Richard Dawkins’ spring tour of the United States is bringing him to Minneapolis — he’ll be speaking in Northrup Auditorium (the huge auditorium on the UMTC campus, so there should be lots of room for everyone) on 4 March 2009. Be there!
In other Dawkins news, he has posted an unused and unedited interview with Father George Coyne on his site. It’s long and it’s very aggravating, so not many of you will make it through the whole thing, but you’ll understand why it wasn’t used in any documentary. Coyne is personable, intelligent, and pleasant without fault. He’s the kind of avuncular and educated fellow anyone could find wonderful in conversation … except on religion.
Dawkins politely asks him how he reconciles the peculiar details of his religious belief to reason, and Coyne can’t quite address the problem. He’s willing to admit that if he’d been brought up in an Islamic household, he almost certainly wouldn’t be Catholic, but that that should inform him that the specifics of his belief are not founded in evidence and reason evades him totally. He falls back on “tradition” and “faith” as excuses. It’s tragic — I’m certain he’s a very smart man, but on religion he is simply blind and stupid.
Another tangent came to me while watching the video. I’ve been doing a lot of traveling lately, which means I spend all this time with strangers in airports. It’s interesting; most people are just people, and you can’t pigeonhole them into narrower roles without talking to them, except for people in uniforms. And who wears uniforms? Soldiers returning or going back to duty, police and security guards who are on duty, and priests. The police I can understand; they have an official job to do, and the uniform is useful in announcing their authority and making them obvious people to turn to when you need help.
But priests? Nope. That is an utterly useless profession. No one is worried about needing an emergency exorcism, or handling a drive-by spiritual crisis, or requiring rapid cracker delivery. Wearing the clerical collar is simply a demand for deference and respect, a token flaunted in expectation that the bearer will be regarded as especially virtuous and important. It’s annoying and unwarranted. I’m afraid that when I see priests wandering about in the airport, I’m not thinking, “there goes a good man,” I’m thinking, “there goes a sad gomer who wasted his life on the nonexistent.” I suppose it’s fair warning, but it’s still pretentious.
So in the Dawkins/Coyne interview, I’m noticing that Coyne has the magic collar on (I suppose if he’d been raised in an Islamic culture, he’d have a beard and black robes; if Buddhist, he’d be shaved bald and wearing orange; same difference), and Dawkins is dressed like any academic, nothing particularly distinctive. It bugged me. There is a status game being played here, and clerics demand it and get it, while scientists shrug off the superficialities and don’t try to push it. If you just ignore the words they’re saying (trust me, Coyne’s words aren’t at all enlightening) and look at the image, the message is that Coyne has special status, while Dawkins is simply one of the hoi polloi.
I don’t quite know what to do about it. We’re certainly not going to propose a uniform for scientists, which would be just as pompous as priests making sure to announce their delusions visually even while they’re standing around the luggage carousel. I guess I’m just going to have to put it on my to-do list of things to accomplish while we’re destroying religion: diminish the credibility of the clerical uniform. We’re just going to have to start regarding it in the same way we view clown costumes, I think.
At least with priests on a plane you know the only going down will be going on in the lav.
You know, wearing a lab coat while traveling could come in handy, all of those pockets and your name embroidered on the chest. And if there was an emergency on your flight, everyone would know how to ask for help.
I thought scientists DID have a uniform: tweed jackets and bow ties. Or, if you REALLY want respect, a lab coat, big opaque goggles, and a test tube bubbling over with some glowing concoction.
Let’s start wearing white coats everywhere.
I watched as much as I could stomach, until it got boring listening to meaningless waffle from Coyne. How does someone that intelligent get so stupid? (Rhetorical question.)
Is there a schedule available for Richard Dawkins’ US tour that you mentioned?
I dunno about uniforms, but scientists should have some sort of shiny badge, like law enforcement and some types of government. Perhaps a different badge for major fields, with smaller icons for more specific fields.
Then, when something is going on, you can jump in, flip open your badge wallet and say, “Don’t worry, I’m a biologist!”
Great. Now all I can see in my brain is priest after priest after priest piling out of a tiny little hearse…
Blast! Amar beat me to it. But you gotta hand it to me, I did have the visuals:
http://cientifica.eu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/mad_scientist.gif
Made me think of this:
http://cectic.com/105.html
Alternately you could just go everywhere in your graduation robes.
one could argue that the thing with priests is that the difference between them and say a police officer, is that the officers uniform is a work outfit, while the priest is more symbolic of lifestyle. Like a nun, Priests cannot be seen presented to the world as anything other than what their beliefs direct them to act. Being a soldier, or fireman, etc., can be transitory, but being dedicated to supernatural belief system, supposedly, takes place on a more profound level. A soldier is more than just a soldier, but a priest is just a priest.
PZ, you mention a Richard Dawkins tour coming to the U.S., but I was unable to find any info on this on his website. Where did you find out about the schedule? Thanks.
T
A uniform? What’s wrong with a few pens & a pencil in the shirt or jacket pocket?
You could try dressing like Prof. Dumbledore.
Why not wear the dog-collar itself? I think you might need to achieve some critical mass of non-priests wearing holy garb before it’s anything other than really creepy, but it would be an effective way to remove its significance.
Hi, i may be traveling to the US on March. Where can i find more information about this event (tickets, etc)?
I propose nudity as a uniform for theologians.
“We’re just going to have to start regarding it in the same way we view clown costumes, I think”
I’ve always wondered why you don’t take this sort of approach to a nativity scene. To me it’s no different to any other Fairy Tale.
Oh, c’mon; think how much fun it will be to have this the official professional uniform of scientists everywhere. =)
re 19:
I thought the idea of the white labcoat was to show that you haven’t spilled any nasty chemicals all over yourself. :D
I’m afraid I don’t see a priest’s outfit as pompous, any more than I would traditional Amish clothing or a monk’s robe. Clothing has traditionally been used as a signal of group identity, but that needn’t be accompanied by a sense of superiority.
In my days as a Catholic, I had the opportunity to befriend many priests, and to experience life as a practicing Catholic. My experience is that Priests who wear their clericals are frequently approached by people who are seeking comfort and/or confession opportunities, and so some feel it is part of their “duty” to wear the uniform. Also, although it may be difficult to appreciate from the “other side”, many believers, especially traditional minded Catholics, feel beleaguered and get a sense of affirmation by seeing a public display of Catholic faith, such as a Priest wearing clericals. They know the Priest is likely to encounter snide comments and less than steller treatment, especially in the days after the breaking of the sex scandals. In some parts of the world, such as Mexico, it is a criminal offence to wear clerical dress in public, and immigrants from that country tell me they find it an empowering experience to see Priests in public.
Just my two cents worth.
abb3w: Excellent! Combines the Ebil Atheist Scientist Mafia with the Gay Agenda!
“I don’t quite know what to do about it.”
Schmeer beat me to it: dilute the collar’s symbolism by having many non-priests wear them.
I recently saw a man and a woman wearing these at some public place. (I forget the details.) It wasn’t near Halloween, and they weren’t acting very priestly, so it was confusing. I thought, “Are they, or aren’t they? Is this some kind of personal amusement of theirs?”
Maybe aficionados of different scientific disciplines could use different colors. Red for physics, green for biology, black for cosmology, etcetera. The guys with the white collars? They got nuthin’.
Meanwhile, is this just a Catholic thing? What kinds of uniform do Protestant ministers use in daily life? Mormons? Scientologists?
I would propose the propeller beanie, although it isn’t really necessary for recognition. In 1991 or 2, SIGGRAPH was held in Vegas, and the big event on Tuesday night is always the Electronic Theatre, followed by the biggest host bar party of the week. There was a conga line from the screening in one casino through the Mirage, and I remember hearing somebody remark, “Wow, will you look at all the propellerheads!” There were no real identifying marks and scars (other than badges on lanyards) per se, but geeks are readily identifiable by our innate incompetence at affecting the wearing of a uniform, even that of a civilian.
PZ said,
Not originally. Interestingly enough, the intent was to dress in the garb of a convict. Now, if we dressed priests in orange jumpsuits and shackles, that would be a start.
Maybe compulsory “Science: it works, bitches” T-shirts for all. The XKCD ones with the cosmic microwave background spectrum.
The lab coat occurred to me but then I thought aren’t those priestly (no, not Jason) costumes available for purchase by anyone? Everyone can wear one. Who’s to say a biologist, a professor, or even a lowly IT person can’t wander the land dressed as a priest too? A slutty version from a costume shop for Patricia and her minions. Some sort of fuzzy leopard print pimp hat with a feather in it for Dr. Myers.
Then imagine how difficult it would be to keep a straight face when someone approaches you for some spiritual mumbo jumbo.
With this dihydrogen monoxide I bless thee in the name of Charles Darwin. RAmen.
I agree with Deconverting. It’s part of their belief system, similar to Amish, Jews, or Muslims wearing distinctive clothing. Mormons do too, but it’s only underwear so we never see it. I feel sad for the priets and I feel especially sad for Father Coyne. He does seem so reasonable except on one issue. Let’s just hope that through the actions of people like Richard Dawkins, more young men and women will realize that religious life is not neccessary to a full life. I only wish I had read the God Delusion when I was 15 instead of 45.
I’m not a scientist, but I can fake it, so I’ll help you here Professor. Your uniform?
Three labcoats, hidden in the alt-text.
http://www.qwantz.com/archive/000918.html
***
And yeah, are there dates for Dawkins’ tour online yet? My chances of seeing him are slim to nil given my situation, but I think it would be an experience to see him speak one day.
Yeah, we can wear the lab coats everywhere.
But we need more specificity, so we can add patches to signify our area of expertise. Here are my suggestions:
Geneticists get a double helix.
Microbiologists get a picture of a petrie plate with colonies on it.
Organic Chemists get a molecular structure (perhaps caffeine?).
Medicinal Chemists get a structure with a pill or capsule.
Analytical Chemists get a chromatogram trace.
Cosmologists get a spiral galaxy that is almost imperceptibly red.
etc…
The way to destroy the authority of the collar is for more people to wear one. Especially if it can be identified with something personally embarrassing to the clergy. For instance, perhaps our gay brethren can appropriate the collar as a signifier of some particularly ingenious gay subculture. Or maybe we can use it as a signifier of bisexuality. There’s lots of room for creativity. Make it a fad so that everyone is wearing one.
Dilute Authority!
Seth Brundle wore a uniform of sorts. It was seven of the same outfit. That way he did not have to think about what to wear.
mmhh. Maybe you should try the mexican solution…
After the “guerra cristera” (1926) it was forbitten to use any religious clothes outside the buildings officially aproved for cult, for almost 60 years.
No collars, no nun clothes, even the pope had to pay a fine, when he came to Mexico, since he was using religious clothes. (The fine was payed in advance by the church).
While the prohibition no longer exists,, except in small towns today priest rarely use their collar outside the church.
Unfortunatelly a war was required for that.
i can only find dates in march of 2008. he was in minnesota then too, but i don’t see anything in 2009…where is the schedule???
You know, we’ve been noticing for quite a while that at the hospital which contain my research center, some doctors (not all) like to stroll around wearing stetoscopes around their necks, and even more worrysome (I’m thinking of hygienic problems here), surgical clothing, including masks, head and shoe coverings, while attending the cafeteria (I do not no if this is unique to this place).
It has always stricken me as pompous and a bit insecure. Like : look here, I am so a doctor. Like they’re afraid to be seen without the MD attached to their name and presence. It’s very amusing to me. I’m thinking that I wouldn’t want to stroll around in the cafeteria with a lab coat whose main usage is to keep contaminants (in my case, steroid hormones and other organic compounds) from harming me and others when I eat. (But what do I know, me not being a doctor and all.)
This whole insistence on priestly garb (not all priests are like that; the one in my former church goes everywhere in regular clothing, no collar) and symbols of authority indicates only a major inferiority complex to me. Not something I’d like to project.
If you should change your mind about a uniform for scientists, perhaps someone can come up with a photo of the one once suggested by Nixon (or more likely some subordinate) for the White House guards. THAT would get you noticed, and since they were never implemented you might get them cheap.
We need special Free Thinker clothing.
Should it be special underwear? A funny hat? A weird collar? An oddly colored robe?
Maybe footwear? Does anyone else use footwear?
The upside to having everyone wear the priest collar is that it would allow a prime opportunity to quote Dave Chappelle.
“Hey, just because I dress this way…”
Elves. Elves and court jesters.
Wait, are you saying I wear a flogger sometimes just to get attention and deference from the proper people, and not because I might have to flog someone at a moment’s notice? I’m shocked that you’d say such a thing! Stop being so accurate, dammit.
I know ! I know ! Magical underwear !
Oh, drat. Somebody already thought of that.
Never mind.
“I’ve been doing a lot of traveling lately, which means I spend all this time with strangers in airports. It’s interesting; most people are just people, and you can’t pigeonhole them into narrower roles without talking to them,…”
“In truck stops and hamburger joints
In Cadillac limousines
In the company of has-beens
And bent-backs
And sleeping forms on pavement steps
In libraries and railway stations
In books and banks
In the pages of history
In suicidal cavalry attacks
I recognize…
Myself in every stranger’s eyes
And in wheelchairs by monuments
Under tube trains and commuter accidents
In council care and county courts
At Easter fairs and sea-side resorts
In drawing rooms and city morgues
In award winning photographs
Of life rafts on the China seas
In transit camps, under arc lamps
On unloading ramps
In faces blurred by rubber stamps
I recognize…
Myself in every stranger’s eyes
And now, from where I stand
Upon this hill
I plundered from the pool
I look around
I search the skies
I shade my eyes
So nearly blind
And I see signs of half remembered days
I hear bells that chime in strange familiar ways
I recognize…
The hope you kindle in your eyes
It’s oh so easy now
As we lie here in the dark
Nothing interferes, it’s obvious
How to beat the tears
That threaten to snuff out
The spark of our love”
Everyone should just start a fashion trend wearing priest stuff, just like the military and the baseball undershirt trends. That would be awesome.
Galbinus @ 37:
Tell me you’re not thinking about these
Nooooooo !
Professors do have a uniform: it’s cap and gown. The oxfordians have very spiffy caps, too – Dawkins probably looks quite natty in his, if he ever wears it.
My dad was a professor at an ivy league school (recently retired) and used to lecture in cap and gown because “that’s the uniform of a professor.” The original eccentric but everyone adored him.
Clerical collar shirts are inexpensive and look really natty if you take the white plastic thingie out. In my goth days I used to wear one all the time and back when I used to ride my motorcycle everywhere I wore a clerical collar sometimes because it increased my saving throw at avoiding speeding tickets. Seriously – I got out of at least two that way.
re #15, 24, 31:
it is illegal (in Canada) to impersonate a cleric.
(Don’t have a reference: learned this at a series of public talks on secularism this past fall. Might not be true but the person who told me was someone I trust and who was in a position to know: cross-appointed to Law & Philosophy)
Would wearing a clerical collar be enough “Impersonation” to be a crime? Might be worth challenging the law.
PZ, if you ever participate in a debate with a priest, I suggest you pick up a costume at the local fancy-dress shop. Darth Vader, perhaps?
Can we acquire clerical collars and wear them? Perhaps with ‘FAKE’, ‘LULZ’, ‘REASON’ or some other beautifully diasarming word written on the white bit?
Seriously, I’d love to see what happens if I walk around with one. But I don’t think I could.
But maybe, just maybe… what if we organised some day for atheists to wear an authentic dog collar? Disarm the fuckers and let everyone else question what that $100 tab of fail actually means?
That uniform really irritates me.
Once I was on a bus. I was a child, as was almost everyone on the bus, except one old codger. He was wearing a dog collar. An elderly lady got on and needed an accessible seat. What did Dog Collar Tit do? Did he offer her his seat? No. He prodded a small child and ordered the lad to stand up for the lady, about a second before she noticed I’d already stood up for her.
SHITBIN.
He, of course, never raised a buttock for the old lass.
In before someone complains about “the hoi polloi”.
If I tried to board a plane in my old labcoat, I’m pretty sure I’d get dragged off in handcuffs.
CoE clergy wears a dogcollar too. I vaguely recall there being something about at constable (or summat) being allowed to wear it while in uniform a coupla years ago because he’d been ordained as a lay preacher.
I’ve never seen a Danish priest wear the pipecollar off duty – likely because it’s so seventeenth century. I don’t know how it is for the Swedes, but they’re equally ridiculous so I doubt they wear it outside of work either.
Yeah, I didn’t see this visit date on neither the MNatheists site nor on Richard Dawkin’s.
Pleaz clarify *pleady face here*
As a person who wore a uniform for more than 20 years (USAF retired), I believe the uniform is more for the group that wears it rather than the outsider looking in. It helps to keep everyone on the same page within the organization. It makes everyone equal. Depending on the organization of course there could be variety in ranks and so different features for those. So, for preist, perhaps it could be nothing more than a way to humble them and show they are all on the same footing.
“He’s willing to admit that if he’d been brought up in an Islamic household, he almost certainly wouldn’t be Catholic, but that that should inform him that the specifics of his belief are not founded in evidence and reason evades him totally. He falls back on “tradition” and “faith” as excuses. It’s tragic — I’m certain he’s a very smart man, but on religion he is simply blind and stupid.”
This simply doesn’t follow. If you had been brought up in Afghanistan, you’d almost certainly be a Muslim; does this fact say anything about the truth or falsity of atheism? Of course not. Ever hear of the genetic fallacy?
“No one is worried about needing an emergency exorcism”
Sadly, I’m sure that there are plenty of people who are.
It’s Friday, and I need my cephalopod fix, please…
Aww PZ that was really low. Priests are some of the best educated and lowest paid professions out there I think they deserve respect though, even if you have a different worldview.
One of the best teachers I’ve had (in philosophy) was a priest. It’s hard for me (and it would be unjust) to judge his entire life/role, etc., but he was a pretty great guy, so far as I knew.
I did end up talking with a priest in a bookstore who more or less intimated that he wished he’d spent his life differently, which was not a subject I brought up. He said that philology or the like might have been a better choice.
One should perhaps note that the priesthood and the orders are in many ways modeled upon a Platonic model, where one forsakes the “mundane” and contemplates Truth and pushes learning. That same model led the clerics to begin universities in Europe (if copying Islamic centers to some extent), and for all their faults, it was a way to keep knowledge and thought alive in dark times.
Some of the more serious priests are far from claiming that God is anything but a personal belief, and not one that is necessarily all that easy to maintain.
The upshot, I think, is that one really can’t judge priests by their uniforms, either.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Facile at 55
New around here often?
Respect isn’t deserved, it’s earned. And anybody who has become a priest despite any “best education” has failed it. Seminaries produce at least as many apostates as priests.
While I respect your right to believe any foolish thing you choose, and defend your right to believe it, your fatuous superstitious twaddle, your beliefs and their priestly pitchmen, deserve nothing more than disdain and mockery, as they are impervious to reason and argument.
pikeamus @ #10, you’re my own personal Jesus.
That’s a great site! :D Wonder if PZ has read it?
http://cectic.com/057.html
No, he would probably still be atheist. PZ was raised in a religion and has rejected it. Who are you to say he wouldn’t have done that as a Muslim as well?
I’d venture to say that the vast majority of atheists were raised in some religion and have basically outgrown it.
I’d also venture to say that among the religious only a very small minority are conversions away from their childhood upbringing religion. And of those conversions, most are probably just between different versions of Christianity.
Respect isn’t deserved, it’s earned.
And I think people who are educated,value morals and live moral lives of restraint and spend their lives helping and counseling others while not seeking personal wealth have done their bit to earn respect.
And anybody who has become a priest despite any “best education” has failed it.
How so?
your fatuous superstitious twaddle,
So I suppose mocking people’s beliefs makes them untrue?
as they are impervious to reason and argument.
How so? I think my beliefs are foundational to reason.
@Stevem
You totally miss Eric’s point. Dawkin’s logic here is very fallacious. How one comes to their beliefs says nothing about the falsity of them. Genetic fallacy.
while not seeking personal wealth
Never seen Vatican City, have you?
How so?
Don’t be dense.
So I suppose mocking people’s beliefs makes them untrue?
What a stupid non sequitur.
I think my beliefs are foundational to reason.
Be my guest. Believe whatever you like. Whatever gets you through the night. Demonstrate some reason for us, if you would, please.
The reason why the priest had the clerical collar on was because he was in his house of worship. In this case, his dress code matches the building. It would have been silly if Dawkins felt the need to wear the white coat and swab the pews while Coyne was talking just so people would know a priest and a scientist were talking. The priest was in his element so he wore the garb.
Hey, c’mon folks, we all know that costume has always been an important part of personal identity. I don’t think it’s so much to establish dominance over others as to say, “This is who I am”. Certainly in older times attire was a way to establish dominance — witness the sumptuary laws. But nowadays there are few relics of those dominance behaviors: the sashes worn by Latin American potentates; the vestments worn by Catholic poobahs; and so forth. But much of the role of costume nowadays is more about individual identity than two-person relationship. I don’t think that a priest wears his habit because he wants to establish dominance over anybody; it’s because he’s a priest, and that is what priests wear.
Women are more expressive about this than men. Women consciously recognize the role of costume in declaring identity; that’s why they tend to keep a larger wardrobe than men. Men tend to be more inhibited in the use of costume to declare their identities, but they are still acutely aware of it. Try getting a guy to carry his wife’s purse sometime.
My own attitude towards the use of costume is disjointed. For myself personally, I’m pretty much of the attitude that “adornment is vanity” and so I go for plain and simple. Yet, in reacting to other’s attire, my attitude is “vive le difference!”
My mom recently became an ordained Methodist minister. She only wears her minister clothes when doing a service.
She is a bit unusual, however. She has been teaching the members of her church to actually think about their beliefs instead of spouting what you’re told to believe. This includes reading Harry Potter before condemning it and similar tactics.
Because she’s actually gone to school and learned the lessons she’s actually able to discuss the church, the history, and the beliefs with me (an athiest) much better than most religious folk.
“Hey man, if we’re going to be wearing uniforms, let’s all wear something different”
I’m jealous. I’d love to go hear RD speak if only he should some day have a talk within two days travel of my domicile ( … I won’t hold my breath).
Tweed jacket with elbow patches. That’s how we spot one another.
Coyne has had too many Gin & Tonics and is turning into Antony Flew.
#32:
Hey, I do that too! And I’m not even a scientist. Or a fly.
I’m amused by the idea of non-priests going around in priest garb to rob it of its meaning, but this could lead to a sort of arms race. Some of those bishop outfits are awfully gaudy and impractical, and most people couldn’t carry it off.
I think my beliefs are foundational to reason
More to the point, reason is not foundational to your belief.
We’re certainly not going to propose a uniform for scientists
*Winks* Well, a dance costume isn’t exactly a uniform, now is it?
Or maybe you scientists could do a calendar?
It was pretty funny when Catholic Charities freaked out over some kids mock stripping for charity. Then it wouldn’t matter what uniform you took off. ;-)
“He’s willing to admit that if he’d been brought up in an Islamic household, he almost certainly wouldn’t be Catholic, but that that should inform him that the specifics of his belief are not founded in evidence and reason evades him totally. He falls back on “tradition” and “faith” as excuses. It’s tragic — I’m certain he’s a very smart man, but on religion he is simply blind and stupid.”
This simply doesn’t follow. If you had been brought up in Afghanistan, you’d almost certainly be a Muslim; does this fact say anything about the truth or falsity of atheism? Of course not. Ever hear of the genetic fallacy?
It says that religions are arbitrary culural practices. It doesn’t prove all religions false, but it gives no reason to consider any given religion as true.
The charge of committing the genetic fallacy would hold if the claim were “You’re only a Muslim because you were brought up in Afghanistan; therefore, Islam is false.” But that’s not the claim. The claim is that the content of any given person’s religious beliefs are not the product of reasoned choice; they are determined by the culural environment. No strong claim of proof of atheism is made, but there’s certainly no comfort for the believer who wishes to assert some unique status for his own set of beliefs.
Couldn’t anyone who wanted to make themselves available to help or comfort those in need wear a collar? Say, a priest wears his religious collar, but a lay person who wishes to be available to listen or offer advice wears a slightly different collar. Maybe with a big scarlet A on it. If I’m aggrieved I could just ask for an atheist counselor. There’s no way a god-walloper would wear that!
No one has answered where they to find Richard Dawkins schedule for America yet. It’s been asked several times, and if someone knows then please let us know. I am an hour and a half from Austin, TX and I would love to find out if he is coming to speak at UT this year.
Is there a slutty nun Halloween costume?
(When I saw the Dresden Dolls a couple of years ago, one of the opening acts did a very naughty choreographed piece about religion to “Motorin’.” I’ve tried but haven’t been able to find out anything about it/them since, so if anyone has any information it would be much appreciated.)
…Anyway, I wear my everyday clothes to teach, and always have. Do other people dress up?
Of course priests should wear clerical garb.
How else are we to warn altar boys?
PZ, the guy’s doing you a favor: You know talking to him about reason is a waste of time. If you see a rabbi, on the other hand, you know your chances of having a sane conversation on evolutionary biology are better than with someone wearing the “A.” See http://bp0.blogger.com/_4kuJkMcpIvs/RmoBDqXKqlI/AAAAAAAAAAc/Reka0G1gxbQ/s1600-h/evolved.jpg
The obvious solution is for atheists, skeptics and secularists to start wearing the collar as well, so as to remove any sort of special status for that symbol.
I’m supposed to believe a histogram which has “Christian” enclosed in quotation marks? What does that even mean? The plot-maker doesn’t think the respondents are Christian because they’re not the right sort?
No, Dawkins was not employing the genetic fallacy. Dawkins didn’t say that Coyne’s beliefs were false because he was raised that way; he said that Coyne was Catholic because he was raised that way, and that “being raised that way” is no substitute for reason.
You might have a favorite sports team based on where you grew up, but that doesn’t make it the “best” team. And if you were to insist otherwise, with no evidence, you’d be an idiot.
And you missed mine. The point is that almost all religious beliefs are, in effect, simply inherited without any thought or reason. Whereas almost all atheists came to that lack of belief through a process of reason and had to actively shed their upbringing. Therefore there is somewhat more validity than a belief that is just held for no reason at all. I disagree that “how one comes to their beliefs” is not important.
The genetic fallacy applies to judging the validity of a belief based only on its origin. In this case, being raised in one faith or another doesn’t make either one true or false. But that is not the same as coming to a belief through a process of reason and inquiry. Then the belief is being tested and analyzed for its validity. It is not being judged solely on its origin, which is the genetic fallacy.
A little hard to tell at that resolution, but isn’t Dawkins wearing his “A” pin there?
You totally miss Eric’s point. Dawkin’s logic here is very fallacious. How one comes to their beliefs says nothing about the falsity of them. Genetic fallacy.
It does say something, however, that everybody comes by their religious beliefs in the same way, yet all religious claims conflict with all other such claims. Say you put ten people in a room, each with a magic-8-ball toy. Proceed to ask these people a series of questions, which they will answer by reporting what the 8-ball says. How many questions would you need to ask before you determined that magic-8-balls are not reliable?
The argument being made isn’t that a single given set of beliefs is false exclusively due to its origin, which would be the genetic fallacy. The claim is that an honest person is forced to admit that on the same (lack of) evidence, the content of his beliefs would be utterly contradictory to his actual beliefs, were he only born on a different scrap of land. The point of the argument is not to assert the strength of atheism as a position; merely to point out the complete lack of any other reason than an accident of geography for choosing one set of religious beliefs over another.
@SC #76: 4350 hits for slutty nun Halloween costume on Google, with http://www.spirithalloween.com/couples-costumes_classic-character-costumes/sexy-nun-costume/ the top non-paid link.
I think scientists should show dressed like Jedi, specifically like Luke in Return of the Jedi. That get-up was awfully preist like: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/4928/Lukejedi.jpg
Twenty years ago, I would have hesitated to suggest this, because The Force just seemed like another hokey religion that was no substitute for a good blaster at my side, but now we know that The Force really has a scientific explanation: midichlorians. So it’s ok. Really. Your Jedi mind-tricks will be quite effective on the feeble-minded priests and other religious believers.
I Suspect that the uniform of religious leaders is the same as the bright coloring found in nature: It’s a warning.
In nature it says “I’m poisonous”
In Society it says “My beliefs are poisonous”
-a poisoned Cat
Dave the happy singer asks:
Can we acquire clerical collars and wear them? Perhaps with ‘FAKE’, ‘LULZ’, ‘REASON’ or some other beautifully diasarming word written on the white bit?
http://www.almy.com – is where I usually buy my clerical wear. It’s harder to get nun’s garb (nun’s stuff is “sanctified” and is restricted) so I get fakes from a very nice Ebay seller in Thailand:
They do good work – and as a special plus, you can request your own colors. :) A red nun? No problem.
http://stores.ebay.com/Your-Dressmaker-Medieval
i.e.:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Catholic-Christian-Nun-Ritual-Robe-Hooded-Sapular-Larp_W0QQitemZ270278677600QQihZ017QQcategoryZ102547QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem
I’m sure you could get one in red and have someone embroider something really rocking on the back…
I used these for my “deconstructed nun” series of photos (NSFW) http://mjranum.deviantart.com/art/Praying-with-Scissors-4-103863615
Because education, possibly above all, should be education in critical thinking and the evaluation of propositions based upon not only reason but evidence (and the skills and techniques to evaluate evidence). Anything that doesn’t teach this is simply indoctrination, and doesn’t deserve the name “education.” Further, the state of human knowledge in the sciences provides clear evidence of the absurdity of Catholic beliefs. That’s how so.
I still haven’t seen that. Thanks for the reminder!
Dress like a Jedi?? Bah! Scientists need to both impress and inspire a frisson of terror. We should dress like Darth Vader! I want to be able to wear a cape and jackboots (maybe also epaulets) on a daily basis! Marching down a long corridor (such as one often finds in airports) with boots clacking and cape billowing behind you is the second best thing for improving the male ego.
Why do priests wear uniform? Cause they desperately need it, without them their inanity is obvious, transparent.
That’s precisely the reason why Dawkins does not need one…
It’s just like the guys who write a book and stamp their “Ph.D” in the cover with huge letters. Einstein NEVER did that. Kent Hovind does it all the time.
Thanks, NBwaW @ #85. That’s not bad at all (though I think I could probably make it myself rather than spending fifty bucks).
Thank you, SC in 88. Sadly, most educations these days aren’t of the best sort. In mine, I’m continually encountering appeals to nothing more than authority, and the ever popular demand for deference to ones worldview, no matter how daft.
“We’re just going to have to start regarding it in the same way we view clown costumes, I think.”
Prisoners wear uniforms too.
You know, a good priest doesn’t just offer supplications to an imaginary man in the sky. A good priest is a community leader who does things that actually matter.
What percentage of them are “good” by my definition, and what percentage of those feel the need to flaunt it, I couldn’t say.
30: Yeah, we can wear the lab coats everywhere. But we need more specificity, so we can add patches to signify our area of expertise.
68: Tweed jacket with elbow patches. That’s how we spot one another.
Some of us aren’t entitled to lab coats, and around here we reserve tweed for the humanities and social sciences.
For computer people: Hacker Casual. Long hair and/or beard, backpack, flannel shirt, clean-but-faded jeans, fleece jacket, hiking boots recommended, friendly but piercing gaze. Conveys the attitude of “I’m competent enough that I don’t have to much care how I look, and if you mess with me I can scramble your on-line grade records so badly you’ll need an accountant to straighten them out.”
again I do not have the time to read all the comments if I repeat what has been said already then I agree.
The priests collar uniform does make them stand out as someone who “dedicated himself to god”, and also one with some authority to speak for the “church and for god.” like the bell formally rung by lepers :)
In an other life I heard a priest tell of his experience of getting of the boat from Ireland in New York and not getting the treatment he in part became a priest for I thought at the time it was very funny but I had to suppress the urge to bust out laughing.
Here in the US we have a none deferential attitude to authority in general that been good in general but sometimes we elect Bozos to be our authorities.
it seems to me that science here is not very inclined to authority as it is more to truth. So a uniform for scientist would not be very likely to get very far. Like the creationist are always identified when they speak of Darwinism instead of Evolution.
I did not know that the Buddhists dress and shaved head was from convicts before I thought that the saffron robs was the color of the cloth that they wrapped corpses in.
If your “reason is based on faith” (Facilis : I think my beliefs are foundational to reason) then your arguments and understanding could hold together in your mind but not necessarily match reality as we find it.
And you missed mine. The point is that almost all religious beliefs are, in effect, simply inherited without any thought or reason.,
How do you know this? This would probably be offensive to anyone who has converted from another worldview or any kind of intellectual within the Christian tradition.
Whereas almost all atheists came to that lack of belief through a process of reason and had to actively shed their upbringing.
How do you know this? I don’t think so. I don’t claim to know the reason why many atheists convert but a lot of them I know had some kind of emotional experience that left the dissatisfied with the church or some emotional reaction to a part of the bible. A couple just wanted to be rebellious towrds the traditional beliefs people hold.
Therefore there is somewhat more validity than a belief that is just held for no reason at all. I disagree that “how one comes to their beliefs” is not important.
But someone could be born atheist. That would say nothing about whether it was true or false.Someone could convert and that wouldn’t amek it true. from another religion to Christianity
Speaking as a science fiction fan who detests all thing Star Wars, (I know I am begging for trouble here!) why this fascination with dressing as Darth Vader? A fascist figure who gains redemption? Way too religious for my taste.
This would probably be offensive to … any kind of intellectual within the Christian tradition.
Like Coyne? Does he seem offended? It seems to me he concedes the point.
Facilis, first most, but not all, kids end up with the same religion as their parents when they grow up. Not surprising as the parents help to brainwash them.
Second, most atheists do shed religion due to the finding that religion and the various holy books are irrational. It is hard to break the teachings of your parents. In my case, finding atheism started with reading the bible from cover to cover and finding it to be a horrible, illogical book that bit itself so often there was not hope of staunching the bleeding.
You are a through godbot, so you need to really step back to look logically at the situation. I doubt if you can.
If Father Vivian O’Blivion, resplendent in his frock, isn’t whipping up the batter for the pancakes of his flock at St. Alfonzo’s Pancake Breakfast, then he’s just out and about parading his Grand Wazoo outfit, telling the world, “FCC you if you don’t like my hat!”
“Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform.” –FZ to the kids taunting a cop at a concert.
We get him first! March 2nd. Wharton Center on the campus of Michigan State University…
After I bought a couple tickets I saw this little tidbit…
http://www.statenews.com/index.php/article/2008/12/550m_nuclear_research_facility_coming_to_msu
Coincidence? I think not!
Whoop! Whoop!
Hey! I stole the margarine! Though you better watch out for Nanook, he has a mean circular motion.
Dawkins politely asks him how he reconciles the peculiar details of his religious belief to reason, and Coyne can’t quite address the problem.
I noticed this too.
dan howitt
“But priests? Nope. That is an utterly useless profession. No one is worried about needing an emergency exorcism, or handling a drive-by spiritual crisis, or requiring rapid cracker delivery. Wearing the clerical collar is simply a demand for deference and respect, a token flaunted in expectation that the bearer will be regarded as especially virtuous and important. It’s annoying and unwarranted. I’m afraid that when I see priests wandering about in the airport, I’m not thinking, “there goes a good man,” I’m thinking, “there goes a sad gomer who wasted his life on the nonexistent.” I suppose it’s fair warning, but it’s still pretentious.”
I can understand your atheism, but not your absolute ignorance of religious people.
In fact, something like a billion Catholics are “worried about … (a priest) handling a drive-by spiritual crisis, or requiring rapid (communion) delivery.”
Priests are often among the first responders to accidents and tragedies, and spend most of their time in hospital rooms. Once upon a time, a clerical collar was a passport to these events.
It takes an exceedingly small mind to misunderstand the role that the Clergy plays in the lives of 1/5 of the world’s population. And a very small ego to be threatened by what is just another costume in your own world view.
Priests don’t wear any baubles of authority. No patches or batons, no buttons or guns.
To be threatened by a piece of cloth speak volumes about your own tenuous self-identity.
I’m thinking, “There goes a solicitor.” But then I work in an airport, and I know about half the people that look like priests really are solicitors. And those women dressed like nun-nurses holding buckets asking for money for the poor? They’re not nuns or nurses– don’t give them anything!
No, the failure of people’s beliefs to correspond to evidence makes them untrue and susceptible to mocking.
@97
I think it’s been discussed elsewhere on this site, but I don’t think you can say anyone is born as a (pick a religion or non-religion). Infants do not understand any concepts of theology or faith or religion, it is all taught to them. It’s like saying a baby is a creationist or an evolutionist. It’s something they take on (or is put upon them) in their life.
To truly say you belong to a religion or have a certain belief you must be able to explain how you came to that. I wasn’t born a Christian, PZ Myers wasn’t born an atheist. We both arrived at our current beliefs through introspection and study.
circular motion
GREAT GOOGLY-MOOGLY!
@105 “Priests don’t wear any baubles of authority. No patches or batons, no buttons or guns.”
Two words: The Pope.
Why can’t we all wear priests’ collars around everywhere? They aren’t trademarked, are they? The more non-priests who wear them, the more diluted the effect will become. And you’ll get much-deserved respect in the meantime.
Many seek power and status.
Then you are seriously delusional.
True enough but it does increase the likelyhood that they are arrived at through non rational processes.
“Dawkins politely asks him how he reconciles the peculiar details of his religious belief to reason, and Coyne can’t quite address the problem.”
With all due respect to Dawkins (whom I greatly admire) what did he expect Coyne to say? Someone who has spent his entire life believing in and teaching about and writing about absolute nonsense is hardly going to slap his forehead and say “Gosh Richard, I have been so stupid all these years” Humans seem to have an amazing capability to rationalize any belief system they have in spite of evidence to the contrary. Maybe there is some survival value in that ability.
Great point regarding uniforms — esp. for clergy. I agree I think it’s all about “treat me special”. I had a close friend spend years living in a Malay Buddhist monastery and he said their rationalization for the ‘uniform’ is quite different. They “force” themselves to look and dress distinctive — they purposely cultivate a look that they perceive as “uncool” — as a method of reducing ego. If they all look the same and that ‘look’ is uncool, as their rationale goes, this helps them to reduce their own sense of personal self/ego (which is one of the SINFUL human traits for Buddhists). Of course, all you have to do is watch people when a Buddhist monk walks through a Malaysian town, however, to realize that the deference and fawning by the faithful contradicts this rationale entirely; it is all about “treat me special,” just like the white collar in the West.
There are not a billion catholics, they count every man woman and child even those whose entire families have left the church for another denomination or just left period.
[Because education, possibly above all, should be education in critical thinking and the evaluation of propositions based upon not only reason but evidence (and the skills and techniques to evaluate evidence).]
I guess I would agree
[Further, the state of human knowledge in the sciences provides clear evidence of the absurdity of Catholic beliefs. That’s how so.]
Could you please give me an example of this?
God exists is a metaphysical claim and not a scientific claim (in case you didn’t know).
But someone could be born atheist.
There’s quite a compelling argument to be made that everyone was born atheist, which is kind of what we’ve been getting at. You don’t get religion until you learn about it from your parents and/or the culture you live in, and what religion you get tends to correlate highly with where you live. Sometimes there’s a conflict there — ask any North American Jewish parent of small children about the difficulties they have in explaining to Bibi and Tembelina why they don’t get Christmas presents too…
Personally regarding the clergy outfit – I’m all for it – its the best stay clear signal I’ve ever seen! I see a man/woman of the cloth approaching and I set my face to sarky sneer… only joshing…but still its a great early warning sign that any debate with this person is going to be hideously circular and thoroughly frustrating…maybe we should employ something similar for all religious folk…fish or +’s for xtians and…stars for the jewish…no wait…thats been used before…forget it!
[You are a through godbot, so you need to really step back to look logically at the situation. I doubt if you can.]
I have
God exists is a metaphysical claim and not a scientific claim
You are responding to a claim about “Catholic beliefs,” not generic theism, or deism.
Could you please give me an example of this?
Divine conception; the virgin birth; miracles performed by Jesus, the apostles and the saints; the resurrection. Let’s go with those for starters.
It depends. If that metaphysical god interacts with the physical world, it’s not metaphysical any more. None of the Abrahamic religions limit their god to the metaphysical.
facilis –
Claiming that the question of whether or not your imaginary friend exists is a metaphysical question rather than a scientific question is possibly one of the most specious arguments ever. Philosophical wanking makes me angry.
The absurd notion that the supernatural exists has about the same amount of sense (which is to say, no sense) as the notion that there is an invisible pink unicorn. You could just as easily claim that this invisible pink unicorn only exists outside of the scientific realm. However, there is no evidence for anything ‘outside’ of the scientific realm (which nothing is). There is no deity of any sort.
Wrong again. Until you acknowledge a metaphysical god is worthless god since it can’t effect the real world. Then, you have stepped back enough.
God exists is a metaphysical claim and not a scientific claim
Then what you’ve got is storytelling, with literary sophistication and personal taste as the only guides.
Give me a good story over metaphysical claims any day. Anything “after physics” is storytelling, and poor storytelling at that. Tall tales demand credulity and suspension of disbelief, yet no value is added to any mere story when clerics insist that it’s historically factual, and when supported by neither observation and evidence, trumps both. No story worth the telling is improved by adding the unsupportable claim that it’s dry documentary.
Time to break out the futuristic jumpsuits!!
Glen Davidson |#56
I wonder how many priests feel the same way as the priest in the bookstore. At one time the church and monasteries were centers of learning–depending on geography. Going into the Order to devote oneself to the pursuit of truth had a certain romantic appeal (like Sean Connery in the The Name of the Rose.) Nowadays, with modern science disestablishing the God concept, and social paradigms shifting, becoming a priest in the pursuit of knowledge is increasingly anomalous. It’s easy to understand the poignancy of the priest in the bookstore.
Personally, if I had to choose, I’d rather see your average priest in an airport than your average puffy-haired evangelical. (I think. I’ve not met that many priests. I’ve had a lot more experience with the fanatically-obsessed-with-jesusjoy crowd.)
Depends on the definition, of course. The definition that follows the etymology would suggest everyone is born atheist.
But a lot of scientists believe that we are born prone toward magical thinking and to teleology, both of which play readily into the hands of religion.
In the strict sense we may be born atheist, but one has to learn how to think in order to understand the world without the claptrap of superstition and magic. Which is why atheism is late to the human intellect in the historical sense (not quite as late as many people think, though).
Not disagreeing, just fleshing out some of the complications.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
In the case of Coyne, he admitted as much in the interview.
I think everyone’s missing an opportunity here. People have mentioned lab coats and badges, but those are inadequate to display the true wonder of SCIENCE!! Every working scientist needs to outfit themselves in full steampunk glory! Aetheric Electro-Goggles for everyone!
On average, I do not think they are so likely to deeply offend one’s intellect.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Could you please give me an example of this?
Divine conception;
Historical claim
the virgin birth;
Historical claim(wasn’t there a virgin-born shark on the news the other day)
miracles performed by Jesus, the apostles and the saints; the resurrection.
All historical claims I’ll grant you that we may not have enough historical evidence to confirm all of them. It does not mean they are absurd however. You have yet to make any kind of argument against miracles.
“We’re certainly not going to propose a uniform for scientists,”
Missing a big opportunity here PZ. Do you know how friggin’ popular the Dr. Horrible episodes have made a certain style of labcoat and goggles? I’m just sayin…
![]()
http://www.mydisguises.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/dr_horrible.jpg
You have yet to make any kind of argument against miracles.
Fine then, you go right ahead and refute Hume. I’ll wait here.
“It would take a miracle.”
I’m going to half to agree with the lab coat and goggles idea. Or Top hats. I would totally agree to bring the top-hat back.
@110
“Priests don’t wear any baubles of authority. No patches or batons, no buttons or guns.”
“Two words: The Pope.”
Two words:
Red herring.
The Pope, although a priest, does not typify a typical priest’s threads.
Virgin birth? Don’t make me laugh. Parthenogenesis requires that the offspring be female, at least in the case of hominids. Those pesky sex chromosomes. So Jesus was a woman. Time to go back to school and actually learn something.
Forget the white coats…scientists should just go around wearing those blue nitrile gloves. They’re practical,keep unpleasant things off of your hands, and are good for people with latex allergies! Plus, they *really* annoy the enemies of the Alliance.
@129 I bring in Dinosaur Comics, but you can’t be bothered to mention Girl Genius? Bah.
I think I’d prefer the Beakman-style lab coat and hair.
…Oh who am I kidding? I’d be dressed as Lester the Rat.
The absurd notion that the supernatural exists has about the same amount of sense (which is to say, no sense) as the notion that there is an invisible pink unicorn. You could just as easily claim that this invisible pink unicorn only exists outside of the scientific realm. However, there is no evidence for anything ‘outside’ of the scientific realm (which nothing is). There is no deity of any sort.
The difference is ,of course that theist have presented arguments and evidence for belief in God.(The invisible pink unicorn also violates the law of non-contradiction and so is beyond the realm of logical possibility)
facilis #118 wrote:
Richard Dawkins defined the God Hypothesis as:“… there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it.”
Could you please give some examples of “metaphysical claims” which are less controversial than “God,” so that we can consider both categories, and decide whether the above statement is more like a metaphysical claim, or more like a scientific one.
All historical claims I’ll grant you that we may not have enough historical evidence to confirm all of them.
There’s no historical evidence to confirm any of them.
It does not mean they are absurd however.
absurd: adj. inconsistent with reason or logic or common sense
Miracles are absurd.
You have yet to make any kind of argument against miracles.
I thought it was implied. No miracle has ever been observed with methodological rigor. No evidence exists for any of the claims made for miracles to date.
@134 If you’re wearing a top hat you need a handlebar mustache to twirl with it. First of all, that would make things too easy for creationists to caricature you as “evil-utionists.” Secondly, it’s probably difficult to twirl a mustache while wearing the latex gloves I was going to mention UNTIL SOMEONE BEAT ME TO IT! ::shakes fist @137::
@135 The Pope is king-priest, so he’s (always he) is fair game. Besides, other levels like cardinals or THE BISHOP(!) have fancy outfits. Higher up the totem, the more gaudy your refinements.
(The invisible pink unicorn also violates the law of non-contradiction and so is beyond the realm of logical possibility)
Non-contradiction? That should just about wrap it up for god then. I’ll throw in a bonus Euthyphro dialogue for extras.
I suggest we all start wearing white lab coats with large Scarlet A’s on the breast pocket.
I love your airport thoughts. One thing that is wonderful about living in America is the huge diversity that can be found just by walking through an airport.
J… is that you?
Could you please give some examples of “metaphysical claims” which are less controversial than “God,”
Mind dualism would be one
And what’s wrong with the “Naked Bunny with a Whip” look?
Whip it good–for science!
Of course every process has a start but people who are angry become less so and only stay away from church if arguments against it make sense.
Make that ‘no evidence’ to confirm them. None. It’s a matter of faith. And yes it seems most of them are absurd from a science perspective.
They have presented arguments that an elementary student can blow threw for the most part and no evidence to speak of in any real world sense.
Likewise the ‘pink unicorn’ is no more in violation than an invisible being who hears and sees all and is everywhere at the same time. Both are in the same realm of logic.
RE: #s 6, 12, 16, 34, 50, 67, 75:
I echo: tour dates please! I was looking up flight times and prices before even making it to the second paragraph.
As for impersonating clergy being illegal in Canada (#46), what if one wore the collar/uniform WHILE also sporting a T-shirt/sign stating, “I’M AN ATHEIST.” Kind of undoes the ‘impersonation,’ I’d think. Though you’d look even more ridiculous than a priest.
RE: Facilis:
#55: If you’re not educated in reason and critical thinking, you’re not very educated at all – no matter how many diplomas hang on the wall. If the men who became priests wanted to do good while being paid little and educated a lot, they should have become teachers.
# 61 – Dawkins’ logic would be fallacious if you were correct. However, no one’s expecting the priest’s lack of knowledge to DISPROVE anything. Rather, it just shows that he has no good reason to believe what he does. How you were “brought up” is no determinant of reality.
RE: Rick, #68: I don’t know if women look very good in tweed jackets with elbow patches, though. :P
While not quite yet a dead issue, mind-body dualism is non-responsive on the gurney next to the toe-tagged corpse labeled “vitalism.”
I think everyone’s missing an opportunity here. People have mentioned lab coats and badges, but those are inadequate to display the true wonder of SCIENCE!! Every working scientist needs to outfit themselves in full steampunk glory!
Aetheric Electro-Goggles for everyone!
@150 Women can make many a piece of male fashion sexy, if they wear it the right way :p
Fine then, you go right ahead and refute Hume. I’ll wait here.
I don’t have to. Go pick up “Hume’s abject failure” at the bookstore.The fact is that Hume’s claims don’t stand up when put in the light of modern probability calculus (at least Hume lived before modern probability calculus, you don’t have such an excuse)
What a load of baloney! I think one can study their way out of a religion like any cult. But I don’t think one can study into thinking guys fly around on horses, people fly into the sky, and ark’s carried all the world’s animals during a global flood. That takes something else and it shouldn’t be called study.
Mind dualism
That’s supposed to be less controversial than the existence of god(s)? Not that there’s any hard and fast metric for assessing levels of controversy, but I’m going to have to disagree.
Further, you’re stating that this is categorically not a scientific claim? That there’s no way, in principle, using empirical methods, that we can test this proposition?
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but sooner or later all religions involve the wearing of silly hats. I can’t quite figure that out. Great site, thanks.
-Tarzman.
@Facilis
None of which survive the epistimological requirements of intersubjectivity and insulation.
As the French would say: “l’échec”
facilis, you’re a boring troll. If you hold the Holy Grail of evidence to support your theistic views, please please PLEASE whip it out. Skipping through the comments with your banal partial sentences is a waste of everyone’s time. Put up or shut up.
I’ve yet to hear a Christian make any kind of argument against the Ganesha milk-drinking miracle of 1995 and yet I don’t see them running off in droves to Delhi to convert, so what’s the fucking point of mentioning miracles other than to confirm you believe in the ones that confirm your faith and reject those that don’t?
Facilis presents an abject failure. He should go wash his brains in Russel’s Celestial Teapot.
Two words: Queen, please.
***
I need a miracle every day.
“there goes a sad gomer who wasted his life on the nonexistent.”
There but for the grace of… doh!
Personally, I find things like the priest’s collar or nun’s habit helpful. They’re sartorial warning signs: “No critical thinking skills, please don’t attempt to use logic or reason to persuade.” Saves one a lot of trouble.
-jane doe
Could you please give some examples of “metaphysical claims” which are less controversial than “God?”
facilis #147 wrote:
I’m afraid there’s controversy about where this claim belongs, with many scientists saying it’s been falsified through neurology (at least), and paranormalists insisting that it’s been experimentally verified. If the paranormalists were correct — and there was indeed valid evidence that ESP and PK were genuine — then this would be empirical support for mind dualism, and strong evidence against mind/brain physicalism or materialism. So I think a good case can be made that it’s a scientific claim, and not a metaphysical one.
Do you have another example?
Too late. I saw the WHOLE thing yesterday so I guess I’m either:
1. Subconsciously masochistic, or
2. The type of guy who likes getting a free peak at the inner mind of an aging Catholic carnival freak without paying a quarter.
Your call.
Enjoy.
@155 “That takes something else and it shouldn’t be called study.”
You don’t think it should, but the definition of the word (application of the mind to the acquisition of knowledge, as by reading, investigation, or reflection) does allow its use in what I wrote above. I used the word because it was the first thing to come to mind as I was writing. ‘Examination’ or ‘investigation’ may have been better choices, they do not carry the implication of accepting what is presented by those seen as authorities or what is already considered to be true. They allow the leeway that the person examining or investigating can draw their own conclusions, which does go against the traditional definition of ‘study’.
Lapel pins.
A detailed system of discipline-specific lapel pins.
no…wait…I almost never wear lapels…
Tattoos.
A detailed system of discipline-specific tattoos.
Bobby spit on me.
And what’s wrong with the “Naked Bunny with a Whip” look?
*grins*
I know who’s getting the first spanking this weekend.
IIRC, Facilis was here a little while ago, and showing just the same truthiness he is now. Yawn.
Science at the end of day it will cause mankind to edge forward since it constantly improves. Religion is the anchor holding mankind back since it can’t change.
absurd: adj. inconsistent with reason or logic or common sense
Miracles are absurd.
You have yet to substantiate your claim. I can see how they are inconsistent with atheism or naturalism, but I have yet to see how they are inconsistent with logic.
I thought it was implied.
I guess you thought wrong
No miracle has ever been observed with methodological rigor.
So it never haooens because you never observed it….Riiight
No evidence exists for any of the claims made for miracles to date.
Isn’t eyewitness testimony a form of evidence? I see no reason to dismiss these claims outright.
Because you don’t understand intersubjectivity.
Logic is irrelevant without physical evidence to back it up. But then you know that, but evaded it.
Dear Jeezus, tell me it’s not true; Uncommon Descent reports
P.S. Congrats to Denyse O’Leary, whose Post-Darwinist blog tied for third in the science and technology category from the Canadian Blog Awards.
Actally, 4th, but what the devil is O’Leary’s crap doing in there?
And subject to personal bias.
Posted by: SC, OM | December 12, 2008
I need a miracle every day.
Oh, SC, I think you keep doing this just for me.
It’s A Miracle!
facilis: “Isn’t eyewitness testimony a form of evidence?”
*wretch*
Seriously? I guess you can’t think of anything that has been claimed by “eyewitness testimony” that you find incredible on it’s face. I suppose if someone says it’s true, it’s good enough for you. If not, how do you think we should test the claims of eyewitnesses for validity? Do you really need someone to hold your hand through this?
OK, new fucking rule for trolls:
Take the time to look around the world and realise your cute little beliefs (whatever they may be) ain’t all that fucking special before you show up here all fucking perplexed that we don’t have a fucking godgasm when you mention the Shroud of Turin or other such bullshit.
You got miracles, the Jews got miracles, the Hindus got miracles, the Buddhists got miracles.
Do not show up here expecting us to be impressed by your little stories of magic tricks without having some pretty good fucking answers to why you’re not impressed by the magic trick stories of other religions.
We’re so fucking tired of having to do the thinking for both fucking sides when it comes to trolls, goddamn it.
Yep, what Brownian said. Hear, hear.
Brownian (OM) wins The Rory.
Isn’t eyewitness testimony a form of evidence?
Yes, in much the same way that limericks are a form of poetry.
Nice! Gotta love JG in shorts.
SC, are you familiar with this excellent blog?
Janine, that’s not funny…
Ask any defense attorney wether he would prefer an eyewitness or scientific forensic evidence against his client. He will take the eyewitness testimony any day, since it is much easier for that to be garbled and distorted by him.
So facilis, since you’re not a Hindu, I expect you’ll be happy to explain to why you dismiss the world-wide eyewitness testimony of Ganesha statues drinking milk outright.
Ha, just kidding. That would require intellectual integrity from you, and I expect nothing of the sort.
Oh, absolutely not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witness
And a “witness” who cannot be cross-examined as a result of being dead? Utterly useless.
(PS: There is a way to “cross-examine” the dead. The method might be summarized as “empirical corroborating forensic evidence”.)
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | December 12, 2008
Janine, that’s not funny…
‘snort’ Sorry, I cannot stop laughing right now.
Thanks! Added to favorites.
Oh that one’s easy, Brownian, God let Satan deceive those Hellbound Hindoos to test our faith. Facilis has beliefs that nothing could disprove.
So I think a good case can be made that it’s a scientific claim, and not a metaphysical one.
Isn’t it both? Metaphysical claims seem to be more like scientific theories than scientific hypotheses, claims about what’s “behind” the observations.
You got miracles, the Jews got miracles, the Hindus got miracles, the Buddhists got miracles.
Good point.We have testimonies of miracles from many different cultures all over the world.This doesn’t mean miracles really happen but if someone wants to assert that miracles don’t happen they must have some heck of a good argument against them.
why you’re not impressed by the magic trick stories of other religions.
I guess I examine both sides with a skeptical mind and see in those cases which can be explained best by naturalistic processes and which cannot.
What if we all started wearing clerical uniforms? We might get better service at the airport, stores etc until they caught on.
I forgot about that one, Ken. I guess it’s like how when prayer works it proves God exists because He listens, but when prayer doesn’t work it proves God exists because He works in mysterious ways.
I can see the appeal of SJG’s NOMA concept; science and religion totally do answer different questions: science apparently answers the questions what? where? when? why? how? and religion answers the koan-like question: What is the sound of no brain flapping?
Regarding uniforms….In Australia, our pharmacists use a similar “uniform-led” confidence trick. They dress in white coats and stand on elevated platforms while they stick labels on packs. The status trick keeps the public compliant and also helps them in their highly organised campaign to fight off competition (here pharmacists are allowed monopoly access to local markets, privilege granted by law and reviewed every few years). At the same time, you should see the stuff they ALL push on their countertops. My local pharmacist now has the “anti-snor” ring – worn on the little finger and claiming to use acupuncture pressure points to stop snoring. Bah! And all of the “semi-medical” jelly beans “fat blaster” products and “earwax candles” they can squeeze onto a display. Perhaps uniforms make us generally less critical and more compliant?
windy #190 wrote:
I think it depends on how “metaphysics” is being defined. I don’t know for sure how facilis is using the term, which is why I asked him/her for examples of metaphysical ‘claims.’
I guess I examine both sides with a skeptical mind and see in those cases which can be explained best by naturalistic processes and which cannot.
Oh, boy. So, you’re basically saying, the more absurd the claim, the more likely you are to believe it?
Facilis, still trying to wave a magic flag to make us see you have no evidence. Just like you don’t have any evidence for your imaginary deity. Your miracles are fairy tales. Unless we can interview the eyewitnesses, they stay fairy tales. Keep trying. This can be very entertaining watching constantly fall into pits of fiction.
I expect you’ll be happy to explain to why you dismiss the world-wide eyewitness testimony of Ganesha statues drinking milk outright.
I didn’t. I examined it and saw what the best explaination for the event was.
And yet somehow you manage to come down in favor of the “miracles” that you’ve been told happened by your own tradition.
Special pleading is special.
Posted by: facilis | December 12, 2008
I expect you’ll be happy to explain to why you dismiss the world-wide eyewitness testimony of Ganesha statues drinking milk outright.
I didn’t. I examined it and saw what the best explaination for the event was.
You just keep me hanging on.
@#186
prepare to have wikipedia thrown in your face by the jesus freak.
You just keep me hanging on.
And there ain’t nuthin’ I can do about it…
Facilis, when it comes to the analysis of miracles you don’t have an objective opinion. You already believe in the judeo-christian god, so you are going to be far more predisposed to accept miracles specific to your faith while remaining skeptical about the miracles presented as evidence for gods of other faiths.
A hypothetical: if you yourself witnessed a genuine miracle, one neither your nor an objective observer could discount, but which resulted only from an act of worship of a non-christian god, would you convert to that religion?
Odd. I was in the Atlanta airport this morning waiting to fly home to Philly and there was a priest on my flight, wearing a short sleeved priest shirt.
My first thought (beyond the fact that the short sleeved shirt with the fake collar looked incredibly stupid) was “who are we trying to impress?”
Can we be blamed if we are left to wonder what’s under the preacher’s garb –lace panties or …?
Subject: Rev. Gary Aldridge, 51: Baptist preacher found dead wearing two wet suits, hogtied, with dildo inserted in anus
Associated Press
Authorities found no evidence of wrongdoing in the death of a Baptist
minister who was discovered asphyxiated in his home, hogtied and
dressed in two rubber diving suits, police said Wednesday.
An autopsy and investigators determined the death of the Rev. Gary
Aldridge on June 24 to be an accident, said Lt. Mark Drinkard, a
spokesman for the Montgomery Police Department.
“It’s a closed case. There are no charges,” he said.
When the autopsy was released Friday, the newspaper posted the report
on its Web site. The Smoking Gun, an Internet site that posts crime
reports and court documents, also has posted it. The report indicated
that Aldridge died while seeking sexual gratification.
The autopsy, prepared by Dr. Stephen Boudreau of the Alabama
Department of Forensic Sciences, lists “accidental mechanical
asphyxia” as the cause of death. Aldridge’s hands and feet were bound
together behind his back, and they were attached to a nylon cord
fastened around his neck.
The body was dressed in a face mask with a single breathing vent, two
wetsuits and was bound with cords and a belt, according to the report.
“These things happen,” Boudreau told the Advertiser. “We see probably
two of these a year. If you’re not used to seeing that sort of thing,
it’s probably unusual.”
Aldridge was the longtime pastor of Thornington Road Baptist Church in
Montgomery. A church member found the body after Aldridge failed to
show up at church on a Sunday when his wife was out of town.
—
The autopsy, including dildo details, can be read at:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/1008072scuba1.html
The Baptists don’t seem to be too upset: after all, he wasn’t dancing.
Eyewitnesses are evidence, but of what?
To be sure, scientists are frequently eyewitnesses to experiments and deliberate observations, but there the strong check on lying is the fact that anyone (with the right equipment and training) should be able to repeat the same eyewitness observations (single events are more difficult, but ideally several will have seen it–like with Supernova 1987A).
I don’t think any thinking person would claim that the Bible is not evidence, or that Muhammed’s claims are not evidence. But clearly they’re not evidence of what scientific testimony is. One is virtually certain that both the Bible and the Koran are evidence of what early believers (presumably Muhammed being one) wanted from their religion, for example.
Of course the idea that Biblical eyewitnesses would constitute eyewitness evidence that a court would take seriously is absolutely absurd, both because of their evident prejudice, and because none of it is firsthand. In that context, Biblical “eyewitnesses” would be considered hearsay at best, but much more like non-evidence in the sense of testifying to the events in question.
Eyewitnesses to the Fatima “miracle” are much more impressive, convincing me that something happened there. What, however, is not something that is known, perhaps not even knowable. I’d guess some sort of “natural phenomenon,” from atmospheric disturbances to some sort of mind-altering gases emanating from the ground. Mass hypnosis seems just possible, but not likely among all of the skeptics who were there.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
facilis doesn’t exist.
It’s simply a bot with a misspelled name: Fallacy.
Now, let’s watch Fallacy jump back in to ‘prove’ they do exist.
And when Fallacy ‘proves’ they exist then maybe they will learn one of the first steps necessary for something to exist. Maybe.
I didn’t. I examined it and saw what the best explaination for the event was.
I see that you’re talking right past the issue. With regard to the miracles attested by the New Testament, the claim is not that something seemingly inexplicable occurred but there might be some natural explanation, it is that these events never took place at all.
I’m convinced. It must have been a miracle.
Facilis, you’re not going to get away with shifting the burden here.
The burden is on those who claim the miracle happened, not those who are smart enough to be skeptical and demand evidence.
Credulity?
Ken, I have to get Wicked on you.
What was the bass player wearing?
Sure it’s evidence – irrefutable evidence. Oh, not for a god or a godlike being, but of a tribe’s folk tales (with some genuine history thrown in) mingled with the growth and development – or, dare I say evolution – of a belief system.
That’s a reasonable explanation for why you don’t believe that the Hindu Milk Miracle doesn’t confirm the existence of Ganesha (and personally, I agree).
What it doesn’t answer however, is why you don’t expect non-believers in your god to do the same with the miracles attributed to him.
As others have noted above, it amounts to burden-shifting. Further, it’s intellectually lazy.
Why do people keep responding to GIL and Facilis? I don’t object to the fact that they’re trolls, per se, it’s just that they’re so ignorant! It’s like having a fourth-grader in your high-school trig class: they don’t have the basics down.
These people are making arguments that have been refuted a thousand times on this blog alone! If they aren’t going to read any relevant books, at least they ought to be required to read this entire blog, plus comments, before they get to “contribute” to the discussion.
As the guest workers in the Valley of the Obscene Green Ogre say, “If you picket, it will never heal.”
What was the bass player wearing?
Which one?
Facilis is at least engaging in dialogue. He may have a closed mind but at least he’s attempting to justify it, sophistry though it may be. GIL, on the other hand, is just a moron wasting everyone’s time – well, except those of us fortunate enough to have a killfile installed.
That bass player is wearing a cucumber wrapped in tin foil.
“HELLO CLEVELAND!”
Why do people keep responding to GIL and Facilis?
Oh, we’re only incidentally responding to the trolls. They’re merely insignificant topics of minor amusement among those of us actually conversant in, and competent to discuss, the relevant material.
Carry on.
Correct, plus it is fun to mock the idiots who like to think they are smarter than us. Considering all the backgrounds here, that is almost impossible.
Maybe it was the Christian God who was performing the Ganesh milk miracle thingy in order to convert Hindhus to Christianity, so he used one of their pagan statues but because he works in mysterious ways he didn’t make the sign of the cross visible enough because he thought they weren’t yet deserving to become christians but he’ll keep on trying, when he thinks they’re ready he’ll make it more obvious so they convert poco a poco.
Just a hypothesis. And btw, nobody can prove that it’s false.
Vicars and Tarts? Something for the next Pharyngula get-together!
“HELLO CLEVELAND!”
“You can’t beat a good cucumber, I always say.”
facilis gave a reasoned response to a question of mine, so s/he gets a point for that (and did it without whining about my tone, which earns at least a half point extra).
GIL’s just goofing, though.
Then PZ should disemvowel him. He might make more sense that way.
Oh Ken…
Brenda’s strange obsession was for certain vegetables and fruit.
Ann #215 wrote:
Well, I haven’t responded to GodIsLove myself because I do think he might be a troll (just kidding around), but facilis has been polite and reasonable, and I don’t think his or her questions and responses have been stupid at all. They can be encountered in books and essays written over the years by some very intelligent people, and getting into why and how the arguments are wrong isn’t easy. There are assumptions under assumptions, and difficult ideas and concepts lying beneath what can look like simple errors. Never underestimate apologetics, or the people who make them. Rule of thumb.
It’s also not easy to phrase or form good responses. But it’s valuable to have practice — and to observe others who know what they’re doing — because the brave Christian souls who come on this blog are at least at the level at — and probably a few steps up from — the fellow at the water cooler, or the lady at the gym, and they’re the ones who are likely to put you on the spot when you aren’t expecting it. And that’s when you’re really going to wish you had lots of experience with handling ideas and dealing with people — and the calm that (hopefully) can come from it.
Besides, what if we’re wrong? We need the loyal opposition. ;)
Having more people wear them would be very useful. It would reduce the impact if many people just wore them casually. No one would know the difference between the frauds and the real thing (Ill let you decide who are the frauds)
But the real sticker would be ‘Wear a roman collar day’
Mark a day where all the skeptics just walk out of doors wearing the goofy thing. Could be fun, could be a way of starting a dialog, would definitely be a way to piss of Catholic League.
Janine, I think I love you.
(I swear I’ve dated at least a few of those 88 women.)
Mmmmmmmmmm, hmm-hmm-hmm-hmm-hmmmmmm-hmmmmm.
So we have steampunk, star wars, steampunk star wars, regular lab coat and safety glasses, and doctoral robes, but not one person suggests the one piece speedsuit of Dr. Thadeus Venture?
Talking about miracles, I think this is the real reason fundies want to revert us to
the Dark Agesliving in tents and wearing robes and sandals and herding sheep: their obsession with, and greed for, miracles. When I was growing up, every goddamn inexplicable thing and coincidence that happened in a person’s life was a MIRACLE and proof of jesus. A big part of church was testifying to the power of the Lord. If a person recovered from an illness, it was a MIRACLE! If a person didn’t starve to death after losing their job, it was a MIRACLE!They want their god to be real, and if we all just play along and believe in jesus and make this a truly Christian nation and reinstitute Old Testament law then their god will speak to us again in burning bushes, and we’ll get to see real honest-to-god miracles again.
They reject critical thinking because once their god returns in full (due to his children having faith, not reason) then logic and critical thinking won’t matter anyway; we’ll all live in a magical world of miracles and be little children for the lord. (See Pat Robertson grinning and playing pattycake pattycake with his invisible father?)
There is nothing truth-seeking about religion or the desire to witness miracles. It is greed. It is not special. It is not beautiful. It’s just greed.
Here’s a message to all the science nerds: Do you know how you feel when some ignorant theist comes along and starts providing ‘scientific’ evidence for a young earth, a worldwide flood, creationism, etc.? You don’t know whether to laugh, cry, ignore him, shoot yourself, shoot him, etc., right? Well, we philosophy nerds feel the same way when you science nerds 1. completely butcher philo 101; 2. act as if having taken philo 101 is sufficient when it comes to understanding sophisticated philosophic analyses; 3. butcher philo 101 while at the same time knocking philosophy; and 4. think that your understanding of science somehow entails that all philosophy, which you’re proud to admit you’re ignorant of, is nonsense. (There are other categories, I’m sure, but these four are the mains ones.) As I read through the comments on metaphysics, Hume, the genetic fallacy, dualism, contradictions, evidence, intersubjectivity, and so on, I felt (in most cases) as most of you do when you read a creationist’s mindless rant (or, rather, part of it; you probably have as difficult a time reading such nonsense all the way through as I did reading through these comments).
Sastra @227, very well said.
You can tell facilis is at least here for some sort of dialogue. He/She is what I’d call quality opposition, and they’ve been pretty rare lately, in comparison with the likes of GodisLove, Charles, HG, Robert Byers and the numerous Poes (sorry, I’m not proud of my virgine) somewhat wasting many people’s keyboards.
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t philosophy like apologetics: mental wankery?
Let me emphasize, I’m not referring to every comment; only to the most obviously ignorant ones.
Ann@#215:
(or what Sastra wrote)
eric@#232:
I might have a little more respect for your concern if I hadn’t seen you completely botch a “rebuttal” of the assertion that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.
I’ll admit that my own counterargument wasn’t the best at first, but the flaw in your argument was pathetic.
Well, we philosophy nerds feel the same way when you science nerds 1. completely butcher philo 101; 2. act as if having taken philo 101 is sufficient when it comes to understanding sophisticated philosophic analyses; 3. butcher philo 101 while at the same time knocking philosophy; and 4. think that your understanding of science somehow entails that all philosophy, which you’re proud to admit you’re ignorant of, is nonsense. (There are other categories, I’m sure, but these four are the mains ones.) As I read through the comments on metaphysics, Hume, the genetic fallacy, dualism, contradictions, evidence, intersubjectivity, and so on, I felt (in most cases) as most of you do when you read a creationist’s mindless rant (or, rather, part of it; you probably have as difficult a time reading such nonsense all the way through as I did reading through these comments).
Put up or shut up. You’re awfully smug and secure in your self-proclaimed authority for not having addressed a single specific argument that anyone made. (dualism? we barely touched on it: care to offer a “sophisticated philosophic analysis”? intersubjectivity? wow us.) And most of what you’re talking about is simple rhetoric anyway. Like your misidentification of the genetic fallacy, among other things. 1. It doesn’t take any expertise in philosophy to lob around the names of fallacies 2. nor does it to see when somebody is just lobbing around the name of a fallacy while misidentifying the argument that was actually made 3. Incidentally, that’s called a straw-man.
@117: There’s quite a compelling argument to be made that everyone was born atheist, which is kind of what we’ve been getting at.
The only argument, in my experience, is an argument by definition. I find these arguments problematic because the theoretical meaning provided often conflicts with the person’s actual usage. Too often, the person attaches additional ideas such as reason, logic, certain political perspectives, and disdain for religion. (That’s to only name a few.) If the reality of usage was connected with the theoretical meaning, I would be inclined to agree. However, my experience has shown this to not be the case. Hence, I disagree with there being “a compelling argument” that everyone is born atheist.
“Mmmmmmmmmm, hmm-hmm-hmm-hmm-hmmmmmm-hmmmmm.”
Showing off their silver leaves, as we walk by…wait, what were we singing?
William Hillbright #238 wrote:
I agree. People are conflating a lack of belief in God with the rational rejection of a hypothesis. Babies are “atheists” in the same way that dogs and carrots are atheists. So what?
I realize that people are usually trying to make a point countering the claim that “everyone is born knowing God in their heart,” but it’s a cheap sort of semantic victory. Instead of “no they’re not,” it looks like they’re saying that everyone is born knowing that there isn’t a God.
@232
What, in any of Facilis’ posts suggests that he does understand intersubjectivity?
And what is your beef with Tom Clark’s use of it in the linked article?
@117 and @238
I’ve always taken atheism to mean an active denial of any supernatural/metaphysical belief. Babies can’t fit that definition because they don’t have opinions/beliefs so much as instincts.
Are you the same eric who once called weak atheism a “cowardly attempt to escape any onus in a debate” and thinks that in science “you can’t get something into your conclusion if it isn’t already in your premises”? Makes me wonder if you should accuse others of butchering philosophical arguments…
Owlmirror: “I might have a little more respect for your concern if I hadn’t seen you completely botch a “rebuttal” of the assertion that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.”
Nonsense. If you failed to get the point I was making, i.e. that the concept ‘extraordinary evidence’ doesn’t stand up to a serious analysis *because* it turns out that it’s just plain ol’, ‘ordinary’ evidence after all that justifies extraordinary claims, then the fault was most certainly with you, not with me. If I may paraphrase Johnson, I can provide you with an explanation, but I can’t understand it for you. You may think that ‘analysis by slogan’ is a fine and dandy way to evaluate truth claims; I prefer to see if the slogan itself can withstand analysis. Here, it can’t.
“Joe was resurrected” is an extraordinary claim. How do we justify it? We confirm that Joe had died, and then we, say, meet an embodied Joe, alive and well, at some time after he died, with a number of other people. (For the sake of simplicity, assume that Joe is your brother, the two of you were very close, etc.; in such a situation, seeing Joe and talking to him with others would be enough for you to conclude that it’s ‘really’ Joe.) None of that *evidence* is “extraordinary,” though the situation certainly is; rather, it’s the same sort of evidence (talking to Joe, seeing Joe, confirming with others that they too can see Joe, etc.) that would confirm that Joe hadn’t gone to the store, as he had told his wife, but had instead gone to his girlfriend’s house (someone else sees him there, he tells Joe’s wife, Joe’s wife and her friend go to Joe’s girlfriend’s house and confront him, talk to, er, scream at him, etc.). The evidence is only ‘extraordinary’ (where Joe is resurrected) in the sense that it supports an undeniably extraordinary conclusion; in other words, the conclusion is so contrary to our normal expectations, that we’d expect *not* to find any evidence to support it (e.g. it’s a hoax, a hallucination, etc.): **it’s the finding of ordinary evidence where we don’t expect it that’s extraordinary**. It doesn’t, however, follow that the evidence *itself* is extraordinary. To confuse the two (extraordinarily finding ordinary evidence where you wouldn’t expect to on the one hand, with extraordinary evidence on the other) is to demonstrate just the sort of slip shod thinking about philosophy (here, concerning Sagan’s philosophic claim about ‘evidence’) that I was referring to.
Thank you for providing me with an easy opportunity to make my point!
Philosophy isn’t nonsense. However, many of the major schools contradict each other that the non-philosophically inclined are left with the impression that it’s primarily mental masturbation. Philosophy has give us some useful tools, like Occam’s Razor. But most of it is mumbo-jumbo wrapped up in jargon.
Incidentally, I’m an economist, so I’m professionally acquainted with mumbo-jumbo wrapped up in jargon being presented as serious arguments.
Only three professions are formally entitled to wear robes:
Clergy (High Anglicans and some Catholics still do)
Lawyers (English and Canadian lawyers still do)
Professors (who don’t wear their robes nearly often enough)
Once I get the PhD I don’t see why I’d wear anything but robes.
—–
A metaphysical debate that does not involve God or ghosts: do mathematical objects exist, and what would it mean to say that they do?
In the movies we can always start communicating with aliens by banging out primes, but would that really work? Is our math an incredibly complex set of arbitrary conventions which we use to talk about the world in a consistent way, or is math “out there” already? Do mathematicians discover mathematical truth or create it? etc.
Yes, metaphysics is usually silly. Biomedical ethics is rarely silly.
—–
Adding to what Sastra said, people are born without any concept of God. That’s not being born atheist — it’s not even being born agnostic! Someone who has no concept of God can neither believe nor disbelieve, nor withhold judgment on this debate which they know nothing about.
1 – no God concepts
2 – rejects God concepts
3 – withholds judgment on God concepts
These are all distinguishable, even if we sometimes apply the same word (“atheist”) to 1-2 or 1-2-3. Saying that babies are born 2 is unhelpful because it is false.
I guess I’m just going to have to put it on my to-do list of things to accomplish while we’re destroying religion: diminish the credibility of the clerical uniform.
(smiling fondly at PZ’s direction from some remote sinecure of cyberspace)
Do tell. Perhaps you should also take steps to undermine the gravitas of their buildings? I mean, certain architectural styles simply mark the religious as a privileged class in this world or the next, especially if (by way of comparison) you work in the cinderblock wing of academia. Seriously, PZ, the shot on this page of your school site looks like a prison. How in the Name of Cthulthu are you supposed to compete with something like this, that practically screams out, “I’m going to heaven…and you’re not!”….?
I await with great interest the details of your visit to the local Planning Commission. Down with all spires, stained glass, gargoyles and the like….or, if that is not feasible, perhaps a warning sticker? Something like, well…here?
eric #244 wrote:
In their books and articles, most skeptics who use the “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” phrase make it clear that, by “extraordinary evidence,” they do not mean miraculous or supernatural evidence: they mean evidence which is stronger than that normally used for casual or ordinary claims. Anecdotes or personal testimony won’t do.
In your example, all the factors added up to very strong evidence. So you’re right — if people have misinterpreted the phrase.
we philosophy nerds
“Are you a philosopher? Where’s your sponge?”
Tales of hypothetical resurrections are not evidence. Tales of dead and resurrected gods, monsters, heroes, cartoon characters and fairy princesses, are a dime a dozen, as extraordinary as that may seem to the credulous and those with a corner on the philostophy racket.
You mean you didn’t already?!
Thank you for providing me with an easy opportunity to make my point!
It didn’t seem to help. Maybe a higher degree of difficulty would earn you higher scores.
The point is not that there are two kinds of evidence, ordinary and extraordinary. Taken individually, of course a given data point is just as “ordinary” as any other. “Extraordinary evidence” refers to the lengths we will go to compile data in support of the claim before we will accept it.
In your “Joe is resurrected” example:
Ordinary case. Joe is believed by us to be alive. Someone says, “Joe is at the door.” Perfectly ordinary claim. To corroborate it, I am satisfied with a cursory observation of this individual’s person. Consistent with the proposition that this person is Joe? Yes. No further evidence required. I am happy to believe that this is Joe, based solely on the bare fact of his presence.
Extraordinary case: Joe is known to be dead. He has been buried. He is an ex-Joe. Someone says, “Joe is at the door.” A rather extraordinary claim. To corroborate it, I am simply not going to rest after my cursory examination. There are too many other explanations that could account for an individual that looks superficially like Joe being at the door. If Joe is well known to me, I might ask him questions that I thought only he would know the answer to. A DNA test might be in order, or fingerprinting. Etc. All extraordinary evidence in the sense that we don’t avail ourselves of this level of testing when an ordinary claim has been made. The apparent presence of Joe himself is the ordinary evidence, and it suffices in the first case, but it does not in the second.
Where you go wrong is “in such a situation, seeing Joe and talking to him with others would be enough for you to conclude that it’s ‘really’ Joe.” And my point is, in the ordinary case, you would have already been satisfied by merely the barest glance at Joe that this was ‘really’ Joe. The conversation is extraordinary evidence in the sense that, pending its outcome, you’re questioning the identity of someone whose presence you would ordinarily take for granted.
Scot Hatfield OM #247 wrote:
No, you misunderstand. We want more spires! Better gargoyles! Collars? Pht. We’re going to have tassels and epaulets and plumes on our crowns with jewels!
And when a scientist enters the room, trumpets.
Oh, and capes.
Perhaps you should also take steps to undermine the gravitas of their buildings?
As you know, Scott, budgets for schools here in California can’t compete with the ever-expanding prison budget. As to the reason for the gravitas, Lenny Bruce mused on this one night in Berkeley:
Eric @232, ‘Tis Himself @245: so far as I’m concerned, I consider that science another term for natural philosophy – i.e. a subset of Philosophy.
Brownian writes:
I’ve yet to hear a Christian make any kind of argument against the Ganesha milk-drinking miracle of 1995 and yet I don’t see them running off in droves to Delhi to convert, so what’s the fucking point of mentioning miracles other than to confirm you believe in the ones that confirm your faith and reject those that don’t?
Headshot.
That was just beautiful. Thanks for brightening up my whole day.
Ian: (re: second subject) Looks as though you’ve just finished reading Anathem!
Scott: First building says, quietly, “I am functional”. The second screams in ostentatious pride “I’ve just wasted hundreds of thousands of man-hours erecting a pile of kitsch to the glory of con-men”. Three plaster ducks on a living room wall have more taste than that monstrosity.
Addendum:
Do not show up here expecting us to be impressed by your little stories of magic tricks without having some pretty good fucking answers to why you’re not impressed by the magic trick stories of other religions.
Also, please try to stick to miracles that are really miraculous. As a decent benchmark, a good miracle should conclusively out-perform, say, what Penn and Teller could do on a good day. For example, I saw Penn and Teller saw a really sexy girl in half, and she was again made whole. That tops telling Lazarus to get off the slab – Laz wasn’t even sawed in half!
By the way, there does appear to be a paranormal something-or-other surrounding Lourdes. I haven’t bothered to do all the math because I don’t give a fuck, but with millions of visitors through Lourdes there have been something like 11 “miraculous cures of cancer” — which means that something in Lourdes is depressing the base rate of spontaneous remission. That could be really interesting! With millions of visitors through there, there ought to be dozens and dozens of cancer cures. Neat, huh?
mjr.
We want more spires!
Sez you. I want to gaze down upon the mundanes from my orbital space forest. Don’t need a costume (duh), and I won’t be mingling with the commoners who aren’t my pets.
I have a better slogan than “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” upon reflection.
Extraordinary claims require us to falsify an extraordinary number of competing hypotheses.
In the ordinary case, when Joe is at the door, all the same alternative explanations for why there’s an individual who looks like Joe at the door are theoretically in play. But we don’t even begin to consider them unless there’s some reason not to believe it’s really Joe at the door.
This, at least, removes the ambiguity in the phrase “extrordinary evidence” that eric is exploiting.
Thoughts?
Someone who has no concept of God can neither believe nor disbelieve
I don’t really get this. Why does it require an active effort to not believe in something? If you don’t have a concept of something, then it seems obvious to me you don’t believe in it.
Bunny – Things that seem obvious often are not. The issue here is in people definitions – in this case disbelief means that there was once a belief that has now been discarded. I ten to side with you that disbelief simply means to not believe – no prior belief required.
CJO #251 got the spirit of how the phrase “extraordinary proof” is used by skeptics. The extra evidence that is required to confirm that the situation is what is being described. The evidence itself isn’t extraordinary or magical, but there is a sufficient amount of evidence to clearly confirm or falsify the claim. In the case of Joe, I would require DNA testing in order to confirm his resurrection.
I’ll let the philosophers debate the phrasing of the new “extraordinary evidence”.
John Morales #254
Your own link disagrees with you:
Natural philosophy started evolving into science when Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle discarded medieval scholasticism in favor of what became the scientific method. The Scholastics didn’t see a necessity to test their ideas in the real world. In the 17th Century William Harvey described the circulatory system and was attacked by Scholastics for disputing Galen (129-200 CE). One of the major points of dispute was that Harvey had the audacity to rely on experimentation. If thinking deep thoughts was good enough for Galen, then why should anyone actually check to see if Galen was right or not? (No, this is not hyperbole, there were people who really made this argument.)
Natural philosophers observed phenomena and came up with ‘philosophical’ conclusions. Scientists make observations and present theories. There is a difference between the two disciplines.
‘Tis Himself @263,
Yes, I’m aware of that – but this is a matter of terminology: “The word “scientist,” meant to refer to a systematically-working natural philosopher, (as opposed to an intuitive or empirically-minded one) was coined in 1833 by William Whewell.” I think this historically contingent event has created a perception of a dichotomy where there should be none.
It’s only my opinion, of course.
In the case of Joe, I would require DNA testing in order to confirm his resurrection.
And more, surely, since DNA alone doesn’t rule out all kinds of cloning scenarios and what have you, all pretty far out, but still more plausible than magic.
I’ll let the philosophers debate the phrasing of the new “extraordinary evidence”.
Sure, I can understand why a lot of scientists don’t really see the point. It’s more a matter of rhetoric for me, or pedagogy. How to communicate ways of thinking about things like methodology and evidence –and the “extraordinary” for that matter– that come naturally to scientists, at least within their fields, but are widely misunderstood by non-scientists and misrepresented by creationists and associated apologists and pseudoscience enthusiasts.
“Extroadinary” is extraordinarily subjective. Someone should draw some kind of objective line to differentiate the ordinary from extraordinary.Otherwise the skeptic keeps moving goalposts.
Anyway, I think I would be convinced of ESP or anything else I don’t believe in by quite ordinary evidence
@Emmet Caulefield
No, the failure of people’s beliefs to correspond to evidence makes them untrue and susceptible to mocking.
What exactly in Catholic belief does not conform to evidence?
And why isn’t eyewitness testimony evidence?
Dressing as clergy is something I must highly recommend that all atheists try at least once.
It will give you an insight into the feedback that these frauds get, simply by the wearing of
the “cloth”.
Last halloween, my wife and I dressed as nun and priest (scariest thing I could think of) and
set out on an organised night club crawl of Cairns, Australia.
Normally dressed, as a not particularly attractive 56 year old man, some clubs catering for 18- 35 year olds make it
tricky to enter, young ladies avoid eye contact and strangers rarely initiate conversation.
Certainly none have ever asked me to pose for photographs with them and never have I been
asked to hold the breasts of cute young backpackers while the photos were taken.
However, with the uniform on, things were totally different, straight in at clubs, the odd free
drink, smiles from the girlies, strangers chatting, pics taken and breasts held. Fortunately
for me my wife could see the absurdity of the situation and just let me enjoy.
Drunken strangers wanted me to forgive them for their past sins. They were most surprised when I granted them absolution from not only past sins, but any sins that they might commit later that night. Some of them I even gave the next couple of weeks.
More seriously though, the deference that many people showed toward the uniform was quite alarming. I can fully understand why priests gain an inflated sense of their own importance.
Take your pick: the entire Catechism is an affront to evidence and reason, a patently ridiculous concoction of laughably absurd piffle. Please, start with Transubstantiation: that’s always good for a hearty belly-laugh.
Facilis #266 wrote:
I think that’s a bad example. ESP is a particularly extraordinary claim, and, because of its strong reliance on seeing patterns and finding significance in coincidences, very easy to mistake or mis-attribute. You need a lot of controls. Paranormalists have been trying to demonstrate it under lab conditions for years, and the best they can come up with is some borderline noise.
CJO, I’m sure we are on the same page. DNA is one of the most definitive tests, so it absolutely needs to be run. Fingerprints might work, since the fetal development timing may be slightly different with clones, so minor variations in ridge detail are possible. More than one test would need to be run to confirm resurrection.
The phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is short, simple, and to the point, even if slightly inaccurate. I worry that if it gets too long, while it may be more accurate, it might not work as well with the general public. A slightly longer version “extraordinary claims require an extraordinary amount of evidence” might work. If it gets much longer, the attention of the public may be lost before the end of the sentence. That’s why people who are better with words and understand a bit of marketing are better suited than I am for the discussion.
Once the ESP experiments were really made into blind studies, which was required due to some cheating that was occurring, the data fell into random chance. In other words, just a guess, and the right/wrong matched that predicted if no ESP was occurring. James Randi had a million dollar prize to anybody who could demonstrate various psychic powers. Being a stage magician, Randi always figured out how they were going to cheat and created controls to circumvent the cheating. He still has his money.
Nerd @272,
How about “extraordinary claims require extraordinary quality of evidence”?
PZ, you said:
I beg to differ. Many people worry just so, desperately. Religion is simple enough and effective enough to derail many from any philosophy that involves individual action and or courage. It’s why preachers get rich and temples get built.
People believe, as opposed to know, certain things because of the instant reward implied in all superstitions. And this is due to their failure to have learned about the real world. The fault for this is widespread, endemic.
Some hope presents itself in the efforts of bloggers like you and commenters like us who respond. Given a long enough run, we just might make a difference that will last.
I always wonder why anyone would want to advertise the fact that, at least in one area of their life, they are a gullible, drivelling idiot. People wearing their particular religious garb, which includes, not only the priestly collars but hijabs, yarmulkas, etc., alert me to this particular flaw in their character. Far from eliciting respect, I feel something between pity and disgust.
Re: comment 275, I should have added that this is how political parties are created also, by people who believe they know. A foolish omission.
How about the Assumption? Mary being transported directly into Heaven without passing Go and collecting 200 shekels seems to be pretty off the wall.
CJO, Four quick points.
1. You missed the context of the original discussion (on another thread) that Owlmirror and I had about Sagan’s slogan. My claim was that the slogan is either false (most obviously for the reasons I gave above), or trite.
2. Your *interpretation* of the slogan is simply false. Notice, the slogan is epistemological — claims of such and such a sort *require* (or *demand*) such and such evidence; nowhere is the subjective, psychological element of ‘persuasion’ (which differs from justification) mentioned. Yet notice how your phrases evince a concern with persuasion, not justification: “before we will accept it”; “I am happy to believe”; “I am satisfied “; “I am simply not going to rest after my cursory examination”; “you would have already been satisfied”; and so on. A justified claim is justified whether you ‘are happy to believe,’, are ‘satisfied,’ will ‘accept’ it, ‘are ready to rest after a cursory examination’ or not. Your interpretation of the slogan, however, reduces it to just such a psychological claim: *I* won’t be *persuaded* about such and such a claim unless such and such evidence is presented. Sorry, but if you can’t distinguish the epistemic requirements of justification from the normative, psychological requirements of persuasion (which often vary from culture to culture), then you also have helped me make my case.
3. The trite interpretation amounts to this: (one piece of ordinary evidence) + (another piece of ordinary evidence) + (still another piece of ordinary evidence) = ‘extraordinary evidence’ (where ‘extraordinary evidence’ is understood as ‘an accumulation of ordinary evidence proportionate with the evidentiary requirements of the claim.’ In other words, you’re just saying, ‘a lot of evidence is required to justify claims that require a lot of evidence.’ Well, no kidding.
4. The evidence you gave, which you claimed would satisfy you that Joe had been resurrected, won’t work (given an epsitemic interpretation of the slogan). Think about it: Our resurrected Joe could satisfy all the requirements you mentioned — fingerprints, DNA, intimate questions, etc. — *and it would still be the case that there would be possible explanations less ‘extraordinary’ than resurrection*. Resurrection (understood as, say Christians use the term) would require a miracle; a perfect replica of Joe, right down to the DNA and fingerprints, who guessed the correct answer to each question every time, however, would only be highly improbable. Now, what’s more extraordinary — a highly improbable event that’s physically possible, or a miracle?
I could go on about the problems inherent in the standard of ‘ordinariness,’ and with a few other complications, but I think I’ve made my point.
Tis Himself,
What, you mean you don’t believe in the celestial teleport of a cosmic Levantine zombie’s mother? Nor even in her enchanted one-way vagina?
Next you’ll be telling us that you don’t believe in the magic crackers in the “let’s play cannibals” pantomime!
#115 DagoRed:
That was also the idea behind clerical uniforms in christianity, before the bishops and cardinals started tarting themselves up “for the glory of god” once the church became a major power center in Europe.
A monk’s habit in most religions is supposed to be a symbol of humility, and it often goes along with things like shaving one’s head as a way of rejecting vanity.
I disagree with PZ’s assessment of priests as entirely useless. In between sermons, a lot of priests do useful work in their community, acting as shrinks, mediators, charity fundraisers, medics, public health educators, and so on.
-jcr
So did witchdoctors, back in the day.
Seriously, I have no problem with this, if they have some qualifications and training in those fields. How many of them would?
For example, I was most annoyed when, here in Oz, our late Howard Government introduced funding for school Chaplains, whose only requirement was that they have “religious” credentials. Happily, this current Government has made changes to the program, which they disingenuously deny are a form of secularisation of it.
And then there’s this:
School chaplains ‘worked miracles’
GOD has cured at least one state school student of attention deficit disorder and another of asthma, according to interviews with chaplains employed in 2850 schools under a $165 million federal government program.
The Lord has also made it stop raining at a state school assembly in Queensland and performed other miracles to bring state school children to Jesus.
One chaplain was able to “fix the head” of a disruptive student by placing his hands upon the boy’s head, and praying for him. […]
Sigh.
We hereby christen thee “The Mighty Dawk”
It always brings to mind:
Black and blue uniforms….
Police and priests
-Boomtown Rats, “Banana Republic”
#22 – they find it an empowering experience to see Priests in public. – that’s NOT a good thing. The religious are already far more “empowered” than is healthy.
#25 – but geeks are readily identifiable by our innate incompetence at affecting the wearing of a uniform, even that of a civilian. – Speak for yourself, monkey boy.
#46 – it is illegal (in Canada) to impersonate a cleric. – Whatever gave you that idea? It’s legal as all get out. Piracy, alas, remains illegal.
James Randi had a million dollar prize to anybody who could demonstrate various psychic powers.
I’ve still got my blue 2000 club membership card with the picture of Pigasus on it. I pledged a grand to the prize, and I’d have to say it’s the safest bet I’ve ever made.
-jcr
Nobody’s brought up Mendel?
@ #137:
Or Mary was really a man with a developmental abnormality mediated by environmental factors, such that she appeared mostly female while Jesus could still develop (at least vaguely) male in slightly different environmental conditions.
I’ve never liked this catchy phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.
As a slogan, it’s terrible, because it actually creates more problems than it solves. At the very least, it seems to presuppose the possible existence of extraordinary evidence, which in itself is problematic.
In actual practice, it never works, one is not looking for extraordinary evidence, but whether there exists an ordinary naturalistic explanation.
Take any such claim, for instance the most common one, “I’ve had an interpersonal connection with God”. What’s required for such claim to be deemed at least plausible is not an extraordinary evidence, but that there be no ordinary explanation that is more plausible (which there obviously is).
It’s the same with any hypothetical miracle : take the ganesh milk drinking, what’s required to make this extraordinary claim (God was pulling milk from the spoon inside the statue) plausible ? It’s not extraordinary evidence that’s required, but that one cannot find a more plausible ordinary naturalistic explanation for said phenomena.
So I’d prefer as a slogan, “extraordinary claims require that there can’t be found an ordinary explanation”.
From Canada
Hoping that Al franklin will still lose I would like to point out that mr Myers coming and being involved in Minnosota may be the reason for Al’s defeat.
All this attacking Catholic religious ideas and customs and trying to bring contempt upon Catholic beliefs may of pushed a tiny margin of the vote against Franken.
The vote being so close and Myers being loudly for Franken may of made just a few thousand Minnosotans chose the republican.
Has anyone brought this up?
Its very possible and probable.
Words matter.
Cause and effect.
@ #286
Perhaps that’s because nobody has swallowed him (or he’s extremely easily digested, with no emetic properties, melting in the mouth and being absorbed straight away).
This seems to be an over-generalization. Most of them have a day job which could be something useful like doctor or teacher. And there are some impressive individual examples like Mendel or even Andrew Greeley.
Not that I want to defend the “profession” which is a sad and abusive system considering that they don’t get paid and at least in theory don’t get laid either.
From Florida
Fuck off, Byers, you retard.
From Spain
Byers, at first your rants were funny for their stupefying stupidity. Now they are boring us. Time to find another blog for your droppings.
According to Joseph Campell, Costumes define a mythological character. When a judge walks into the courtroom, you don’t stand up to the guy, you stand up to the robe that he’s wearing and the role that he’s going to play. Now if scientists want to represent a mythological character, they should return to yesteryear (1966) and don lab-coats (examples: “War Between the Planets” and “Zontar, Invader from Venus”)
Mr Byers.
From Canada, also.
Professor Myers lives in Minnesota. You do not. By your own logic you should just STFU.
And you are still a fucking moron.
I actually quite enjoy wearing my lab coat on the street in the mild British autumn weather – although it DOES tend to make some people ask me directions to the nearest hospital. Perhaps I should have it embroidered with “Aspiring MChem” to discourage this sort of thing.
“I moved here from Canada and they think I’m slow, eh?”
Speaking as a long-time fan of Star Trek/War/Gate I’m all in favour of uniforms. The Trek comm badge is pretty close to a stylized atheist ‘A’ so it wouldn’t be difficult to adapt StarFleet uniforms. On the other hand, the Stargate costume of tactical vest worn over combat fatigues is more readily available, looks more macho and aggressive in keeping with the New Atheist image, and you can slap atheist ‘A’badges on to the Velcro patches on the shoulders.
Scott Hatfield @#248 raises an interesting question about religious buildings. Personally, I find the huge megachurch auditoria to be ostentatious displays of Earthly wealth and power that are hard to square with the message of Christianity. But then the same could be said of the great churches and cathedrals of Europe. Breathtakingly beautiful though some of them are, it is hard not to wonder whether the money could not have been better spent, particularly given the conditions in which most of the people of those countries lived at that time.
So when do I get my scientist badge? Can I get it next semester when I fulfill the MS requirements, or do I have to wait for my PhD?
I wonder what the badge for particle physics would look like… someone needs to get to work designing these!
What about the ubiquitous pocket protector?
This is a product which immediately lets the world know that you value true geekdom in all its pristine glory.
They are far less bulky than a lab coat, and yet still allows the hardcore geek to make a bold fashion statement.
I guess they’re normally associated with engineers and aerospace scientists more so than with biologists, but what the heck, you could be the first to start a new trend amongst biology professors.
There is a vast array of products available to suit just about any scientific profession. You can find many such products here;
http://www.pojman.com/PP/pocket_protectors/pocket_protectors.html
And here’s an example of one such product being used in its natural environment;
http://www.jimwcoleman.com/photoblog/1004%20jim%20nerd.gif
Bold, yet at the same time understated don’t you think?
PZ Myers:
Imagine you’re in an airport. Suddenly an elderly gentleman collapses, having just suffered a massive stroke or heart attack.
As he lies there dying, he clutches at your sleeve and implores you to find a Catholic priest to administer the Last Rites. What do you do?
Do you subject the poor fellow to a harangue about the evils of organized religion? Gently inform him that he’s been brainwashed into believing in a non-existent afterlife? Thrust a copy of The God Delusion into his hands?
Of course not — you do the decent thing and look around for a priest. Now if priests wore an ordinary suit and tie or dressed like slobs in jeans and T-shirt, you’d have a problem.
But as long as they were distinctive priestly garb — no problem. That clerical collar you spot in the crowd allows you to help an old man die consoled and at peace.
(Of course it could turn out to be a retarded adolescent who thinks it’s, like, really kewl to “destroy the authority of the collar” or “dilute the collar’s symbolism” by wandering around dressed as a priest, but that’s just one of the risks we run in this imperfect world.)
Pilty, I could agree with you, if you would just show some physical evidence for your imaginary god that would pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers. Otherwise, without a god, the priestly class is just a flea upon humanity.
You can’t be serious?
Piltdown
I’d call emergency and say that elderly gentleman has collapsed, having probably suffered a massive stroke or heart attack, then alert the airport staff and/or look for a doctor or paramedic in the crowd. This is a situation too important to waste time pandering to delusions.
Uniform for scientists
Uniform and behavior of Creationists
Rev BDC @306, LOL!
“Is there a priest in the house? A priest!! (what?) Orthodox! Is there an Orthodox priest in the house? Help, we need an Ortho…(what?) Greek Orthodox! Is there a Greek Orthodox priest in the house?”
*gurgle, gasp*
“Oh, and maybe a doctor?”
Piltdown Man #301 wrote:
Presumably, priests in the area would be drawn to scenes of commotion and chaos, concerned that there may be a Catholic who needs ministering to, and they’d run up and volunteer their services without being asked.
Otherwise, the prospect of people running all around an airport shouting for an emergency priest seems pretty far-fetched. They’d more likely be shouting for medics or doctors. Or, perhaps, the dying man’s wife and children.
“Pilty, I could agree with you, if you would just show some physical evidence for your imaginary god that would pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers. Otherwise, without a god, the priestly class is just a flea upon humanity.”
What else can’t be justified with ‘physical evidence that would pass muster with scientists, magicians and professional debunkers,’ and thus must be thrown out along with god?
Let’s start with propositions. There’s not an iota of ‘physical evidence’ that supports the notion that propositions exist, so out they go. Hence, by your own criterion, the proposition expressed by the sentences in your post have got to go. Pity.
Or, we could just start with the notion that ‘X is imaginary if it can’t be supported with physical evidence that would pass muster with scientists, magicians and professional debunkers.’ There’s no physical evidence for that notion itself, is there?
What about concepts? Mathematical objects? Logical rules? Moral precepts? (Hey, if they go out the door as a result of the ‘physical evidence’ criterion, then who cares about the guy having the heart attack?) Epistemic norms? Natural laws? Rational metaphysical conclusions (like the existence of other minds or an external world)? Irrational metaphysical conclusions (like naturalism ;) )?
Your universe isn’t simply ‘disenchanted;’ it’s unrecognizable.
eric #310 wrote:
None of the things you mention are problems for materialism — unless you use a silly, strawman greedy-reductionist version. Concepts, precepts, rules, etc. are abstractions. Materialism doesn’t rule out higher level phenomena formed by patterns and interactions. You’re attacking a view for something it doesn’t say.
I suppose other things which could be classified with God would be things like Extra Sensory Perception, vitalistic energy fields, astrology, and magic spells. Like God, they tend to rely on anecdotes, subjective validation, tradition, intuitions, pseudoscience, and appeals to faith and belief.
eric’s shallow sophistry:
Physical evidence includes the effects of on a physical system – for example, emotions are not physical, but the evidence thereof is quite scientific and convincing, and there’s a science (psychology) that addresses this.
“None of the things you mention are problems for materialism — unless you use a silly, strawman greedy-reductionist version. Concepts, precepts, rules, etc. are abstractions. Materialism doesn’t rule out higher level phenomena formed by patterns and interactions. You’re attacking a view for something it doesn’t say.”
Sastra, when you talk about ‘materialism,’ you’re dealing with ontology; I was responding to an *epistemological* rule, viz. if there’s no physical evidence for X, X is imaginary. (Incidentally, if we go by that rule, then abstractions *qua abstractions* are out.) Clearly, then, I was in no way attacking a straw man, since I wasn’t saying a thing about materialism (though I did poke a little bit of fun at naturalism; that, however, isn’t necessarily identified with materialism).
eric @310, as Sastra points out, another issue you don’t consider in your thesis is the concept of categories of being.
“Physical evidence includes the effects of on a physical system”
John, kindly provide me with the ‘physical evidence’ (including the effects on a physical system) that justifies one’s belief in propositions, concepts, mathematical objects, logical rules, etc.
John, go back to the ontology/epistemology distinction I mentioned in my response to Sastra. You may learn something.
Are you contending that god(s) is/are one of those four and that he is only real in the same sense as modus ponens?
No.
#317, s|he|he/she/they|
Eric @315, you’re saying God is in the same category as “propositions, concepts, mathematical objects, logical rules, etc.”? Such things do not physically exist, and as such do not require physical proof (other than their utility in either understanding or manipulating physical things). Deities that purportedly affect nature and minds (i.e. produce observationally-accessible effects), however, would require evidence since they are not necessary to a consistend and valid conception of reality.
@317, I don’t need to go back. It is an ontological issue inasmuch as different categories require different standards for establishing their “reality”, and you’re confusing epistemology with empiricism.
Eric, philosophy is mental masturbation if it isn’t backed up by physical evidence. You are engaging in mental masturbation. You should do it in private, and wash your hands afterwards before you rejoin the regular community. Pilty either puts up the evidence or shuts up. He has needed to shut up for months now.
#318 Eric,
I assume that’s an answer to #317.
Then what’s the point of wanking on about whether abstractions exist or not?
If you claim that something is concrete and real, rather than an abstraction or a thought, you must eventually produce empirical evidence for it.
Nobody says that leprechauns don’t exist as thoughts that can be labeled and talked about, we say that leprechauns don’t exist as concrete real entities because there is no empirical evidence for them. Ditto for god(s).
“It is an ontological issue inasmuch as different categories require different standards for establishing their “reality”, and you’re confusing epistemology with empiricism.”
Not quite. If the following rule obtains — “If you can’t provide physical evidence for X that would pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers, then X is imaginary” — then there’s only *one* standard, regardless of the ‘category.’ (BTW, not only is it bad form to post a wiki source, but it’s especially bad when that source claims it needs checking by experts!) So, yes, you do need to look again, since you obviously don’t understand the distinction well enough to apply it.
You’re foolishly agreeing with me, with respect to the substance of my remarks, while rhetorically expressing your disagreement!
Oh yeah, eric, I consider “God” to be in the same category as beliefs – they both affect minds (which in turn affect humans). So in that sense, yeah, gods are as real as any other imaginary being is – they’re as real as Santa Claus.
And the evidence for Santa’s reality is probably more convincing than the evidence for God’s reality :)
No one’s suggesting that there’s no physical evidence for the Christian God concept as a product of the human imagination. Indeed, there are millions of pages of abstruse drivel about it. Just as there’s physical evidence in the form of monuments, artworks, scrolls, recordings of lectures, etc., for the existence of other god concepts.
“Eric, philosophy is mental masturbation if it isn’t backed up by physical evidence.”
Do you have any physical evidence for this? Of course not; it’s a philosophical position itself, so you’re mentally masturbating. Will you please stop it with the mental masturbation; you’re making me uncomfortable.
Wow, eric.
So, you claim we’re saying scientists consider emotions are imaginary? Right.
What a clumsy straw man.
As for linking to Wikipedia, are you arguing that the concept of categories of being isn’t basic to ontology, regardless of its breakdown?
eric,
It is reasonable to infer from context that the statement applied to “real” existential claims, not concepts. Obtusely failing to infer as much in order to nit-pick is disingenuous.
Isn’t God anyway a product of the human mind, like the rest ?
negentropyeater,
According to theists, that’s true only for the false gods. Their particular God(s) is/are, um, entirely different.
Do you have any physical evidence for this? Of course not; it’s a philosophical position itself, so you’re mentally masturbating.
And rejecting religion is a religious position, just as Eric would be a fuckhead to object to my referring to him as a fuckhead. For Eric to ignore the accusation would be part of the mounting pile of evidence of Eric’s dicklessness.
I’m sorry, but I couldn’t be more rude on such short notice.
Eric, your comment in #318 (‘No’) – earlier you dismiss our refutation of god because of his/her intangibility on the physical plane as invalid because we accept the existence of abstract concepts (propositions, concepts, mathematical objects, logical rules) – but then you say that you don’t include the concept of god/s in that group.
What was the point of arguing that we must accept the existence of god as an abstract concept because we believe in other abstract concepts if you’re then going to argue that god isn’t an abstract concept?
Of course, I’m a) hungover and tired, and b) almost entirely unschooled in philosophy/logic – so it might be more my fault than yours.
Now I think eric just needs to acknowledge that his post #310 in defense of Pilty was very bad philosophy. That would be nice.
Philosophy is most certainly useful, but not when it’s bad and fuckingly moronic philosophy.
While, as I mentioned before, I don’t have any education in philosophy, I’d like to think I’m bright and perceptive enough to work my way through to understanding most of the arguments involving it – but Eric seems to operate on another level entirely.
It’s like (for example) we have an argument about clouds, and he asks me to define clouds; I do, but then he replies that isn’t the correct definition of clouds and therefore clouds can’t exist.
No doubt this gets (or got) him good marks in his philosophy courses, but to me it seems self-indulgent and empty to bother with it outside the classroom.
What delights me about Symbolic Logic is the rule that has it that if the premises were true, the conclusion would have to be true, right next to the rule that the conclusion can be true, even if the premises are false. So, there we are, Wowbagger, struggling along with empiricism, as far from the Platonic Ideal as it can possibly be.
The problem is that if god is just a philosophical statement, the believers need to acknowledge that god is only in their minds, and cannot change anything in the real world. In other words, prayer is useless. I can live with that if they left it there. Nobody else needs to believe their delusions along with them. Pilty, that is your problem since you believe a spiritual god.
If prayer can affect the material world, then god must leave an imprint on the material world with physical evidence. But that means a material god that everybody must believe in. So the religious need to fish or cut bait. Define your god and live with the consequences. And don’t ever change the goalposts in mid argument.
Ahh, another non-materialist. If you are going to argue that thoughts are non-material then lump God in the same category, I hope you mean God is nothing more than a mental construct. Without the mind there would be no thoughts, just as without the mind there would be no God. God is just another thought.
Wowbagger, I guess the difference between philosophy and science* is that between theory and practice.
“The difference between theory and practice, is that in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice”.
* cf. my #255.
The difference I see between philosophy and science is that when philosophy is contrary to evidence, the evidence must be wrong. When science is contrary to evidence, it’s the science that’s wrong ;)
Stop masturbating and people will stop discussing it. Continue masturbating in public and it’ll be commented on.
Ken, Nerd, Kel and John – thanks for that; I’m glad to know that it’s more to do with eric’s somewhat disingenuous position than it is to my lack of education. He and I (with others) had a very similar conversation on a thread a couple of weeks back that went almost exactly the same way is this one; this time, at least, I’m not left with any doubts as to why.
When someone starts waxing philosophically, then you know there’s bound to be some dishonest rhetoric about.
Oh, qua yourself. Amusingly, that sentence appearing on our screens provides physical evidence that abstractions exist, at least in eric’s mind (in this case, in ours as well). My typing the words “If we go by that rule, then the concept of plaid, three-headed people is out” is evidence of the existence of that concept. It’s self-refuting.
qua?
Que?
I’ve noticed the cat-o-licks tend to try the philosophical, imaginary god for a while, then try to turn tables once you have accepted that and try for the god who can affect the real world. Quite the lie. We’ve had Pilty, John Knight, Pete Rooke, and a few others try that tack. Doesn’t ever work with me, since physical evidence will always be required, and they can never produce any evidence that passes muster.
It’s just another god-of-the-gaps argument. ‘You can’t prove, using certain philosophical arguments, that god can’t exist; therefore, he must exist.’
Thing is, I don’t think eric’s a theist of any stripe – he just likes arguing.
Wowbagger,
He should stick to something he’s good at, then, and stop embarrassing himself.
“Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it’s all because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place.”
— (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
BF Skinner thought so, but then he and the behaviorists have largely been thrown out as the dominant mode of thought.
And anyway, emotions ARE physical. The limbic activation you experience is, in fact, ion fluxes moving down insulated neurons. Yes, they have a mass, and follow a pattern in real space. So I would have to agree that everything that is real is physical, or has some impact on the physical world. If it doesn’t fit this category, it isn’t real.
God is real as a concept, insofar as the patterns of people’s brains represent him/her/it. And no further.
I am embarrassed to share a common label with those so blatantly ignorant of philosophy.
I guess – but to a philosophy naïf like myself he makes points I can see have flaws but which I don’t have the skills to refute – at least, not with any confidence. It’s like I know why what he’s said is wrong, but I don’t know how express why he’s wrong.
Yes, they have a mass, and follow a pattern in real space. So I would have to agree that everything that is real is physical, or has some impact on the physical world.
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/11/scientists-extract-i.html
At last, we can do that episode of The Prisoner
Ken Cope @352
I must confess, I haven’t seen The Prisoner, and in fact don’t know what it is. However, the link you provided was wonderful, and I cant quite stem my giddiness.
Here’s a question for the dualists:
If you are actually confident that your memories are on some higher, intangible plane of existence, you probably wouldn’t mind having some lesions inflicted on your hippocampus, right?
I mean, what could go wrong? The brain is clearly a useless organ, and plays no part in our mind, right?
Matt, Sexual Jihadist @349,
Yeah, but you’re describing the physical cause of the noumena of emotions, not their qualia per se, to which we are referring.
</obscurantism>
Ah, yes, because the qualia can exist without the physical signs, right? No, wait, they cant. Maybe because stating that emotions are ’caused’ by the physical signs is meaningless. They are never found apart. One does not result in a process by which the other is initiated.
As for what the qualia are, aside from a physical process, have fun discussing that. The question is about as meaningful as “what does an electron experience as it changes an energy level?”. And about as likely to be answered. Because while we can describe it physically, there will always be those who say: “Yes, but we don’t know how the ELECTRON perceives it.” And we don’t. Doesn’t make the question any less of a waste of time.
Sorry, Matt, it was a pretty weak joke :)
#77 FTW!!!
Nerd of Redhead @336:
To say that God is a spiritual being is not to say He only exists in the same way as a philosophical concept exists in someone’s mind. And to say that a spiritual being could not act on the physical universe is just a dogmatic assertion.
As for the “physical imprint” left on the material universe by actions of a spiritual being, what did you have in mind? Actually witnessing a miracle taking place is one thing, proving physical evidence after the event is quite another. After Jesus turned the water into wine, how could anyone prove the perfectly ordinary wine had once been water? Even if one points to a physical phenomenon for which science cannot easily offer an explanation, like the Turin Shroud, a sceptic would merely respond with something about ‘miracles of the gaps’ and say that just because science can’t explain it now doesn’t mean it won’t be able to explain it in the future.
You keep demanding evidence of God’s existence but I can’t help wondering what sort of evidence you think you have a right to expect. Suppose God does in fact exist and has the attributes Christians say He has. Such a being isn’t going to show up in a test-tube or even a Large Hadron Collider like some new element or particle. Nor is He some putative cryptozoological entity like Bigfoot who could theoretically be captured and put on display for all to see. Still less is He a genie that can be summoned at will. God is a sovereign person who makes Himself known as and when and to whom He chooses. That’s one of the reasons He’s called ‘Almighty’.
Suppose an incorrigible sceptic demanded solid proof that a certain friend of mine, whose virtues I kept extolling, actually existed. What proof could I produce that would satisfy him? Letters written by my friend could be pooh-poohed as forgeries. Corroborating witness from other acquaintances could be dismissed as mass delusion or conspiracy. Photographic or film evidence could be faked.
The only thing that would convince the sceptic would be if he were to meet my friend and see for himself. This is possible but there is just one catch. Perhaps I forgot to mention that my friend isn’t any old Joe Schmoe but is a very important person — a king, in fact. You don’t issue peremptory demands for him to meet you at your convenience — that would be lèse majesté. You humbly petition him to meet you at his convenience.
If the Christian God does in fact exist, it would be unreasonable to expect the Creator of the Universe or His Son to appear at the beck and call of one of His common subjects, who moreover refuses to show respect for His royal authority. Instead of clamouring outside the palace gates like a revolting peasant or upstart noble, enter the antechamber cap in hand, get down on your knees and await His Majesty’s pleasure. He has promised not to refuse an audience to anyone who seeks one in an appropriate spirit, so it’ll soon become apparent if He doesn’t exist. In that case, you might end up feeling a bit foolish — but far less so than if He does exist and you refuse to even look for Him where He says He can be found.
Nice long apologetic rant there Pilty. It’s great to have a live specimen to observer. Making excuses for the absence of an omnipresent deity, it’s quite impressive.
What is there in that rant of yours that cannot be transplanted to apply to any other deity in human history?
Don’t worry, if Jesus tried that trick in front of a bunch of Scientists nowadays, they would easily be capable of asserting if this was a simple forgery or a possible supernatural phenomena for which they cannot find an ordinary natural explanation.
Please name me one purported miracle that has happened recently and has been examined thoroughly by Scientists that doesn’t have an ordinary natural explanation.
@ Piltdown Man #359
You haven’t even managed to produce any letters hand-written by your imaginary friend though. Nor have you produced any photographs of the imaginary friend (nor fingerprints, blood or saliva samples etc etc). All the so-called witnesses around the world disagree with each other, vehemently and violently and in just about every detail imaginable, and hence are actually evidence against your imaginary friend existing in reality.
You don’t even meet your own basic standards of evidence. Yet you wonder why we laugh at your foolish belief.
Pilty, I’ll break this up into smaller arguments.
Due to your last few paragraphs this: First of all your imaginary god doesn’t exist, your holy book is a work of fiction, the theology derived from that fiction is another work of fiction. The burden of proof is on you, and will always be on you, to show otherwise. To date, you have failed miserably. More on this in a later post.
The spiritual god I mentioned is the god of Deists. A nebulous god who created the world, but then stepped back and let it run on its own. The only reason for the god is that the person cannot see the universe without one. There is no need for a holy book or theology, since the god doesn’t interact with the real world. Also, this god cannot be proved since there is no interaction with the real world after the creation. Many people have believed in such a god, Albert Einstein and Thomas Jefferson being just two examples. Since this is a very personal idea of god without any theological baggage, there is no need for others to believe the same thing, so there is no preaching to convert. Convert to whom? Zeus, Yahweh, Flying Spaghetti Monster are all interchangeable. So if your god is totally spiritual, which you imply to me every time I ask for proof of god, it falls in this category. So if this is your god, no need to preach, just go away.
Mass hypnosis [at Fatima] seems just possible, but not likely among all of the skeptics who were there. – Glen D
This underestimates human suggestibility; rationalists and sceptics are also vulnerable to this, although perhaps less so than others. Besides, how good is the evidence that a lot of sceptics were present, and saw something highly unusual? Why are there no photographs of anything unusual in the sky if this was a physical event?
I haven’t made a study of this event, so you may well have information I have not come across, but as of now, I see no reason to believe anything anomoalous took place.
Nerd of Redhead @363:
There is no burden of proof, as I’m not trying to convince you of God’s existence.
I’m merely a) explaining why your demands for me to produce physical evidence of God’s existence are misconceived, and b) suggesting you ask God Himself to provide you with proof of His existence.
What have you got to lose?
Pilty, the burden of proof is always on you. Quit lying. Otherwise you would take your theology and go back to your cave, and stop bothering us. You want us to believe. Then show us the proof for your imaginary god.
Pilty, in my previous post #363 I covered what I meant by a spiritual god. That was a god who may have created the universe, but is not now interacting with the universe in any way. Therefore, no traces of god beyond the creation itself can be seen due to lack of interaction. It is the god you claim every time I ask for proof.
In this post, I will cover the non-spiritual god, the one you actually believe in. This makes your spiritual god claim a lie. This god can interact with the natural world, answer prayers, do miracles and other sundry tasks. A real being who can leave their mark on the world. This god can also have holy books and theology. But, how do we tell a real god who can suspend natural laws if they so desire, from a god or an advanced alien race who can’t (think Vorlons in the B5 universe)? Now, if the god/alien follows natural laws, evidence to their existence might be hard or impossible to find. Everything found can be explained by natural causes by science, with no need to infer any supernatural being. This also means the miracles in the bible are fiction, as there is no supernatural cause. This is also a pretty wimpy god, with no omni’s as required by the definition of god. So, like the spiritual god, doesn’t do anything magical, and really can’t be proved. Since it can’t do anything, why bother worshipping it?
So the only god that fits what you keep describing is the god who can suspend the natural laws for the supernatural events described in the bible to happen. It also fits with the omni’s that describe your god. So we need to look at the possible evidence such a god would leave behind. That will be covered in a later post.
Pilty,
Have you asked him yourself, and what specific proof has he provided you with ?
I think some commenters have been far too dismissive of philosophy (which contains brilliant work such as Dennett’s, integrating scientific findings with everyday experience and explicating such difficult concepts as consciousness and free will, as well as much trash) and of eric’s points about the existence of non-physical entities such as propositions and mathematical objects (smug and condescending little snot though he is). If we are not to get entangled in the toils of theists, we do need to be a bit more sophisticated than just saying (in effect) “If you can’t kick it, it doesn’t exist”. As an example, take prime numbers. These are certainly not physical objects, they do not have causal powers, but the distinction between primes and composite numbers cannot be denied once it is understood, and we can prove that there are infinitely many of each. The fact that (say) 17 is prime constrains what we are able to do in the physical world. For example, if we have 17 square blocks, we cannot arrange them to make a rectangle. If we have 16 or 18, we can. Gods, of course (like meteorites, electrons, ghosts or leprachauns), come into a very different category: they are supposed to have causal powers and in most cases, to act on the physical world; hence it is proper to demand evidence of their doing so.
Piltdown’s lame analogy between his alleged god and a haughty earthly monarch has already been trashed, but I’ll add my critique. The difference is that anyone can check other sources of evidence to check whether Piltdown’s claim that this king exists is true; if he does, there will be ample and undisputed evidence of the fact. In the case of gods, all we have are the mutually contradictory assertions of hundreds of religions and tens of thousands of sects. As with the contradictory descriptions of the Loch Ness monster, these are, if anything, evidence for non-existence: a real being would surely produce a great deal more consistency.
Looking beyond empirical evidence for a moment, we know that doctrinally orthodox Christianity is false, because it makes logically contradictory assertions, most notably:
1) Jesus the Nazarene was “wholly man”.
2) Jesus the Nazarene was “wholly God”.
This is much more absurd than claiming, for example, that there is an organism which is at once wholly a cabbage, and wholly a cuttlefish: a man is finite in size, spatio-temporally located, mortal, limited in knowledge and powers while “God”, we are assured, is infinite in all respects, everywhere at once, immortal, omniscient and omnipotent. The differences between cabbages and cuttlefish are trivial by comparison.
The same charge cannot (AFAIK) be levelled at Islam, Unitarianism, Judaism or other monotheistic religions – so all Christians, if they cannot abandon theism, should if they pretend to rationality immediately abandon Christianity for one of these alternatives.
suggesting you ask God Himself to provide you with proof of His existence.
What have you got to lose?,/I> – Piltdown
First, there may be a god who objects most strongly to being pestered, and will punish the pesterer with eternal torment – or who only likes to be approached by people wearing ten-gallon hats and revealing lingerie, and will similarly punish offenders. Either of these possibilities is (see my previous comment) infinitely more likely to be true than is doctrinally orthodox Christianity. Second, auto-suggestion is a powerful and sometimes dangerous enterprise. There was a comment on this blog some while ago (sorry I can’t be more specific, perhaps someone will remember) by an atheist who had experimentally tried cultivating an attitude of reverence to some everyday object – and even after quite a short time, found “withdrawal” quite difficult. If one could “find God” sinply by asking, one would expect sincere seekers after God – who surely have existed in a very wide range of cultures – all to come up with the same God. Manifestly, they do not.
Nick #369,
I don’t think anybody was dismissive of eric’s points about the existence of non-physical entities, we just trashed him for bringing it up as an argument in defense of Pilty’s God (see #310). Note btw that he dissapeared once he realised his mistake.
Pilty, forty+ years ago I was a believer. Then I made the “mistake” of reading the bible from cover to cover. Then in disbelief, I read it again. The bible is a horrid book showing a god I had no wish to ever emulate. The text kept contradicting itself, and since it was impossible to determine the good text from the non-good text, it was easier to give it all up. By backing away from belief, the lies inherent in religion are easy to expose. By the way, this is a common start for becoming an atheist, reading the bible. Imagine that, if it is such a great book.
So now, after training the scientific method and skepticism, god has to be proved for me to believe. So far, absolutely no evidence to confirm the existence of god has been presented, by either man or god. He evidently doesn’t care if I believe or not, so why do you? Philosophical arguments are just sophistry. Quit telling me to just believe, because all that tells me is that you know you have nothing.
What do you mean science can’t offer an explanation for the turin shroud? It arose in the 14th century, dates to the 14th century, made of 14th century fabric and it’s face is out of proportion for what it would be like if it were wrapped around a human face. The shroud is a fake Pilty. Surely you knew that?
“I don’t think anybody was dismissive of eric’s points about the existence of non-physical entities, we just trashed him for bringing it up as an argument in defense of Pilty’s God (see #310). Note btw that he dissapeared once he realised his mistake.”
Was I defending Pilty’s conception of god, or was I criticizing Nerd of Redhead’s “physical evidence” criterion? I thought it was the latter, and, as the saying goes, I am the world’s foremost authority on questions pertaining to *my* opinions, beliefs, intentions, etc.
Note, I didn’t once mention ‘god’ in any of my posts, but instead focused on propositions, mathematical objects, etc. That should’ve provided you with a clue as to my intentions. The point I was making — a rather uncontroversial one, I think — is that if one can show that there are some aspects of the world that cannot be justified by way of the physical evidence criterion, then it’s at least premature to argue, as Nerd did, that If X cannot be justified in that way, X is imaginary. Once we concede that not everything that we rationally believe is amenable to justification by physical evidence, the question gets a bit more complicated, and simplistic dismissals like Nerd’s become a bit more irritating.
On the subject of god and justification, I’ll note that, in general, most theologians don’t think that god is just another sort of object in (or outside) the universe, and that we can therefore look for ‘evidence’ of his existence. (Note, this isn’t just asserted, or assumed, but argued for.) Rather, they tend to argue that god either exists necessarily or not at all, and that it makes no more sense to talk about the ‘probability’ that god exists (which is what we’re always talking about when we limit ourselves to ‘evidence’) than it does to talk about the probability that the number 17 is prime, or to ask for ‘evidence’ that 17 is prime. In other words, arguments for god’s existence aren’t probabilistic and evidence based (and they’re obviously not mathematical), but metaphysical. Now, metaphysical arguments may begin with some general observation about the world (e.g. change), but they proceed to argue deductively about what is entailed by that observation. Therefore, they either succeed or fail — there’s no sense in which we could speak about ‘probability,’ and therefore no sense to make of ‘evidence.’ (Obviously, I’m using the term ‘evidence’ here in accord with its acceptation: normally, we don’t speak of deductive arguments as ‘evidence,’ but rather suppose that they use evidence in their premises. Of course, there are technical definitions of ‘evidence’ that do include arguments, but that’s not how I’m using the term.)
Interestingly, the demand for evidence for god’s existence supposes that the only legitimate way to make such an argument is along lines similar to those of the ID crowd. I don’t know if this is due to ignorance of the way god is most frequently argued for (i.e. metaphysically), or if it’s merely a strategy. The ID crowd is so obviously ridiculous that if you can lump all theists into their ranks, then the notion that theism itself is ridiculous becomes much more tenable.
I’m dismissive of the eric type philosopher, rather than philosophy as a whole. The ones who think they can philosophically prove the existence of God. There are some damn fine philosophers out there, but people like eric just use philosophical language in the hope that people won’t know better.
Posted by: Piltdown Man | December 14, 2008
Even if one points to a physical phenomenon for which science cannot easily offer an explanation, like the Turin Shroud…
There is something innately funny about a person using a moniker named after a hoax using a hoax to back up an argument.
Bullshit, most theologians believe in an interventionist God.
Good catch Kel, if the best Pilty can offer is a known and proven forgery, he has nothing. Lets see, carbon dating to the time of appearance of the shroud. The time had a lot of forgeries being made, and somebody actually duplicated how the image arose using materials that date to that time. As they say on Mythbusters, “Busted!”
“Bullshit, most theologians believe in an interventionist God.”
Kel, there’s no contradiction involved in believing that god ‘intervenes’ in the world without being an object in the world, or an object at all.
Also, it doesn’t follow that ‘an intervention’ can only be understood in terms of agency, i.e. that if god does intervene in the world, then such interventions must be explainable *only* by resorting to agency; rather, there can be levels of explanation, something we’re all familiar with. Is the water boiling because of the excited state of its molecules, or because I want tea (to use a common example)? Here, we’ve a mechanistic explanation and a teleological explanation for the same event, *neither one of which contradicts the other*, but also, *neither one of which is entailed by the other*.
Rather, they [most theologians] tend to argue that god either exists necessarily or not at all, and that it makes no more sense to talk about the ‘probability’ that god exists (which is what we’re always talking about when we limit ourselves to ‘evidence’) than it does to talk about the probability that the number 17 is prime, or to ask for ‘evidence’ that 17 is prime.
I doubt “most theologians” take this line: acceptance of the ontological argument remains an eccentricity. Catholic theologians, for example, are I think still officially required to believe in Aquinas “five ways”.
Additionally, it does make sense to ask for evidence that 17 is prime: the evidence is that it cannot be divided without remainder by any smaller number. Where very large putative primes are being investigated, mathematicians are quite happy to talk about evidence for their primality, and indeed about probabilities, even though any individual number either is or is not prime – because they can say things like: “Of x numbers that pass this test, over 99% have so far turned out to be prime”.
Eric, I never took philosophy in my college days, so I’ll let those whose backgrounds include to discuss your claims in detail. I do have a BS detector, and it goes off when you write.
If god cannot effect the real world, having or not having god makes no difference. You get the same result in both cases, and Occam’s razor says no god is the simpler explanation. Only if god can effect real world do you need to worry about proof for god. But if god requires “special pleading” or lesser evidence, it isn’t much of god, is it?
Also, it doesn’t follow that ‘an intervention’ can only be understood in terms of agency – eric
How else could it be understood? And what does it mean to say that God is “not an object”? This is just theological obfuscation unless a specific alternative is put forward.
There is a contradiction, however, between God not being an object and God not being measurable. If God interacts in the universe, then God is potentially measurable. Hell, we can even detect neutrinos – elementary particles that can pass through matter.
As NoR has been saying, we can detect subatomic particles. We know the relationship between matter and energy. We’ve been able to see galaxies 13 billion light years away. And suddenly in this world of measurement, the interventionist God of the bible goes missing? Methinks God is dead.
eric #374 wrote:
Depends on what sort of argument for God we’re dealing with: many of them are indeed evidentialist arguments (ie. Argument from Design; Argument from Miracles). The Ontological Arguments, however, suffer from their own flaws.
I think that the issue which lies at the core of deciding what sorts of evidence would count for or against God — or deciding that God needs no evidence because its existence is self-evident — has to do with what sort of thing God is supposed to be. And this is where “God” seems to dance back and forth.
Sometimes God is like a number… except it’s like the sort of number that can think and feel. Sometimes God is like the basic concept of “existence” … only we can choose to have a “relationship” with it, like approaching a King who may, or may not, reveal himself to us. Sometimes God is like the Mystery at the center of all Mysteries … and we can somehow know that this is a Mystery that has the attributes of Omniscience and Omnipotence and Omnipresence. God is real the way abstractions are real, but acts like a kind of psychokenetic energy, manifesting its will. God is a reified abstraction.
As Hegel put it, “God is, as it were, the sewer into which all contradictions flow.”
As for whether there are “some aspects of the world that cannot be justified by way of the physical evidence criterion,” that may depend on what is meant by “justification.” I think that at some point every justification is going to have to rest or reduce to sense experience or reasonable inferences from sense experience of the physical. An effective argument otherwise would be one that made no use of the physical or assumptions about the physical. And I think that would seem to be difficult, if not self-defeating.
In the bible, there are some stories of the way God operates, these elements should have left evidence that they happened. Like the global flood, or the 10 plagues of Egypt. These kinds of events tend to leave geological markers, so we should be able to measure it. In this, the God hypothesis has failed again and again, all these events that were described simply didn’t happen. What does that tell us about the construct of God?
I’ll add to this that, in the bible, god turns up and physically interacts with people – wasn’t Moses handed the tablets with the ten commandments on the top of Mt Sinai? He didn’t receive ‘divine inspiration’ and reach for his chisel, did he?
Pilty’s proposition (and eric’s rationale to support it) would be fine if the non-corporeal, hands-off god was how he’d always been presented, but it isn’t. For him to suddenly decide that, after thousands of years of appearing to humans (who, incidentally, didn’t seem to let proof get in the way of their faith) he wanted to become a nebulous proof-denies-faith god seems just a little convenient.
The physical explanation is both necessary and complete: it is required that the molecules be sufficiently excited for the water to boil, and any water whose molecules are sufficiently excited is considered boiling. The teleological “explanation” is worthless; it is neither necessary nor complete: water may boil in the absence of a desire for tea, and the desire for tea does not make water boil.
Emmet Caulfield #387 wrote:
At the very foundation of the concept of God lies the assumption that the desire for tea ought to be sufficient for water to boil, with no physical process necessary. Desire becomes some sort of “nonphysical” cause from above, acting down on material things below, moving them or even creating them in the first place. Our minds are all little microcosms of God, and God is a giant Mind, writ across everything else.
“I doubt “most theologians” take this line: acceptance of the ontological argument remains an eccentricity. Catholic theologians, for example, are I think still officially required to believe in Aquinas “five ways”.”
Nick, Aquinas’s arguments also lead to the conclusion that god exists necessarily (just think about what it means to say that there are essentially ordered causal series, to take his ‘first way’ as an example).
“Additionally, it does make sense to ask for evidence that 17 is prime: the evidence is that it cannot be divided without remainder by any smaller number.”
Nick, I think there’s a distinction to be made here between the sort of evidence you’re referring to and the sort of evidence I’m referring to. I just don’t have the time to reason it out at the moment, but it would go along these lines: If the fact that, say, 17 and 3 won’t get you 17 counts as evidence that 17 is prime, then it seems that the fact that, say, 6 and 4 won’t get you 6 must count as evidence that 6 is prime; of course, though, 6 isn’t prime. So it doesn’t seem to me that it’s the case that we’re using the term ‘evidence’ in the same way.
“If God interacts in the universe, then God is potentially measurable.”
Not necessarily. First, there’s a difference between measuring the effect of X and measuring the cause of X. (Think virtual particles as a physical counterpart; at best, we can talk about their necessary conditions, but not exactly about their ’causes,’ as that term is generally understood. Note, I’m not saying that VPs violate causality; they don’t, since they don’t carry information. Rather, I’m just saying that it’s not obvious that it’s always the case that we can meaningfully talk about X, as a cause, simply because we can detect certain effects.) We can’t deduce or infer anything meaningful from a pot of boiling water about the person who set it boiling, except that he had the capability to set it boiling. And it’s necessarily the case that as ‘explanations’ get more abstract, they get more vague. I can describe John with more specificity than I can describe ‘human being,’ and I can describe ‘human being’ with more specificity than ‘animal.’ When you’re talking about god — if you’re referring to what theologians tend to say, and not to what the most ignorant fundamentalist would say — then you’re talking about the widest possible category (indeed, even to say we’re speaking about a ‘category’ is to speak analogically) since god is conceived of as the ground of existence (a sustaining ’cause’ as opposed to a ‘first cause’).
“I think that the issue which lies at the core of deciding what sorts of evidence would count for or against God — or deciding that God needs no evidence because its existence is self-evident — has to do with what sort of thing God is supposed to be.”
I agree, except there’s that third category that neither uses ‘evidence’ (in the general sense of the term) nor argues that god is ‘self-evident,’ i.e. metaphysical arguments.
“The physical explanation is both necessary and complete: it is required that the molecules be sufficiently excited for the water to boil, and any water whose molecules are sufficiently excited is considered boiling. The teleological “explanation” is worthless”
I doubt you buy this for a moment. If your father ever asked you why the water on the stove was boiling, and you replied with a scientific analysis of the molecules, you’d get a smack upside the head — and rightly so! We can meaningfully speak of causation and explanation in terms of agency in addition to, say, mechanism. Now, if you want to reduce ‘agency’ to mechanism as well (as you no doubt do), then you’re faced with a host of other problems, as I hope you know (and thus not the simple and obvious end of the story). However, that’s not relevant to this specific post, so I won’t get into it here.
You really go a long way to make excuses for the absence of an omnipresent being.
And when God is simply an expression of the unknown I’ll agree. But when God creates plagues, makes floods, stops the sun rotating, brings on earthquakes and hurricanes, when God answers prayers and interacts with each individual, are you saying that none of this is potentially measurable?
If there is no way to measure God, why believe in God? It seems it’s nothing more than mental masturbation to do so. Surely by taking God away from the realms of measurement you are taking away the ability to know of Her existence.
eric #389 wrote:
That third category is going to have to be argued for, with examples. If it appears to have been invented just for God, it looks very much like special pleading.
God must not be the default on logic, but the end point. In other words, god is not a self evident proposition, but must be shown to be true with evidence and logic. Without both, atheism, by Occam’s razor, is the default self evident proposition.
If God is not measurable, how can it be wise to attribute anything to God? Why is God omnipotent, omniscient, or omnibenevolent? Why is God the creator of the universe, why is God an interactive force? Why is God in three forms, and why not 1 or 2 or 27? Does God even hear or answer our prayers? How can we distinguish God from The Flying Spaghetti Monster? Is there a soul? Is there a heaven or hell? Is the devil real?
The problem with taking God away from being measured means that any comment on the nature of God is nothing more than a speculative assertion. Though that’s the whole point of apologetics, to give excuses for why we don’t see a deity that is meant to be everywhere and in control of the destiny of this planet.
And that’s all this is. I wrote earlier I felt that eric is debating the point rather than attempting to assert that god actually exists. I don’t believe he, personally, is using this argument to claim that god exists; he just views it as an intellectual exercise.
However, Piltdown Man and his ilk see it as strong support for their argument, despite it being yet another god-of-the-gaps response – only with this particular ‘gap’ philosophical rather than scientific. So as long as someone can argue that it’s philosophically possible for some kind of god to exist the religulous will consider it undeniable evidence that their god does exist.
Why else would the nature of their god vary so much if not to suit the fluctuating arguments of his believers?
“That third category is going to have to be argued for, with examples. If it appears to have been invented just for God, it looks very much like special pleading.”
Sastra, not at all. For exmaple, we can think about all sorts of metaphysical arguments and conclusions pertaining only to concepts science uses: Science can ask, “What causes particles to have mass?” while metaphysics asks, “What is a cause?” Science can ask, “Does the Higgs Boson exist?” while metaphysics can ask, “What do we mean by the term ‘existence’?” Science can ask, “What properties does the Higgs Boson have?” while metaphysics asks, “What are properties?” There are all sorts of properly metaphysical concepts, and many theists would argue that god is one of them.
“If God is not measurable, how can it be wise to attribute anything to God? Why is God omnipotent, omniscient, or omnibenevolent? Why is God the creator of the universe, why is God an interactive force? Why is God in three forms, and why not 1 or 2 or 27? Does God even hear or answer our prayers? How can we distinguish God from The Flying Spaghetti Monster?…The problem with taking God away from being measured means that any comment on the nature of God is nothing more than a speculative assertion.”
No, that’s a false alternative. For an example of metaphysical arguments that lead deductively from some very basic observations about the world *not only* to god’s existence, but also to some of the various ‘attributes’ you mention, see (for example) Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles, Book One, #12 to #102. Now, you can of course object to the soundness of the arguments Aquinas presents, but you cannot characterize his efforts as ‘nothing more than mere speculative assertions.’
http://www.op-stjoseph.org/Students/study/thomas/ContraGentiles1.htm
“god is not a self evident proposition, but must be shown to be true with evidence and logic. Without both, atheism, by Occam’s razor, is the default self evident proposition.”
Occam’s razor only applies to competing explanations; as I said earlier, however, theistic explanations and physical explanations need not be in conflict. Also, Occam’s razor is applied when speaking about unnecessary entities; the metaphysical arguments I was referring to (and which are not in any sense limited to versions of the ontological argument), however, conclude that god’s existence is necessary. Therefore, if they are sound, Occam’s razor hardly does any work here. Finally, Occam’s razor only applies to more or less probable hypotheses that are postulated to provide the ‘best explanation’ of the evidence. Metaphysical arguments simply don’t work this way: they either lead to necessarily true conclusions, or they fail completely.
The deductions are still assertions. We have no evidential basis for God’s existence, to infer anything about God (however deductive) is still based on that one assumption and is still speculative assertions. If God were real then there may be ways to tell some of the qualities God possesses, but at best they would be inferences on the unknown. IF God exists, then God would have to be powerful. IF God exists, there’s no reason why he would shy away from the affairs of the creatures he created. The problem is that first IF.
It’s still speculative assertions, you have no idea if there is a deity and what that deity is like. You infer based on what you know about reality, you are using your own understanding of how the world works to define God. There’s no way to know that God’s answering prayers, there’s no way of knowing whether God exists in three forms, that there is a heaven or hell, that there is a soul, that there is eternal judgement. You can’t even know whether that being exists. You have no knowledge, no reasons for belief and it’s still speculation to say otherwise without evidential backing.
eric #395 wrote:
I would argue otherwise. The first two categories were the empirical (that which is based on evidence) and the self-evident (necessary relationships.) But the sorts of things you’ve placed in the third category appear to be questions about things in the first two categories. Causes, existence, and properties are all explanations or descriptions which begin from things we already have, already agree on. There are causes, things exist, they have properties — what does this mean? Metaphysics deals with the nature of reality: the existence of reality (whatever the form may be) is never in question.
We don’t start from or agree on God the same way. It is in question. It may or may not exist. So I don’t think we should place it in the same category.
Instead, I think “God” should be placed into the same category as vitalism and psychokenesis. As a concept, it seems much more similar to those kinds of phenomena than asking “what do we mean by the term ‘existence’?”
“The deductions are still assertions.”
A deduction isn’t an assertion; it’s an argument. It may contain false premises or fallacious logic, but it’s hardly an assertion.
Why does this remind me of Carroll’s account of the discussion between Achilles and the tortoise?
http://www.ditext.com/carroll/tortoise.html
An assertion is something spoken without evidence, people are asserting God exists and doing so in the absence of evidence, that is an assertion. Any deductions made on that assertion are speculations. You are speculating on the unknown when you give attributes to God.
Sastra, you don’t see ’causes’; you see one event, and another event (usually with second one following the first, but sometimes with the two occuring simultaneously). “Causation” is a metaphysical concept, one that’s grounded in observations (as many theists, e.g. Thomists, would argue god is), but that isn’t itself observed. Also, as I’m sure you’re aware, there are plenty of Humeans (though not all, as Hume’s views on causation are much disputed) who would question just to what extent ‘causation’ (understood in terms of necessity) is real! Similar arguments apply to ‘existence,’ ‘properties,’ etc.
eric,
There is a significant difference between the proposition a god of some loose description is philosophically possible and the proposition the specific god of the broader judeo-christian belief system definitely exists.
You’re arguing the first. Everyone else appears to be arguing the second. Apologists argue the first is the second.
“An assertion is something spoken without evidence, people are asserting God exists and doing so in the absence of evidence, that is an assertion. Any deductions made on that assertion are speculations. You are speculating on the unknown when you give attributes to God.”
Kel, even a glance at Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles will falsify what you’ve written above. Again, you may disagree with his arguments, but they cannot be reasonably characterized as ‘assertions.’
Okay, central tenet of Christianity. Jesus is God and rose from the grave. Real world event or metaphysical postulation?
Wowbagger, just to stick to the Thomism theme, if Aquinas’ arguments (which, I must say, are almost always misunderstood) are sound, then god necessarily exists. Not only that, but many (though not all) of the attributes ascribed to god by the Judeo-Christian tradition are philosophically entailed, not merely asserted. If Aquinas is correct, then one can reason one’s way to a god that is very much like the god of Christianity. To go beyond that would require recourse to arguments of a different kind (e.g. historical), and, no doubt, some faith commitments.
“Okay, central tenet of Christianity. Jesus is God and rose from the grave. Real world event or metaphysical postulation?”
Neither, I would think. Most of the arguments I have heard concerning the Jesus’ divinity and the resurrection rely on historical evidence that is rendered more plausible by the sorts of metaphysical arguments we’re discussing (e.g. if the god Aquinas argues for exists, then Jesus’ resurrection is much more plausible than it would be if such a god doesn’t exist). In other words, the resurrection arguments are ‘cumulative case’ arguments, though, of course, they only take you so far. A faith commitment is needed in the end, but, given the cumulative arguments, it’s not exactly an irrational, ‘blind leap’ of faith ‘in the teeth’ of the evidence.
I glanced at it, I even read a whole section of it. It’s still speculation
Aquinas wrote:
Oops, let me correct that: something like the resurrection is not *defended* merely as ‘real world events’ or ‘metaphysical arguments’ are defended; rather, it relies on both. If it happened, then of course it’s a ‘real world event.’ I’m not sure what to make of the distinction between ‘real world’ and ‘metaphysical,’ which is probably why I misread your question as asking about *what sort of argument* something like the resurrection would rely upon.
eric #400 wrote:
I still note a serious difference between your ‘metaphysical concepts’ of causation, existence, and properties — and God. The first three are readily understood as uber- descriptions of things we observe, and we look to their underlying nature. We do not speak of them as if they were persons.
“God,” on the other hand, must have anthropomorphic qualities or it fades into just another word for ‘existence.’ And its existence is not a general metaphysical concept like “existence.” Theists do not “ground” it in observations: they infer it from observations. It’s a different process.
God is inferred from observation the way vitalism is inferred from observation. “The Vital Principle” was not simply another term for life. It, like God, was (and is) a hypothesis which was supposed to account for it. It turned out to be wrong.
eric wrote:
I’m new to philosophy (as I mentioned upthread) so I’m going to have to familiarise myself with what Aquinas wrote before I can give an opinion of it – however, I can’t help but notice that there’s a pretty big ‘if’ in there. And I also suspect that he might have been more than a little biased in his arguments.
If, perhaps, he’d been raised a non-christian and was converted by the strengths of the philosophy he’d developed then I’d be inclined to think otherwise. But to have started with the proposition of god’s definite existence and spent years designing intricate philosophical defences for it isn’t as compelling.
But, like I said, I can’t (and won’t) attempt to criticise it (and him) without becoming more familiar.
The point is that the life of Jesus is a completely testable event, and it’s the core to Christianity. God coming down to earth in human form – evidence. God spending time preaching and building a following – evidence. God dying and being resurrected – evidence. This is the central tenet of Christianity and it happened (or so it goes) in the real world.
Eric, we still come down to the need for god not to be presumed in the logic, but to only become a viable only explanation if physical evidence is produced. So atheism is the default premise. Occam’s razor. Non-existence, the simpler explanation, until existence is proved. God can be determined using evidence and logic. In other words, positive proof is needed for god. Not the lack of proof to the contrary determining that god exists. Lack of proof means no god. You appear to be arguing that lack of proof means god.
“God is inferred from observation the way vitalism is inferred from observation. “The Vital Principle” was not simply another term for life. It, like God, was (and is) a hypothesis which was supposed to account for it. It turned out to be wrong”
But this simply isn’t how these arguments work. They’re not ‘hypotheses’ that are ‘inferred’ from observations, but necessary conclusions deduced from observations. They either succeed or fail.
“The point is that the life of Jesus is a completely testable event, and it’s the core to Christianity.”
Right, as I said this aspect would be part of a cumulative case argument in which historical arguments are presented defending the resurrection. However, the plausibility of such arguments increases by quite a bit if the metaphysical arguments of Aquinas are successful.
I do agree, though, that since Christianity has this historical event at its core, it is falsifiable (e.g. find the ossuary of Jesus and the resurrection didn’t happen — however much people like Carrier want to argue that the resurrection wasn’t ‘physical’; I think Wright has pretty clearly established that, given the context of Second Temple Judaism, ‘resurrection’ had to involve a body).
“If, perhaps, he’d been raised a non-christian and was converted by the strengths of the philosophy he’d developed then I’d be inclined to think otherwise.”
There are some pretty interesting examples of people who have started out as atheists, but who have come to belief primarily through these sorts of arguments. Mortimer Adler, who was born into a nonobservant Jewish family and became a skeptic, but who later converted to Christianity largely because of Aristotle and Aquinas, is one of the best. He not only started out as a skeptic, but he was undeniably one of the preeminent intellectuals of the twentieth century.
Surely the idea is that positive claims require positive evidence. Give us something to falsify. Can we take the DNA off the shroud of turin and see of it only has MtDNA?
“Lack of proof means no god. You appear to be arguing that lack of proof means god.”
No and no!
If I may use a slogan, “absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.” (This slogan, though it too has it’s problems, is much more tenable than Sagan’s!)
And nowhere did I say anything remotely close to “lack of proof means god.” I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to clarify the nature of metaphysical arguments, which, properly speaking, are ‘proofs,’ though they are not (as I said earlier) properly characterized as ‘evidence.’ We don’t normally speak about deductive proofs as ‘evidence’; rather, we usually distinguish ‘proofs’ from ‘evidence.’
Eric, from your last paragraph in #412 it appears you do have a bias toward presuming god exists. Therefore, your logic, and essentially you, become suspect. What I have learned reading Skeptical Inquirer over the years is that people like you need to be told to sit this one out so you don’t try to override the results. Thats why Randi makes people sign as to what are considered positive results prior to running his physic experiments.
What we need is logic not directed toward a conclusion, but evaluates the evidence and ties it together logically without bias. Sounds like what science does. In science, the burden of proof is always on the claimant, so that the default is always something doesn’t exist until evidence proves otherwise. For example, the Higgs boson has been postulated based on theory, hints have been seen of its existence at Fermi Lab, but the LHC will confirm that it exists, if it does exist. Meanwhile scientist consider the Higgs a hypothetical particle, but given the track record of the standard model, likely to be found with sufficient energy and collision density. (Steven Hawking doesn’t want it to be found, as that would churn high energy physics, which he would find amusing.)
Kel, the shroud of Turin?
You’re joking, right?
Let’s look at it for a moment, however. Let’s say that the shroud was Jesus’ burial cloth — even if it has been dated to about 1400 years after Jesus died. Would the absence of MtDNA falsify the resurrection? Well, no. It would only falsify (at best) the virgin birth stories. If you want to falsify the resurrection, the best you could do would be to find Jesus’ ossuary. If there was no body three days (or so) after the burial, then there would be no need for an ossuary, which was only used roughly a year after burial to gather the bones of the deceased.
Obviously I am joking, considering earlier today I called Pilty out for using it as an example of what scientists can’t explain.
Can we first get evidence that Jesus existed, that he was killed on the cross and where he was meant to be buried? You brought the positive claim, show the evidence behind it. For this single most important event in human history, is there anything more than 2nd hand eyewitness accounts written decades after the fact which had to similarly compete with other mangods?
Oh, and once you falsify the virgin birth, you falsify the mangod story too. If God didn’t impregnate Mary with himself, then it destroys the foundation of the implausible event.
Any DNA on the shroud, if the shroud wasn’t a fake, would be from later handlers since it was washed a couple of times over the years and has received some water damage.
“Can we first get evidence that Jesus existed, that he was killed on the cross and where he was meant to be buried? You brought the positive claim, show the evidence behind it. For this single most important event in human history, is there anything more than 2nd hand eyewitness accounts written decades after the fact which had to similarly compete with other mangods?”
Absolutely. Even secular scholars like Gerd Ludemann and John Dominic Crossan will argue that the creedal material we find from Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 (which contains Jesus’ death, burial, an resurrection appearances) can be dated from within three to five years of the resurrection, and was received by Paul from Peter and James. Also, the crucifixion is almost universally accepted among historians because of the ‘criterion of embarrassment’: it’s just not the sort of thing you’d make up if you were trying to persuade others — at first, other Jews — to follow your guy! I certainly don’t think there are strong historical grounds to question Jesus’ historicity, though one could certainly question his divinity.
Parthenogenesis (virgin birth) exists, at about a 1:1,000,000,000 shot in mammals from some research the Redhead did when we were in college. However, the offspring are by necessity female due to them being clones of the mother. Those pesky sex chromosomes.
Virgin births have been recorded, but 9 months prior there invariably was some semen near the vagina which made it past the barrier to fertilize the egg.
So the virgin birth looks very suspect. A man had to be involved somewhere.
Eric, do you have reference to the Paul letter. That is not what all other historical evidence says. Which makes it very suspect.
Just to let you know, I have to go, but I’ll try to respond tomorrow (if I get the cnance — if you don’t hear from me after a flurry of comments, it’s not because I’m ‘ducking’ anything, as someome suggested earlier, but because, like the rest of you, I too have a life! And, since many of you seem to be students as well, you can understand that it’s a busy one!)
I also appreciate the much improved tone of these last exchanges. I may come off as a bit snotty at times, but surely you’d agree that many of you can, too (sastra excepted). This doesn’t justify my behavior, but it does perhaps put it in context.
There’s seems reasonable enough grounds to doubt the historicity, at least in the way he’s written about in the bible. Whether there was a cult leader or not, I’d say yes. There were plenty back then, one could have started what is now known as Christianity. As for the divinity claim – well extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
eric,
I’m aware of some of the high-profile converts and do consider that interesting. But for Aquinas, the absolute pinnacle of christian philosophers, to have been a convert from a position of staunch unbelief purely by virtue of his philosophical investigations into the subject would, I believe, carry more weight.
Kel, Nerd, etc. – I think eric’s point is that, if the judeo-christian god exists as defined by Aquinas, that god wouldn’t have to leave evidence if he didn’t want to – since he is, by definition, omnimax and can do pretty much whatever he wants.
I, personally, don’t get hung up on the evidence aspect of nonbelief. There are plenty of other excellent reasons to do without gods – and Yahweh in particular.
Of course the whole historical Jesus is suspect due to no contemporaneous writings citing him. Nothing in fact for a couple of generations. Which makes mythology more likely. The reference in #420 by Eric needs to be investigated. If it was well known, I’m sure someone would have used it here already. Probably has been disproved, but true believers never let that get in their way.
It may be his point, but it’s not a good one. It certainly gives no reason to believe, it feels like nothing more than apologetics. “Look, we don’t need to give evidence, but we can philosophically prove that God exists.”
I wonder if eric would apply the same reasoning to mathematical proofs of reality. If there were a mathematical theory that showed a universe that sat harmoniously and contained in 11 dimensions would he take that as proof that the universe is a 4-dimensional bubble contained within 7 more dimensions? Or would he see that mathematical proof, however eloquent, as speculation on the unknown?
The way I read it, Aquinas covertly postulated god, then by failing to disprove him, proved him. Very fishy. Start with no god, then prove god. We have better tools than Aquinas had.
Oh, I agree 100% – as I’ve written a couple of times now, it’s just god-of-the-gaps applied to philosophy. And its proponents are still faced with then having to explain why the logic that used to justify their belief in the god they worship can just as easily be used to explain another’s belief in a different god.
I checked up about Corinthians 15, the authorship is dated by historians to be between 53CE and 57CE. So we are looking at 20-25 years after the (alleged) death of Jesus. Though that depends on whether Jesus’ birth lines up with King Herod (died 4BCE) or the Great Census (6CE) so that fluctuation takes it from anywhere between 15 to 30 years. Of course that too has to fit into Pontius Pilate who ruled between 26CE and 36CE so that census date might be a stretch.
Kel, I did a little Googling and was not able to chase down a letter or even a mention of it. And the two authors mentioned don’t appear to be very secular. Very religious. Eric is suspect with his evidence.
It’s that kind of behaviour that gives me a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to philosophy. To me it’s too much like mathematics. Now if someone came out with a model for the universe that was mathematically succinct and showed a geocentric model for the universe, I’d gladly throw it out based on evidence because the evidence shows the earth orbiting the sun. Even in the absence of a complete model of the universe, if it gets the basic assumption wrong no amount of completeness in the model makes it any more plausible.
Ok. I’m the A-hole complaining about “the hoi polloi.” :)
I’ve just started learning the language so I’m probably over impressed with being able to pick it up.
For anyone who, like me for most of my life, knew nothing of Ancient Greek, “hoi polloi,” means, “the many.” So “the hoi polloi” is redundant.
Well, just got back from work and caught up with this thread, but I can’t muster the energy to respond to eric.
I will say that I think truth machine would’ve had some pithy fulminations to contribute in response to some of the above :)
There’s been a bunch of excellent and substantive refutations of Pilt’s “God is a haughty and arrogant monarch; you don’t get to tell him what to do; blah blah blah bow down and humbly ask for him to show himself”, but I just thought I would point out…
Pilt, you’re contradicting the essence of Catholicism itself, there. The whole point of your flavor of Christianity is that God does in fact humble himself on demand by consecrating water to be used in baptism, and by transubstantiating himself into wafers and wine to be put into human mouths and be swallowed and digested. That’s two “miracles” right there, which oddly enough leave no empirical evidence whatsoever.
Pilt, God is your friend. Fine. Could you ask him, nicely, politely, as a friend, to perform a miracle that does have empirical evidence? Something that God would know would be convincing to the most hardened skeptic and materialist?
A while back, I got into a long debate with an “ID” proponent. I don’t think he was a Catholic, but he challenged me to ask God to reveal himself. I responded that since he already had a relationship with God, could he ask God to tell him what the digits of a random number that I generated and saved in a file on my hard drive were.
He refused, claiming that God doesn’t work like that.
Will you take up the challenge, O good and true friend of the Haughty and Arrogant Omniscient Monarch of All?
There are 1024 digits, saved to the file “randnum2”.
And the first digit is “9”.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to pray to God to reveal to you at least up to 50 digits.
So, how good a relationship with your friend do you have?
When I see a white collar with a black suit my first thought is “Round up the children in the house and lock the door!”.
As I understand it, the most persuasive argument against Christianity runs like this:
(1) The claims made by Christianity (miracles, the Resurrection, etc.) are extraordinary.
(2) Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
(3) Extraordinary evidence has not been provided in support of these claims.
(4) Ergo, we cannot believe the claims.
Premise (1) is self-evidently correct. Premise (3) is generally correct; aside from the Gospels, which are all anonymous and of uncertain date and provenance, we have no solid evidence regarding the life of Jesus.
Premise (2) is a normative, rather than a factual, statement and is therefore open to challenge. One can, of course, reject the maxim “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” and, instead, have faith in the veracity of a given extraordinary claim. But this begs the question of how, in the absence of any solid evidence, we distinguish one extraordinary supernatural claim from another; in the absence of evidence, why accept the claims of Christianity and not, say, those of Islam? Or, for that matter, the existence of ghosts, fairies or leprechauns?
This argument doesn’t, of course, justify atheism – it merely justifies a rejection of Christianity. The absence of evidence doesn’t, of course, demonstrate positively that Christian claims are untrue; rather, it merely gives us no good reason to believe them to be true. Thus, the most logical standpoint viz-a-viz the Judeo-Christian God would seem to be agnosticism, for the time being. It is possible that, in the future, archaeologists and historians will unearth more evidence on the life of Jesus; the evidence unearthed might positively falsify the claims made about Jesus by Christians, or, conversely, it might support those claims. But until that time, one would presume that the most intellectually honest standpoint is to admit that we don’t know the answer.
Walton,
No. The problem of evil does away with that particular god, and theodicic arguments are unconvincing.
Or do you find them convincing?
Walton:
Please apply your identical argument to:
Thor
Zeus
Quetzelcoatl
Cthulhu
Leprechauns
Gandalf the Grey
ancient astronauts building the Pyramids
my upstairs neighbor having three buttocks
I’d have to say the most logical standpoint vis-a-vis all of these extraordinary claims is just to say we don’t know, for the time being. You?
It’s open to challenge what constitutes as evidence, but the premise is quite simple. If someone claimed they could levitate, it would break the laws of physics as we know them and thus it would require a lot more rigorous explanation.
What do you think atheism is? No reason to believe, hence atheism. It’s not an absolute that God doesn’t exist, it’s just there is no reason to believe in God or anything supernatural.
It’s both. Atheism is not absolute, it’s a question of belief. Agnosticism is a question of knowledge. With no reason to believe, that’s atheism. Without knowing, that’s agnosticism.
I don’t get why people keep trying to put agnosticism as some middle ground between theism and atheism. It’s not theist -> agnostic -> atheist. They seek to answer two different questions.
Walton,
I’m an agnostic as I can’t rule out with absolute certainty the existence of God(s), defined as “a natural being that exists outside this universe, caused this universe to exist, and can intervene from outside this universe within through acts that may look supernatural to those beings that exist within”.
But I’m not an agnostic w.r.t any God(s) that have been invented by any of the ignorant folks who imagined completely inconsistent, self-contradictory God(s) that are described in all the works of fiction held sacred by those ridculously stupid religions. This can be ruled out with certainty.
Walton, Re point 2
The original quote comes from Carl Saga “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”, and he was used in talking about claims of the paranormal. The basic meaning is that extraordinary claims must be investigated with rigor using the best tools available. Inclusion of others not ordinarily in the investigation might be useful. In asking for proof for god, I always include scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers. Magicians are used to tricking people while scientists aren’t, so scientists are at a disadvantage around tricksters. Using magicians levels the playing field since they will discover the tricks used. Debunkers also help cover territory that might be missed by the other two. By using a larger than normal amount and type of investigators the investigation can be extraordinary. And invariably, all the paranormal stuff has a prosaic explanation, like a trick or selective memory (remember the one time it worked, but not the twenty times it didn’t).
There is no reason god and the bible cannot be put under the same rigor of investigation.
Second sentence Carl Sagan. DOH
“I think eric’s point is that, if the judeo-christian god exists as defined by Aquinas, that god wouldn’t have to leave evidence if he didn’t want to – since he is, by definition, omnimax and can do pretty much whatever he wants.”
No, this isn’t at all what I’m saying. I’m saying that ‘evidence’ is the wrong category altogether. For example, can you meaningfully ask for ‘evidence’ for the proposition, “Something exists”? Of course not; the moment you tried to provide your first piece of evidence, you’d be begging the question. It’s similar with the god of Thomism (again, to stick to one theme for the sake of simplicity). Aquinas’ god is the ground of being itself, a sustaining cause. You can’t ask for evidence of such a god, since either everything is evidence of his existence, or nothing is. Now, this is why we must look to metaphysical arguments — just as we must look to metaphysical arguments to try to get at the truth of the proposition, “Something exists.” So, again, it’s not in any sense related to a ridiculous ‘god-of-the-gaps’ strategy; Aquinas’ arguments, if sound, will work *whatever* science tells us.
“I checked up about Corinthians 15, the authorship is dated by historians to be between 53CE and 57CE. So we are looking at 20-25 years after the (alleged) death of Jesus.”
Note, I said *the creedal material* in 1 Corinthians 15 has been dated to within three to five years of the crucifixion (some will put it back to two, and others up to seven), not the letter itself. The creedal material isn’t original to Paul (for a variety of reasons: the technical words he uses to introduce it, its structure — the triple ‘kai hoti’ — its use of phrases not found elsewhere in Paul’s writings, etc.), so someone had it before he did.
As for Ludemann as a source, if you’d honestly have googled his name, the first hit that comes up is ‘infidels.org,’ where it explicitly states that he’s no longer a Christian! And Crossan doesn’t believe in the resurrection, since he doesn’t believe Jesus was buried. He thinks his body was torn apart by wild dogs (or something along those line — I don’t have time to chase down the source).
Can you give reference for this?
Though still even if it was written during the time of Jesus’ resurrection, there’s a reason that eyewitness testimony is the lowest form of evidence. What Jesus did was impossible, and the best you can come up with is someone saw him do it?
But hey, if you are going to believe based on eyewitness testimony… I once saw a friend levitating. He was there defying gravity. He’s dead now so he can’t redo the experiment sorry, he lifted off this planet and ascended to Pluto.
Do axioms require proof?
And Aquinas’ arguments for this being contain contradictions and question-begging. Even granting the arguments provisionally, Aquinas’ “proven” “god” is the god of Pantheism — and his identification of this god with the god of his religion was fallacious, if not entirely dishonest.
How was that material dated?
eric #412 wrote:
My point is that “God” has been placed in the wrong category. It does not belong with generalized abstractions like “causation,” “existence,” and “properties.” It is a posited Being which causes thing to happen, which may or may not exist, and which has properties. It is not therefore going to be deduced from observations: it’s going to be inferred from them.
I think Aquinas’ definition of God pulls a bait ‘n switch. “The ground of being” can only be a necessary conclusion if it’s just a phrase which means “existence” or “reality.” By giving it specific anthropomorphic attributes such as agency, emotions, intent, values, causative force, will, Mind, etc., theists take God out of the world of metaphysics, and place it into the world of empiricism.
Walton #438 wrote:
You’re forgetting another factor: the evidence supporting an alternative explanation.
For example, let’s say we have a friend Bob who takes a large dose of LSD. A few days later, he tells us that after he took the LSD he was visited by space aliens! Unfortunately, he has no proof: he forgot to take a photograph, and, when they asked him if he wanted one of their extraterrestrial technological devices, he had foolishly said “no.”
Bob made an extraordinary claim: space aliens. He lacked good evidence. All we have is Bob’s say-so. It’s not enough to accept, but we can’t reject. So, if the testimony is all we look at, then we’re forced to be agnostic about what happened.
Except we’re not really agnostic, save in the most technical sense. Because a very good alternative hypothesis to “Bob thinks he saw space aliens because he really did see space aliens” is “Bob thinks he saw space aliens because Bob was stoned out of his mind on LSD, and that’s just the sort of thing you’re liable to hallucinate, especially if you’re a science fiction fan like Bob.” We look for evidence on the competing hypothesis. If it’s strong, then that weakens the alternative.
In the case of the Resurrection and Bible stories, we form an alternative theory or theories relating to the power of emotional commitment and belief causing people to believe things that are not actually true. Is there anything out there in psychology, neurology, and sociology relating to cases where people came to believe in supernatural phenomena or religions which were not really true? What about the mindset of the people who lived in the Mideast 2000 years ago? Were they a skeptical, cynical, cautious bunch of scientists, evaluating every supernatural claim rigorously — especially if they found it pleasing or plausible? Or not?
This all comes into play when we evaluate the Resurrection. The “lack of convincing evidence” for one hypothesis is up against “good strong evidence” supporting another hypothesis. We know something about what LSD does to the brain. We know something about what the desire to believe does to our convictions.
Sastra: Actually, what Bob claimed to see was Jerry Garcia wearing a space helmet.
Sven:
Hey, maybe it was the same Bob! ;)
Here you explain the result at two different ‘levels of explanation’, however the comparison is botched since you are not comparing the same system (the other system is just the instantaneous state of the water in the kettle, the other system includes you and a lot of other things besides). You are not comparing two levels of explanation as much as a long and short view of causation. To make this comparable you could say that you can explain the tea-making solely in terms of physical causation including the state of your brain, or to cut things sort you can explain it in terms of ‘agency’. How does this compare to God ‘intervening’ in the world? Do you have an alternative lower-level explanation for the whole system including God?
Note, I said *the creedal material* in 1 Corinthians 15 has been dated to within three to five years of the crucifixion (some will put it back to two, and others up to seven), not the letter itself. The creedal material isn’t original to Paul (for a variety of reasons: the technical words he uses to introduce it, its structure — the triple ‘kai hoti’ — its use of phrases not found elsewhere in Paul’s writings, etc.), so someone had it before he did.
This is right as far as it goes; it’s credal material, so it’s liturgical; it’s a formula, so there’s no reason to attribute it to the writer who includes it or to expect it not to predate the epistle in which he uses it.
However, as evidence for the historicity of Jesus and the passion narrative, this credal formula fails utterly. I take it as further evidence that with Paul we’re dealing with events in the realm of myth, not history. Note that Paul (after the credal statement in 1 Cor 15) doesn’t say “I am the least of the apostles…” because Cepahas and James and the others he mentions followed the living Jesus, and he is only a late convert; he says “I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.”
Nowhere, in any of the Pauline literature, do we have Paul arguing against, or showing any anxiety at all about, the contrast between an apostolic mission originating in Jesus’s earthly ministry and Paul’s own, originating in a mystical vision. This lends support to the view that all of the apostles were operating on the same basis: revelation, not mandate from a historical figure.
Also, the crucifixion is almost universally accepted among historians because of the ‘criterion of embarrassment’: it’s just not the sort of thing you’d make up if you were trying to persuade others — at first, other Jews — to follow your guy! I certainly don’t think there are strong historical grounds to question Jesus’ historicity, though one could certainly question his divinity.
This argument (and it is as pervasive as eric says) just doesn’t work unless you accept a whole host of presuppositions about the historical uniqueness of early Christianity. It asks us to accept a false dichotomy: either Jesus was a historical figure and the broad outlines of the passion narrative actually occurred c.30 CE, or the whole thing is a hoax, made up by someone out of whole cloth.
But if you put earliest Christianity in a context that includes both the variety of Jewish eschatological theology and the mystery cults with their array of sacrificed and resurrected hero figures, the embarrassment factor is diminished considerably. Well before the purported dates of Jesus’s earthly ministry, messianic theology among the Essenes encompasssed the old themes of the suffering servant and the persecuted righteous one. Posit “Jesus of Nazareth” as an idealized amalgam of several generations worth of messianic rabble-rousers opposed to Roman rule and the capitulation of the elite of Judea to same, and the crucifixion is more indispensible than embarrassing. Everybody knew how that narrative ended, and an obviously counter-historical story of such a figure who didn’t end up crushed by Roman power would have been more of an embarrassment than the narrative we have, which is not history, but “prophesy historicized,” in J.D. Crossan’s words.
Nerd of Redhead at #444:
The original quote comes from Carl Saga “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”, and he was used in talking about claims of the paranormal. The basic meaning is that extraordinary claims must be investigated with rigor using the best tools available.
Yes, I agree – but the difficulty with this, viz-a-viz the Resurrection and other purported supernatural events in Jesus’ life, is that they happened so long ago that they are difficult to evaluate using conventional means.
Where someone today, or in the recent past, has claimed to have witnessed a supernatural or paranormal event, we can normally collect a significant body of evidence on which to evaluate the probable truth or falsehood of their claims. But with Jesus, we have virtually nothing concrete; we can make educated guesses based on the religious culture of the time, but we don’t really have any evidence either way, besides the Gospels and writings of the church fathers (none of which are eyewitness accounts).
As someone pointed out above, there is a more solid ground for active unbelief in a given supernatural phenomenon where the evidence allows us to posit a much more likely natural explanation, as with the LSD user who claims to have encountered aliens while in a drug-induced trance. But, again, I would say that any such explanation we might wish to posit for early Christians’ belief in the resurrection (and I’m aware that some scholars have attempted this) must be purely speculative, since we really have so little direct evidence.
What evidence do we have? We have four accounts of uncertain provenance and date; they may have been written anything from 10 to 100 years after Jesus’ death. We also have other writings of the early church fathers, who, again, were not eyewitnesses to the Resurrection or any of the miracles.
In this regard, there is actually (bizarrely) better evidence for Joseph Smith’s translation of the Book of Mormon from gold plates than there is for the resurrection of Christ (since at least eleven people, whose testimonies appear at the start of every BoM, claimed to have seen the gold plates). The claims of the LDS Church, however, are (to my mind) rendered implausible by the content of the BoM itself (the repetition of translation errors from the KJV, the references to animals and plants which didn’t exist in pre-Columbian America, the implausible demographics of the Nephites and Lamanites, the total lack of archaeological corroboration, etc.).
The Gospels don’t suffer from quite such damning counter-evidence (indeed, many of the historical places and people identified in the Gospels have been corroborated through extraneous evidence, though this is, of course, not evidence for the accuracy of their supernatural content). They do contain minor known errors (Luke’s identification of the census at Jesus’ birth with that of Quirinius, for instance, or Mark’s error in regard to the geography of Tyre and Sidon). But, all in all, they can be neither uncritically accepted nor definitively condemned as historical sources. They are useful sources, but are not sufficient evidence to demonstrate the truth of Christian claims.
I don’t know quite where I’m going with this argument, so I’ll stop now. :-)
“This argument (and it is as pervasive as eric says) just doesn’t work unless you accept a whole host of presuppositions about the historical uniqueness of early Christianity.”
CJO, there are a number of problems with your argument. First, there’s not a jot of evidence for it. (Now *this* is the sort of argument that is amenable to ‘evidence’ as such!) All of the available evidence, and the criteria according to which such evidence is interpreted, points towards a historical Jesus (which is why nearly all scholars of ancient and classical history will concede that it’s more probable than not that there was a historical Jesus; I’m not a scholar in this field, but scholars I have asked, including a former professor of Jewish history of mine, Jay Harris, have told me that the notion that Jesus never existed is very much a fringe view). Even Crossan, whom you refer to at the end of your post, says that Jesus’ crucifixion — and hence, Jesus’ existence — is as historically “certain as *anything* historical ever can be”:
http://books.google.com/books?id=XNkKf5htZq4C&pg=PA96&lpg=PA96&dq=crossan+crucifixion+certain&source=web&ots=0aWP3fr7li&sig=4D5ZKp4s_75vCgXJUILVRMMFNiw&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=9&ct=result
Now that’s strong language!
Further, N.T. Wright has categorized a number of ‘mutations’ to Jewish beliefs that characterize the early Christian movement that cannot be sufficiently accounted for simply by appealing to the variety of beliefs prevalent at the time (he recently added Crossan’s “collaborative eschatology” to that list).
Owlmirror @436:
I never said God was a “haughty and arrogant monarch” — you’re just assuming that a king who insists on his royal prerogatives must be haughty and arrogant. To suppose that a system of hierarchy and deference necessarily involves superiors having contempt for inferiors & inferiors having contempt for themselves is perhaps merely a manifestation of an ingrained and unthinking (ie bigoted) egalitarian prejudice …
Indeed God is a humble and magnanimous king. That still doesn’t mean you “get to tell him what to do”. A priest’s act of consecration is not a “demand”. (And as for “flavor of Christianity”, what is this “Christianity” anyway? Did Jesus say “thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will establish Christianity”?)
Well I did concede that empirical evidence for miracles could be hard to find. I can only report that, in my experience, I have found holy water to be effective in discouraging paranormal activity. As for transubstantiation, one wouldn’t expect to see physical evidence of a metaphysical change, would one?
The trouble is, that challenge isn’t really directed at me, it’s directed at God. And you don’t issue challenges, ultimatums or lay down conditions or terms to the Omniscient Monarch of All, no matter how humble and magnanimous He might be. “This thought of yours is perverse: as if the clay should think against the potter, and the work should say to the maker thereof: Thou madest me not: or the thing framed should say to him that fashioned it: Thou understandest not. “
Why don’t you humbly ask God to reveal Himself to you if He exists? What is the problem with that?
Piltdown Man wrote:
Sweet merciful crap. I can’t believe you actually wrote that. Just how much communion wine do they give you?
the notion that Jesus never existed is very much a fringe view
I will agree. But I will also note that a) it becomes less so, decade by decade, and b) many views that are now current consensus were once considered on the fringe.
Neither the fact that the authorities, in the main, are against it, or the fact that many of them have a vested interest in that very conclusion is determinitive for me. i.e. I’m not terribly set in my conclusions, but the argument from authority doesn’t impress me that much, especially considering the shit-storm that would erupt if one of these experts came out against historicity.
I decided about a year ago to start reading Crossan, Wright, Mack, et al, on the subject, to avoid the “dogmatic atheist” knee-jerk position that it’s just hooey, ehough said. I decided (in my amateur fashion) to make myself a scholar on the subject, and the more I do, the less convinced I am (of the experts’ view). What matters to me is that no incoherencies or absurdities arise from eliminating a single individual as the founder of the Kingdom of God movement and the Gentile Christ cults –and, by the way, how DID one individual give rise to not one, but two major religious movements within decades of his death? Anyway, the more I read, the less necessary such a figure becomes to explain what happened.
Good science is blind. By getting God to show that he can read what owlmirror put in that text file, he’s testing an impartial medium.
That Jesus never existed and there not being any evidence for Jesus’ existence are two very different things. Same goes for the gospels, just because Jesus exists it doesn’t make the gospels historical accounts. And the resurrection is still an impossible event, it would take something more than eyewitness accounts to confirm. Which goes back to my dead levitating friend. Now I’m here and I can provide a 1st hand eyewitness account. So are you going to accept it as fact?
Pilty, you are the one posting god, not us. The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate his existence, or be shown to be a liar and bullshitter. Why would you want to be considered a liar by continuing your coyness on the subject? Show the proof for god or shut up as the honorable options. Continuing your illogical expositions with no proof for god says you are dishonorable.
CJO, I respect your views on the subject, even if I disagree with them. They are well informed and well thought out. However, I will add that your criterion — i.e. no absurdities arise from eliminating as single individual (or element, etc.) as the founder of the movement — seems to me to be the wrong way to go about evaluating historical claims. We can always come up with ‘possible’ alternative explanations that explain some historical phenomena without reference to such and such a figure, so it’s difficult to see how any ‘absurdities’ could arise in this context. The proper approach, it seems to me, is abduction, i.e. inference to the *best* explanation. Note, to say that X is the ‘best’ explanation is to concede that there are ‘other’ possible explanations, and that therefore certain elements of our favorite explanation can be removed without absurdity. The question is, therefore, “What best explains the evidence we have?” and not, “Can we come up with alternative explanations that are not obviously absurd?”
Kel @463:
Perhaps not the best of guides then …
God doesn’t really do impartial.
Isn’t this a bit of a dodge, though? Why does the christian god tremble in fear at the thought of leaving behind any evidence of his existence in some measurable form? I’m sick of the old ‘proof denies faith’ nonsense, because it just doesn’t add up.
This wouldn’t be a problem if he’d always been coy about his existence, but he hasn’t. As I wrote in #386, Yahweh was all about hanging out with the Israelites; they had no reason whatsoever to doubt his existence1.
Only if your definition of ‘humble’ and ‘magnanimous’ are wildly different from those in any dictionary I’m aware of. Why can’t christians just admit their god is a monstrous tyrant? Or, at least, has his bad days2? This ‘all good, all the time’ line is just so patently ridiculous if you’ve even glanced at the old testament – or even parts of the new.
1His omnibenevolence, on the other hand – well, that’s another story. Just ask the Midianites.
2And when I say bad I mean really bad.
I remember a parable in scripture. In this story God revealed himself to be the one true God through a test. What the follower did was get a pile of logs and got followers of other Gods to try and burn the pile. So all the other shamans and holy men tried praying to their respective gods to set the logs on fire, and none of it worked. So it was the believer in God up next, and he got people to pour water on the wood then he prayed. And behold, the wood lit!
I call bollocks that God can’t be tested, it’s just a convenient excuse for the absence of any result.
You didn’t say it, yet it follows from the “monarch’s” behavior. Especially when he’s apparently been “insisting” on his alleged prerogatives for a long, long time…
Oh, bigoted egalitarian me… Wait, what?
Really, Pilt, that sentence kind of got away from you and turned into oxymoronic word salad.
That reminds me, though: You never did answer my question from the other thread — did you change your mind and decide that (mortal) kings require checks and balances?
I’ll have to remember this “bigoted egalitarian prejudice” in future, though:
“Do you accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?”
“Hell no, I didn’t vote for him.”
It is if it always assumed that it is granted. If it isn’t assumed, why have communion as a ritual at all? “Well, maybe this is his body, and maybe this is his blood — if God wants it to be, which we really can’t be sure about, since it’s his prerogative to transubstatiate… or not… as the case may be…”
#include <*facepalm*.h>
Right… however, going by your own admission, you have a relationship with God that I do not: You believe. If that relationship does not give you some increased right of access (to use hierarchical and deferential language), then what’s the point of having it?
Ah, but I am willing to couch this as a petition. Or rather, you can couch this as a petition; I will merely become aware, as a result of this monarch graciously granting your petition, of the monarch’s true existence and puissance.
You wouldn’t want me following some fake non-omniscient demon, now would you?
And Jesus saith to him: If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.
Because the eternal silence that is all that I have received up until now is indistinguishable from nonexistence.
And because if God exists, then God does in fact understand the epistemic problem I have with the absence of empirical evidence for his existence, and will humbly and magnanimously grant your petition.
PS:
http://ebonmusings.org/atheism/burningbush.html
It’s worked far far better than any other guide so far.
Or could it be that God doesn’t really do anything?
Excellent, lets bring the best possible explanations and apply Occams Razor to it.
Ockham’s razor is hardly the only criterion, Kel. There’s explanatory power, explanatory scope (which will favor simpler explanations), degree of ad hocness, conformity with what we do know, and plausibility. Keep in mind that the issue is the historicity of Jesus, not his divinity, resurrection, miracles etc.
We can always come up with ‘possible’ alternative explanations that explain some historical phenomena without reference to such and such a figure, so it’s difficult to see how any ‘absurdities’ could arise in this context. The proper approach, it seems to me, is abduction, i.e. inference to the *best* explanation. Note, to say that X is the ‘best’ explanation is to concede that there are ‘other’ possible explanations, and that therefore certain elements of our favorite explanation can be removed without absurdity. The question is, therefore, “What best explains the evidence we have?” and not, “Can we come up with alternative explanations that are not obviously absurd?”
I honestly expected when I began reading on the subject that the experts would be able to put me aright and convince me that there was a solid reason for the consensus. I’m interested to read the list by Wright that you mentioned, because that sounds like what I expected to hear: “here’s some reasons why you can’t simply eliminate this key figure; otherwise it just doesn’t add up.”
I bolded “certain elements,” above, because I agree, with the qualifier that this implies that you couldn’t eliminate certain other elements and still be able to tell a coherent story. Founding figures would seem to fit that category. For instance, how would you construct a narrative of the Macedonian conquest and subsequent division of the Mediterranean world among the descendants of the generals (Ptolemies, Selucids, etc.) without Alexander?
So God is bigoted and prejudiced?
“The creation cannot make demands of its creator!”
“Then the creator shouldn’t piss on his creation.”
Ennis 49:11
The problem is that theists ask this question only after assuming there is a god, and basing all further investigation around that assumption.
Which is why the theist’s answer to the question, ‘why isn’t there any evidence for anything our god does?’ is always going to be ‘well, given that our god exists, the only answer can be that he doesn’t want us to have any evidence. The real question is why. Let’s spend all our time and effort trying to answer that instead.’
Which sounds exactly like the application of occams razor. So come on, apply the criteria set against competing explanations.
Nerd of Redhead @465:
Suppose you were locked up in jail and I managed to acquire a copy of the key to your cell. I smuggle the key into the prison during visiting hours, concealed in the binding of a book (Dante’s Divine Comedy, say).
Me: (whispering) Pssst! I can get you out of here — I’ve got a key to your cell!
You: How do I know you’re telling the truth? Without physical evidence, your assertion about this key is just that — an unsupported assertion. I’ve seen no physical evidence that you have a key, or even that such a key exists.
Me: (proffering the book) Take this. When you get back to your cell, look down the spine of the book and you’ll find the key!
You: Why should I? The burden of proof lies entirely with you. Not only does your offer presuppose that this elusive “key” exists, it also presupposes that you have a copy, that it is concealed in this book and that it will in fact unlock the door to my cell. Why should I accept any of these unsubstantiated assertions without physical evidence?
Me: But … but … it’s there, if you’ll only look!
You: Enough of these coy evasions. Since you are unable to produce this key, I can only assume you’re lying or deluded.
Me: (looking around helplessly) But I can’t very well produce it here, can I?
You: I smell bullshit. Guard! This man’s bothering me – kindly take me back to my cell.
Your example fails Pilty because of this:
Look, a falsifiable hypothesis!
Either the key is there or it isn’t. We can look and if we don’t find the key then the hypothesis is falsified. We can’t apply that same criteria to God. If we don’t hear anything back from God, it’s shrugged off by “The lord moves in mysterious ways.” Your test for God is an unfalsifiable assertion, your test for the key in the book is falsifiable.
Analogy FAIL.
What prevents you from producing the 1024-digit-number (“key”)? Or indeed, any digits therefrom? This isn’t a prison. There are no guards. There’s only your alleged omniscient entity who loves everyone. What’s holding him up?
Piltdown Man,
Your analogy would be better if the person with the key claimed the key would allow the prisoner to walk through walls, that simply by holding the book he’d be able to do so, and that he shouldn’t bother going back to his cell – he should just take the book now and walk through the nearest wall.
Oh, and that if the key didn’t allow him to walk through walls it would be his own fault for not having enough faith in the key – not that the key didn’t work, because the key always works. Except when it doesn’t.
And if we’re going to do the exercise, may I submit two explanations for the comparison, stated using the idiom of an expert whose work I highly esteem, yet with whom I ultimately disagree?
Crossan has called the passion narrative “prophesy historicized,” and directly opposes this characterization to history dressed up with prophesy after the fact. That is, the only factual element of this narrative, according to probably the leading scholar on the question of the historicity of Jesus, is the “brute fact” of crucifixion.
1. All the accounts of the passion are prophesy historicized, but they were inspired by, and would never have been told if it weren’t for, an actual historical person of humble origins from the Galilee, named Jesus, who founded a peasant resistance movement, caused a stir in Jerusalem, and was crucified by the Romans c.30 CE.
2. All the accounts of the passion are prophesy historicized.
Please judge on the following criteria:
I keep my continuous test for God operating. Well it’s not for just God, it’s for other deities too. But of God I simply ask he turn my water which I keep by my desk at all times into vodka. I’ve been running this experiment for weeks now and my water is still just water. Can I call the God hypothesis falsified yet Pilty?
You have forgotten that you first need to demonstrate that paranormal activity exists in the first place!
David Marjanović wrote:
No he doesn’t, silly – it’s in the bible, so it’s must be true. Remember, all arguments begin with the basic assumptions: a) god exists, and b) everything in the bible is real and true – except, of course, for the stuff that is obviously metaphorical or distasteful*.
*Subject, naturally, to the necessity of it being so and/or the denominational affiliation of the individual theist making the argument.
But there we have it. He has not even refused. He hasn’t answered at all.
Just like the definition of “Bible”. 1 and 2 Maccabees anyone? (1) (H)Enoch? 3 and 4 Ezra (2 Ezra being Nehemia)? And so on.
Good point. I neglected to include the option of selecting whichever particular version of the bible (or supporting texts) to suit the
hole the size of a behemoth they’re trying to pretend isn’t therepoint it is they’re trying to make.DinosaurHippopotamus!Piltdown Man #460 wrote:
Ok, I, too, laughed at the idea of “bigoted egalitarian prejudice.” How dare we consider our superiors as equals …
This is like the little bell I have on my desk, which I ring to keep flying elephants away. I, too, have found it to be very effective.
Here is the problem: the human tendency to find what is sought. Also known as subjective validation.
The “attitude of faith” is one of expectation and hope — which means the critical and analytical faculties are loosened. The seeker makes a personal commitment to look for patterns that will confirm what they want to find. It’s incredibly open-ended.
What do you think would happen if a Christian read about some lovely and attractive New Age version of God — one without Heaven, Hell, or Final Judgment — and said to themselves “I think I will ask Higher Consciousness of Love to give me a sign if She exists?” And then they wait for … a sign.
What do you think that “sign” will be? Remember, they really, really like this much nicer version of God. Perhaps it will be a particularly bright star right outside their window, which they look out of just after wondering if Love has eyes to see them. Maybe they will take a seat on the bus and find themselves sitting next to someone they haven’t seen since kindergarten. They go to an antique store and find a locket with their initials, and the word “Love” next to them. Perhaps they will go to Walmart and, though they’ve never done it before, find themselves wandering into the book section and there is the book The Secret right in front of them. Oooh. Spooky. Or maybe they will hear a special song on the radio, or their cat will start to let them sleep in, or …or…or.
Something “weird” is going to happen. If they’re waiting for a sign, they WILL get a sign, because they will interpret mildly interesting events as amazing, inexplicable, incredible coincidences which were clearly arranged by the universe to demonstrate to them that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God, because we are all part of God. Or something else. Whatever it is they’re seeking to confirm, will be confirmed.
And then, when they tell the story, they will swear up and down that they were skeptical the entire time, they never thought they’d get a sign, and so it’s all the more remarkable that they did get a sign anyway.
That’s how it works. Which means your “request that God reveal Himself” is worthless. No, it’s not a test of God. It’s a test of the imagination.
Pilty, why should I pray to something that only exists between your ears. Until you show positive proof for god with physical evidence, that is all you have. A delusion in your own mind. Time to fold your tent and quit bothering your betters with your delusions.
Maybe this is a prison, and the warder is missing.
According to Ray Comfort it is.
Pilt sneers at Nietzsche. How dare this upstart man make a negative assertion about the state of the monarch’s life! Oh, the monarch will show him what for!
(Unrelated to anything else, I note the quote on the left side of the blog page):
Ah, Stoicism. At least, it sounds like Stoicism.
Ray Comfort is unclear on the concept of where babies come from.
What else need be said about him, besides noting his hilariously ironic blatant banana fetish?
Nice quote there Owlmirror. My one was strangely appropriate
Pilt sneers at Nietzsche.
I’m sure he does, but it’s interesting when they converge on the same sort of examples :)
The only prisoner here is Pilty. He is prisoner of his delusion of god. Stop your belief in god and become a free and rational man.
CJO, I’m certainly not qualified to provide a detailed historical analysis of the passion accounts, or of any other specific event that is said to have occurred in the life of Jesus. I was referring only to the general question of his historicity, which is broad enough and basic enough to allow non-specialists such as myself to reflect upon it sensibly (though no doubt somewhat superficially).
As far as ‘physical evidence for god,’ which Nerd of Redhead is still insisting upon, I have a question: what would constitute ‘physical’ evidence for god’s existence? Richard Dawkins has said that if a statue of the Virgin Mary were to suddenly wave at you, it would be more reasonable to suppose that, however improbable it may be, all the molecules in the statue moved — randomly — in the same direction, causing the arm to move, than to suppose that a ‘miracle’ occurred. I suppose a similar argument could be made if the statue stepped off its pedestal, walked into the nearest bookstore, grabbed a bible, and handed it to the nearest atheist! In other words, it seems to me as if one could explain *any* (logically) possible event as a highly improbable, but nonetheless naturalistic occurrence. Since natural laws are in fact only statistical regularities, one could even explain violations of natural laws naturalistically. A voice from the sky could be explained as a trick of acoustics, a specific, fulfilled prophecy or a series of successful prayer experiments could be explained as coincidences, an act that seems to violate everything we understand about how the world works could be explained as evidence that there are no natural regularities, any act of agency could be explained away as a projection, etc. In other words, it doesn’t even seem possible *in principle* to provide dispositive physical evidence for the existence of god, since any such evidence will always be open to a plethora of imaginative naturalistic explanations. Just as many people today deny the wealth of data that supports evolutionary theory, no doubt many people in a world where god’s existence is supported by the physical evidence would remain atheists.