but on a point you want people to believe I am making.  "Science" is not the issue, not at all.  Let me repeat:  "Science is not the issue."  Understood?  We all understand the purity of science.

The point that seems to be slipping past is that I am saying that scientists are human and as such, like all humans, they will believe even when all the facts are not in.

And again, you are focused on the "process" of science.  I am talking about the "people" who are scientists and their human perceptions.  They are human beings who believe or don't believe regardless of science, which ultimately just proves them wrong or right.

As to Thomas, was he doing it wrong?  You put those words in my mouth.  Had he exercised faith, however, he would not have fallen into the ocean the first time 'round.  Faith is a virtue because it is necessary, as I said.

Here's the key difference:  with science, if you get it wrong, so what?  You merely have a new theory to deal with.  With religion, if you get it wrong, your soul and salvation are on the line.  This is why faith is a virtue.  But that is not really the issue we were discussing here.

Doulos,

I hope I've been clear about the distinction between knowledge (science, supported by evidence) and belief (unsupported but consistent with evidence).

Having lost your belief in Christ, do you find that you've lost all beliefs, or only your religious beliefs? If the latter, I'm curious as to how you distinguish, and what criteria you use for those you continue to accept.

I am sorry Hakooto, I am missing something obvious I think.  How can something be unsupported and yet consistent with evidence?  What is supporting the belief if not evidence?

EDIT:  I have gone back and re-read what you posted again to try and understand and think I have a better idea.

I suppose I can honestly say that I find myself filtering most "belief-level" thoughts out of my life based on the criteria you set forward.   If there is no evidence for something (or at least evidence that I consider valid, as clearly someone like Heath and I would differ on what we would consider valid evidence) then I am unsure how I can have a belief in it.

Something like Homeopathy fits the bill here for sure.  There is no valid (in my mind) evidence that Homeopathy does anything and so I cannot hold a belief that it does anything.  Yes, there are tons of people that swear by homeopathy and have testimonies that it has done remarkable things for their health and well being.  However, when subjected to a rigorous analysis those testimonies come up completely empty.

If homeopathy can be proven to have a real effect based on testing then I am 100% open to changing my mind on the subject.  However until then God and Homeopathy now take the same place in my life.  Something that I see no evidence for and thus cannot support as being real.

So, I suppose I am in the process of filtering out all belief (as defined by you) out of my life.  I'm not sure what the proper term is for someone like that these days ... skeptic seems right, but I'm not sure if there is baggage associated with that term.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:18, Wed 03 Apr 2013.

Any proposition is true or false. But from our limited perspective, there are three possibilities: we know it's true, we know it's false, or we don't know which it is.

The first (know it's true) is the result of science: we find evidence that was predicted by the proposition, such as a drug having a statistically significant increase in curing a disease. This is more than just consistent with the evidence, but is supported by the evidence.

The second (know it's false) is similar to the first: we find evidence of something that was predicted by the negation of the proposition. I know I'm going to get blasted by someone for this, but we know young-earth creationism is false because we have found objects whose radioisotope decays show them to be more than 6000 years old. This contradicts (is not consistent with) the evidence.

The third (we don't know) is where neither of the above has succeeded, sometimes because we haven't been able to perform the experiment, and sometimes because the proposition doesn't predict any empirical behavior. One can't test the power of prayer to cure a disease, for example, because God knows you're performing the experiment, is controlling the results, and can make the statistics look just like a placebo. A statistically significant increase in cures could prove that prayer works. No significant increase in cures doesn't prove that prayer doesn't work, because God can make this experiment generate the result he wants. This is what being consistent with the evidence means, that the evidence neither proves the proposition true nor false.

As to "what is supporting the belief if not evidence?" it leads back to the great divide between believers and non-believers. Support/evidence is a pair of words expressing one concept, that of the scientific method. One can say "P is supported by the evidence", or "P is not supported by the evidence". But "P is supported but not by the evidence" doesn't appear to mean anything because it uses half a scientific phrase. I can only interpret this question as "if belief is non-scientific, what is it?", to which I can only answer "belief", because if it was scientific, it would no longer be belief.



I think skeptic is the term you're looking for, and I don't think skeptic has a negative connotation, but I'm not going to label you something you aren't comfortable calling yourself.

I totally agree with your statement about the great divide. I guess that was my initial point but probably got lost in my inaccurate phrasing of things.

I want to address this though:



If one is willing to claim that 'God fixed the results of the study to appear however He wanted' then that could just as easily apply to anything that doesn't fit with a particular belief.

The world appears old?  That's only because God makes it look that way (this is an actual argument that some Young Earth Creationists have used)

My wife was not cured of cancer from prayer? That's only because God wanted to test my faith.

Fruit flies show signs of evolution? That's only because God makes it look that way to test our faith.

Once someone goes down that road of suggesting that God trumps scientific data it completely undermines the value of any scientific study or understanding for that individual.

Picking and choosing when to accept the findings of a study might be convenient, but it's certainly not honest.

The distinction I wanted to make here was that God could have fixed the results of the experiment, not that we can show that he did, and that the results are exactly what we would have expected had God not been involved. I have heard the above YEC argument, and I will try in a later post to distinguish between these two types of arguments, because they are not the same.

I agree this "efficacy of prayer" is not an ideal example, and I'll try to come up with a more clear case of "unsupported but consistent", one that doesn't feature religion, to get my point across better.

Sounds good.

In reply to Heath (msg # 475):

So Heath, if I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying:

Things in the universe are true, for example, orbits. However, our understanding is imperfect, for example, orbital mechanics, and we as humans may extend what we DO know into what we do NOT, treating a hypothesis as an assumption, leading us into error. Is this correct?

(As a note, this isn't technically 'science'. Science is create a hypothesis, test it, revise the hypothesis. So for example, String Theory is not science, because it is not testable. The edge of orbital mechanics also isn't science, for the same reason, but enters into science as our ability to understand and test grows.)

I do think, in popular media, that this is largely due to a bleed-over of terms. People apply the term 'science' to anything cool and based on (correct or not) math, technology, or complexity. So for example, the Singularity is not science, but people will say it is. And yes, the Singularity for many people fits almost every definition of a religion.

I personally don't like the terms "science" or "religion" because they are not clear and seem to overinclude things that may not belong.  Basically, katisara, what you say is correct, but not exactly encompassing what I was saying.  What I am looking at is the evolution of human understanding of reality.

So, for example:

1) Humans seek out knowledge but have to be open to the fact that they may be wrong (in science or religion);

2) Humans cling to what they want to be true even if not yet "tested" (or in the parlance used above, "proven");

3) Even things that are proven can be proven to be false or at least not as all-encompassing as we thought (e.g. Newtonian vs. Quantum physics, the location of the earth in the universe, the fact of time as not being a constant; the Law of Moses, the righteousness of the Spanish Inquisition, whether a being does or does not exist that is outside our ability to comprehend with our limited knowledge of the universe);

Science and religion are separate things with their own domains, but humans seeking to believe something are the same.  If all you believe in is exact science, then there are only a handful of things you can absolutely be pretty sure you can believe in, because much of science doesn't take you very far into certainty, but instead leads you to unproved hypotheses.

It would be a great fallacy to say that a scientist only believes what has been absolutely proven, or that anything has actually been 100% proven at all.  As Descartes ultimately demonstrated through logic, the only thing he can prove is "I think; therefore, I am."  All else is just rationalized possibilities.  But belief in something or another (even if not definitively proven) is true from the most religious to the most scientific person.

Heath,

I agree with all three of your points.  Well said.  On point 2, while we cling to things we WANT to be true, I personally try my best not to do that.

I also agree that we can't know with 100% certainty anything.

However, it seems that one of the clearest ways to differentiate a believer and so-called skeptic, is the line where they consider scientific evidence to be credible.

In a scientific understanding of the Universe there are (generally) clear ways of establishing whether something is plausible (the method of testing, the statistical significance of the study, reproducibility of the evidence etc - and all of these working toether, not in isolation)

The beauty of this is that while the system is not perfect,it does provide a nice framework to make decisions of credibility on.

That's why it's easy to throw out something like homeopathy (something which I am finding has striking similarities to the God concept). With poor testing and a skewed view of evidence people are convinced it works.  However, it's very simple to run those results through a basic scientific method and decide that while a "believer" of homeopathy might see the evidence as completely compelling, for a skeptic it's actually complete nonsense.

As I began to critically examine my own beliefs and started to head more down the road to skepticism I found that God shared more with ESP and cold fusion than it does with something like gravity.  For some that's no big deal and they have their belief to sustain them.  For me it was a God-killer.

Obviously other factors come into play here as well such as Hume's claim that:


This message was last edited by the player at 04:02, Thu 04 Apr 2013.

"Unsupported but consistent"

I'm going to go to math to pick my examples here. That way I can describe the concept without us getting sidetracked by the details of the example.

When I was an undergraduate, Fermat's Last Theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_last_theorem hadn't yet been solved. I believed it was true and that it would eventually be proved true (though I didn't expect it to occur so soon). That belief was consistent with the evidence (because no one had found a case that proved FLT false), but not supported by the evidence (because no one had proved FLT true as yet). I no longer believe it, because it has been proven true to the satisfaction of the experts. One could say I now accept this on authority, because I have not verified the proof myself.

There still are mathematical propositions that I believe are true and "unsupported but consistent", such as Goldbach's Conjecture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldbach_conjecture .
This message was last edited by the player at 21:53, Thu 04 Apr 2013.

Okay, that makes some sense.

Hmm .. some of this seems like it may be heading to more of a 'Required Evidence' thread, rather than specifically on the Bible, so I'll rein my comment in.

I see events in the bible broken into a few categories;

Non-historical items (for example, proverbs). These are items which do not refer to specific events, and so are not testable. They fall into the realm of philosophy.

Items documented for posterity. For example, lineages, marriages, migrations, etc. The Old Testament wasn't just a religious text, but a cultural and historical one, and so was commonly updated to reflect these things. The lines of begats in late genesis has little or no spiritual or philosophical value. It was included solely for its cultural and historical value. Because of this motivation, and because it is partially or wholly testable by secular research, it seems reasonable to accept that it's true at face value.

Purported events documented to support spiritual or philosophical beliefs, or of spiritual or philosophical nature. For example, the Last Supper, the Burning Bush, and other miracles, as well as parables. The purpose of these items is to talk about God, God's relationship with man, support philosophical or spiritual understanding, etc. Because the motivation is to inform us on spiritual things rather than historical ones, and because they are generally not testable and run contrary to secular research, I would tend to categorize these as being of questionable veracity from a strictly literal perspective. This isn't to say they're untrue; just not necessarily literal (in the case of parables, I'd say they're pretty clearly not literal). There's obviously some debate on which items are in this section compared to the other, and which items are intended to be taken literally or metaphorically, or the level of literalness we should hold items in this category to.

Items totally outside of history. God and angels war, revelations, etc. These items are totally beyond science and historical research; we just don't have the tools to approach this stuff. Whether you believe this or not is based solely on faith, and there just isn't anything science can provide to show otherwise.

Minor historical details. Jesus ate at Mary's house, there was a fellow named Jesus, born of Mary and Joseph, Joseph was a carpenter, etc. Items of perhaps significant cultural and religious value, but too small and generally too insigificant to be testable by  secular research. No one disagrees Jesus, Mary and Joseph (well, their Aramaic equivalents) were common names at the time, or that people ate over at each others' houses. But whether this particular event occured is just untestable. Because it's not unreasonable they occured, their veracity is based solely on how reliable our narrator is. i.e., it comes down to faith (although not a lot of faith), or just being a trusting person.

Out of these categories, the first and second are historically believed to be accurate representations of the times, and the bible can be used as evidence to support other items in that category. The rest quickly fall outside of the realm of historical research, because they run contrary to other evidence, or just don't fall in the realm of testability.

I wrote a lot. I think I forgot what my final point was. It'll come back to me.

Not at all, and I apologize if I gave that impression.  I try to avoid the word "proof" for the most part.  If anything, I remember making a point to say I preferred to use the word "evidence" instead of the word "proof."  We can agree that evidence is the better term here, it seems.


I'm using an example of how witness accounts from many sources can be nonsensical claims.  More to the point, though, I'm point out the difference between having the testimony OF 500 people, and the testimony ABOUT 500 people.  Those are two very different things, I hope you will agree.


Yes, exactly.  So far, so good.  The important issue, though, is that if you conclude that I'm likely to be delusional, lying, or just trying to be absurd, that's not "ignoring facts" as you put it in your description of scientists who doubt the resurrection.  Thinking someone is lying or mistaken is not the same as ignoring facts.


?!?!?  Heath, read what you just said here, and think about it for a second.  I'm confident you wouldn't fall for such an argument in court.  "Oh, Tycho said 5 true things in his testimony that no one questions, so there is no reason to disbelieve anything else he said."  No amount to truth telling on my part makes my next statement guaranteed to be true.  There is much more to evaluating someone claims about X than just looking into whether their claims about Y are true.


I have to strongly disagree here.  You're ignoring the content of what they say as evidence!  Whether I want what they say to be true or not shouldn't come into it at all.  I feel like this should be obvious to someone in your profession, but I feel like you're really trying to tell me that the only two things that matter in deciding if someone's claim should be believed are:
1.  have they told the truth before, and
2.  do you want to believe them
I'm sure you have to make much more convincing argument than just "he's told the truth before, and wouldn't it be great if it were true?" when you're trying to convince a judge or jury that your client's side of the story is the correct one.  If you never actually mention the content of their claim, and the likelihood of it being true, or their motive for lying or not, or whether they actually witnessed the events they describe, or any number of other things, you'd surely have lost your job by now.  I'm sure you know better than this, but I can't tell if you're just being sloppy here, or if you're intentionally glossing over points that don't fit with what you're trying argue here.



I'm sorry to be frustrating you.  It's not my intention, honestly.  And I can relate to the feeling.  I think part of the problem is that we view these discussions rather differently, and have different ideas about what is and isn't 'good behavior' in them.  I don't intend it to be an attack if I say it looks like you don't understand something.  I'm pointing it out because it seems like something you're overlooking in your argument to me, and I'd definitely want someone to let me know if I was fundamentally misunderstanding something I thought I knew.  I can see how it might feel like an attack to someone who didn't view these discussions with the same goal as me (ie, to find out what's true, regardless of whoever happens to be holding that position), and for that I apologize.  The other side of the coin is that I often feel like you use rhetorical techniques or argument styles that don't seem honest to me.  But I try to remind myself that for someone who approach these discussion with a goal of being the most convincing to a third party, those techniques and methods are totally fair game.  In this case, it may well be that you do really know how science works, but are just intentionally ignoring differences that you really are aware of in order to make your case.  To me that seems dishonest, to you it may just seem like good debate practices.  I'll make an effort to not say you don't know something when it seems to me that you don't, since you've said it bothers you.  I'm a creature of habit, though, so do point it out again if I slip up.


This is true, and I can agree with it, but I feel the need to point out that you've made far stronger claims than this here.  You said that scientists who don't accept the testimony regarding the resurrection are "ignoring 'facts' as surely as those who deny evolution, and clinging to a belief system to the exclusion of all other evidence."  That's a lot stronger than what you say above.  Asking for more evidence than just testimony of anonymous, second-hand sources from thousands of years ago for something as incredible as resurrection isn't dogmatic, head-in-the-sand ignoring the facts.  It's rational doubt about something that's a huge claim without much evidence to back it up other that people who want you to believe it saying it's true.

You're claim that scientists will believe things even when all the facts aren't in is certainly true.  The facts are almost never "all in," so we have little choice but to form beliefs with limited knowledge.  We can agree on that.  But your earlier quote was faulting scientists not for believing without all the facts, but rather for NOT believing what a handfull of people a few thousand years ago wrote.  That's what I took so strong an issue to.  If you're backing off that claim, that's fine, but I think you have to make clear that's the case if so.


Yes!  It's very, very important.  I feel like you're intentionally trying to avoid this issue, because it highlights the difference between people who doubt the resurrection, and those who accept the story.  I feel like you're trying to mask this important difference in order to make it harder for people to see why skeptics don't believe the resurrection story.  The "oh, they only don't believe because they refuse to see the facts, and they make up their mind without all the data!"  argument is meant to disparage them for asking for more evidence.  But since asking for more evidence is probably viewed as a fairly reasonable position, I feel like you're trying to instead making them appear dogmatic, set-in-their-ways, or something else more negative.  To me it seems like a dishonest trick (though, again, I acknowledge it's how a rhetorician is supposed to argue), and frustrates me.


If you want to claim that you don't find Thomas' doubt a negative trait, feel free to say so, but I stand by my statements on this.  Thomas is held up as an example of how a christian should avoid being.  He's used as a foil to show that those who believe without evidence are superior.  Let me put it this way, would you be happier if your children were doubters like Thomas, or had faith without needing strong evidence like he did?


I think this is a very good illustration of the important difference between religious reasoning and scientific reasoning.  Scientific reasoning tries to convince you that X is true by showing you the evidence in favor of it.  Religious reasoning tells you that it's very important that you believe X is true.  One is about evidence, the other is about consequences (whether promising rewards, or threatening punishment).  That difference is HUGE, in my view, and we should never claim that they are the same.

Tycho,
I think a major point of disconnect between us here has to do more with the LDS view of religion than the mainstream (and particularly the Evangelical) view.

Under LDS belief, all religious belief will be proven through science and fact when all is finally revealed.  So, for example, that sin causes spiritual harm is metaphysical to us simply because we don't understand the scientific connection between spirituality and sin, but if our science was far enough advanced, it would be indisputable that one causes the other.  And so on for all consequences of good and evil (including what constitutes right and wrong).

True, the purpose of "science" and "religion" are different, I suppose, since science has no real "purpose" at all other than to explain.  But then we act on what the science tells us, just like we do with religion.  So if science tells us smoking may lead to lung cancer, we act based on that.

Religion also involves promises of a Creator.  So if you do ABC and avoid DEF, the Creator will bestow upon you GHI.  If you fail to do so, you do not receive the promised benefits (i.e., blessings).  Science has no such moral code or exchange of covenants.

So, yes, there are differences if you take them apart, simply because religion includes the truths of science and expands them into a code of conduct.  But my analogies still stand because scientists must base their behavior on "something."  That is why I say scientists may act according to what their science tells them (which could be disproven or added to) or according to other things like religion.  So, for example, if they say their interpretation of science is that there is no God, they are putting faith in the science they have at their disposal, which could possibly be wrong.

I don't think we totally disagree. I just don't see the value in science for the sake of science; truth without action based on it is not valuable and has no conscience (whether science or religion).

This last post was a major step in the right direction.  We still disagree about some pretty fundamental things, but in this post you're making a positive case for your position, and making it easier for people to evaluate it, which is what I view as the whole point of such discussions.  So cheers for that.


In general I think there are some very big differences between the LDS positions on things, and the evangelical or mainstream positions.  However, in this case, I'm not really seeing how the position you're arguing for is any different from an evangelical one.  As far as I can tell, they both boil down to "all you scientists will see that we've been right all along once God gets here!" and "asking for evidence is missing the point!  Is all about the rewards of believing!"


Sounds like the evangelical position to me, really.  And, in any case, it's sort of besides the point.  Believing that you'll someday have evidence to prove that you're current views are correct doesn't actually make you any more likely to be correct.  From my point of view, the issue of whether someday everyone will agree with you, or whether instead there will always be disagreement is pretty unimportant.  What matters to the question of how one looks at your view now is whether you have sufficient evidence to back it up, I would argue.

Put another way, if I said "Actually, Heath, I believe that someday we'll have objective, undeniable evidence that Joseph Smith was a fraud," you wouldn't (and shouldn't!) suddenly start doubting your faith.  What I believe about what we'll know in the future is far less important than the evidence we can weigh up right now.


This is an improvement, as you're at least now accepting that they are different, so cheers for that.  But in addition to "explaining," science also helps us determine what is or isn't true, and can also help us make predictions about what will happen in the future.  Science provides useful information (like your example of cigarettes), and also helps us avoid accepting things as true when they aren't (which can be harmful in some cases).


Yes, that's a big differences.  Glad we can make that distinction clear and explicit.


Religion doesn't "include the truths of science."  Your earlier statement about someday all religious beliefs being proven is a belief that you hold about your religion, not something objectively true about religion in general.  It's no more fair to say than it would be for me to say "Science will someday be able to explain all religious values, so it includes all religious wisdom".


Not sure where you're headed with this.  Yes, scientists must base their actions on "something," but that doesn't support the claims you made (such as saying that scientists "ignore facts" or "are no different from those who deny evolution.").  We can agree that scientists have to act on what they know, and on the limited evidence they have, but that's nothing unique to scientists.  We can just as easily say that religious people could put their faith in their religion, which could possibly be wrong.  The difference, I would say, is that the scientist admits and accepts the possibility that they are wrong, and thus continues to update their beliefs as new evidence comes in, and tries to accept those things that seem most likely to be true, whereas the religious person is convinced their beliefs cannot be wrong, and thus is less concerned with evidence, or with the likelihood that their beliefs are correct.

Put another way, since it's possible for any of us (whether religious, scientists, both, or neither) to be wrong, I would argue the 'right' way to act is to use all the evidence we can, and update our beliefs as more evidence comes in, and never be so sure that we're right that it blinds us to new evidence.  We should be open to the idea that we're wrong, rather than just believing that we'll be proven right at some point in the future.


Hmm, I guess for me truth has an intrinsic value, but I can totally accept the views of people who feel otherwise.  Some people have more of an innate curiosity than others, and value knowledge for knowledge's sake.  While others are more of the "what does it do for me?" type.  Nothing wrong with either.  One seems better to me at a gut level, but I think that's probably just a personal thing, and I can't really make a real case for one over the other.

I was wondering about this while waiting for the train today, and came up with a hypothesis.  It's somewhat similar to Doulos' idea that there are people who accept miracles as fine explanations, and those who will accept a non-miraculous explanation over a miraculous one everytime.  But in my case, I'm wondering if there are people who, when weighing up a potential belief, ask "how likely is it that this is true?" and those who instead ask "what is the benefit of believing this (or cost of not believing it)?"  If this were true, I'd expect that those in the former group would make up Doulos' group of skeptics, while the latter would be the group of believers.

Do you think there's any merit in this idea?  I imagine that if there is, the truth is probably more of a spectrum than a clear either/or division.  But speaking for myself, I'm firmly in the "is it true?" camp.  From the arguments you've made in this discussion, it sort of sounds like you could be in the "what's the benefit?" camp.  Does that sound fair to you, or am I taking your words a bit too literally?
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:30, Sat 06 Apr 2013.

I put myself in the "what's the benefit" camp. There are two reasons I don't buy into "how likely is this to be true?": Firstly, for a lot of the propositions posed here, there is no way to estimate the likelihood of them. Secondly, I don't see science as a search for truth. I see science as a way to reliably build bridges that don't fall down, by finding empirical approximations to how the universe works, so that we are confident things built with it will work. Science is something we do to achieve the benefits of technology.

hakootoko, can you elaborate a little bit? How is "finding empirical approximations to how the universe works" not searching for truth? Or are you referring to Truth?

Individual facts are truth. Theories are idealized, inducted formulas built up from true facts. They work as good approximations within the range of data they've been derived from.

For example, Newtonian mechanics is still very good for most purposes. The only reason it's out of date is because people found situations where its approximations were no longer close to truth. Relativity and quantum mechanics were theorized to deal with these situations, and we still don't have a good enough combined theory of relativistic quantum mechanics.

I'm hoping to avoid Socratic dialogs about "What is Truth?" :)

I watched the first few lectures from this online course offered from Yale
( http://www.academicearth.org/c...story-and-literature )
and found it quite interesting.  I think I need to go back and watch it all again (and actually finish it this time) now that my worldview has changed so much. At the time I was already struggling with my understanding of the Bible and thought it was an interesting course.

The biggest challenges I have with such courses is knowing how to filter the professors own bias while viewing it.

Anyone else watched this before?  Or parts of it?