I’m seeing this rendition of the Dawkins Scale going around on social media.
What I find most amusing is all the people saying that they’re a 6, and that anyone who is a 1 or a 7 is an idiot. It’s amusing because I’m a 7.
Here’s the deal: the “god” we’re debating here is this amorphous, poorly defined thing that is floating around in people’s heads, often with a collection of inconsistent, incoherent associations tied to it. Before you ask me whether I believe in it, you had better tell me specifically what you mean and not rely on a set of variable cultural assumptions.
It’s like you’re asking me whether I believe in new Shimmer, and when I ask what it is, you tell me it’s a dessert topping. It’s a floor wax! No, it’s both a dessert topping and a floor wax, and it’s also three things that are one, and it’s the omnipotent ruler of the universe, and it’s afraid of iron chariots, and it thinks you deserve to burn in hell, but it loves you very much!
I’m just going to tell you to sober up, get your act together, and give me a clear and coherent definition of what you’re talking about, and then maybe I’ll be able to decide whether I believe in it or not. Until then, I’m a 7, and you’re just blithering bullshit with a wacky notion with loads of contradictions that you’re trying to conceal by reducing it to a 3-letter word.
I know as well. No scare quotes either. Knowledge, of which I am as sure as anything. Far more sure of that than most facts I use to live my life.
I’m neither a 6 or a 7 because the scale is senseless, for reasons you just excellently explained.
@2 rietpluim
Good point. It’s really impossible to believe the probability of something incomprehensible is 50% or any %, so that even rules out #7 as well. Perhaps what one can say they “know” is definitions of god are typically incomprehensible? :)
Despite what folks like to insist, it actually is possible to know that some gods don’t exist. Anyone who claims that their god has perfect justice and yet is merciful in any way? That god doesn’t exist.
I find the wording to be very weird:
– Why the quotation marks around “know” in 1 and 7, and not around “know” and “think” in other options?
– Why do the wordings not mirror each other? Both 2 and 6 as well as 3 and 5 don’t match each other.
– The capitalizing of god makes it clear it talks about a specific God. What about other religions? What about polytheists?
– The middle option is, unlike the other options which are filled with weasel words and presented as a personal opinion, presented as a statement of fact.
Another shoddy internet meme with not much value.
Glad to know I’m not the only one willing to admit to being a 7.
It’s a nice bit of misdirection on the part of Christian apologists, to be sure. You don’t believe in “God”, guys, you believe in a God. He has a name, loath as you are to use it, because you know that if you say you believe in “Yahweh”, it’s more difficult to spin your beliefs as being any different in kind than a belief in Zeus, Odin, Amun-Ra or the Dagda. Saying you believe in some abstract “God” lets you shift the goalposts about.
Yeah, I’m a 7. I’ve gotten into discussion where I’ve been berated and scolded for that, too. “You can’t be a proper rational skeptic if you’re a 7!”
Zenlike:
The implication is that declaring either of those positions is a matter of emotional faith, because you don’t have evidence of either position.
I’d say I’m off the scale. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘god’ and I suspect neither do you.”
Funny that no one ever asks the number for not believing in aether or phlogiston.
I call myself a 7 as well. That doesn’t mean I’m absolutely sure – I am not absolutely sure either that I will fall downward tomorrow when jumping from a bridge – when flapping with my arms I might fly away.
So if anyone prefer 6,999999… it’s OK with me.
The scale does makes sense. It’s a quick way to make clear how certain you are. That’s all.
Meme power aside, the main purpose of that scale in The God Delusion was to highlight the intellectual cowardice of theistic agnosticism at ‘4’ and the disparity between the large number of people who would identify as ‘1’ compared to smaller number as ‘7’. Also there are no quote marks around the word “know” in the book and the descriptions were slightly different, but I can’t comment on whether that scale had been reproduced elsewhere.
I’m definitely not a 7…or a 1 through 6 either. My objection to the whole list is that it’s missing a number (either 0 or 8) which should read…
“I’m not at all interested in this sort of theological crap.”
On the other hand, “May the Force be with you!”
I’m a 7 because it’s a lucky number. Wheeee
@ Mak, acolyte to Farore, #4
Wait, what? How is possible to have justice, at all, without mercy?
In such discussions I always hold out for, first, a clear definition of what is meant by “god”. Without that what is there to argue about?
I’m a 7 when it comes to an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God as described by most mainstream Christian religions. Because holy crap have you looked at the world?
I’m a 6 when it comes to the all-powerful, all-knowing, fairly evil god who likes to screw with people. The God of Calvin, for example. I believe it’s improbable, but I don’t think I can rule it out 100% just via empirical evidence. I’d probably stick it at 99.9% improbable, but leave myself some wiggle room.
I’m a 4 when it comes to Loki or some other Trickster god. Not all knowing or all powerful, but powerful enough and likes to mess with people. I would have described myself as a 6 for those kinds of gods as well a few years ago, but at the trajectory the world is going I might be at a 3 by the end of 2018…
@vucodlak
Perfect justice means that those who are punished or rewarded get exactly what they deserve. All the time, every time. That doesn’t mesh with mercy, which is a waiving of justice out of compassion.
Wait a minute. You’re not describing ‘Shimmer’ but rather ‘Ubik’. Get your terms straight. (I think. It’s been a very long time since I read Ubik.) And thank you, I am very much a 7 as well — without the quotes.
It depends on the definition of “God.” If God is a post-human computer programmer who created a simulated digital universe in which conscious digital “entities” exist, then I’m a 6. Otherwise, I’m a 7.
The scale itself is poorly worded drivel that obfuscates by its very nature (and you have to love those loaded scare quotes), but suffice to say that I have good reasons for calling myself an atheist rather than an agnostic. If you are going to confer belief upon something, or acknowledge the possibility of the existence of something as reasonable, then as PZ says at the very minimum you need to be able to consistently define what that something is. If the definitions shift all the time there is no there there to deal with at all, and if the notional something is defined to be totally non-falsifiable then belief in it is irrelevant. If god can’t be detected and never interacts with reality in any demonstrable way, why would you assume that some voyeuristic divine weirdo exists outside time and space using the universe as some creepy peep show rather than going with the parsimonious explanation that absolute undetectability in all circumstances looks an awful lot like non-existence?
There is also the point that agnosticism doesn’t come without it own price with regard to your epistemology. If you set the bar for accepting the possibility of something like a godhead so low, then you have left yourself open to being almost hilariously credulous – your mind is so open that your brain is sure to fall out. After all, if you are prepared to countenance the possibility of a god with literally no evidence to support that incredible claim, then you really need to confer equal acceptance on the possibility of the existence of other supernatural entities that have an equivalent (that being non-existent) evidential base. If you think god could exist somehow and somewhere, then you can’t reject the possibility of vampires, werewolves, fairies, Big Foot, Yetis, the Loch Ness Monster, alien abductions, rakshasha or any of the vast variety of other weird things people believe in and have believed in throughout history – you have to be an agnostic with regard to all of them if you want to maintain any level of intellectual consistency. Very few people who say they are agnostic about god are prepared to go that far, which is odd when you consider that a notional all powerful sky wizard who ‘poofed’ the whole universe into existence by magic is the most extreme claim of the whole misbegotten bunch.
Seven here. Otherwise I must rescind all the rest of my knowledge to accommodate it..
I’m an “8” I guess. I simply reject the God-hypothesis. I can’t find any reason to take it seriously.
@weylguy #20: So what universe would that ‘prime simulator’ reside in? Another simulation?
I’m also a 7. Since there is no real evidence to support the superfluous and very fluid deity, the null hypothesis is non-existent. In order to convince me otherwise, they must define their deity sufficiently it can be falsified by solid physical evidence.
Funny how if you don’t presuppose a deity, there really isn’t a need for one.
I almost believe in most Discworld gods and Sithrak.
The JudeoChristianIslamicMonoGod … not at all.
“Tastes terrific.” “And just look at that shine!”
My scale goes to 11. I’m one disbeliefier.
Chigau:
Offering up [the scent] of sausages with mustard can’t hurt. I wouldn’t mind Anoia being real at all. Good god, that one.
On this scale I’m probably 8 but I would give myself 9.
6.9999_
Absolutely reject the superlative classification. I am the most anti-auperlative you’ve ever seen, believe me no way extremist.
Bah, too silly.
Seriously I do dislike saying “I absolutely KNOW there is no G* “. Rather leave it open for even a shred of hard evidence. I do try to avoid solid conclusion based on opinion or “ lack of evidence”
I never say a 7 is an “ idiot” just “ jumping on a plausibility”.
Oh well
??
My position is that until someone can actually define the god they are asking me to believe in, there’s not point even discussing my degree of belief–at least not on the real axis. Maybe I could come up with something on the imaginary axis or maybe even in the complex plane for some values of god…
I’ve had some Xtians go so far as to say that God is whatever underlies the order in the Universe. OK. I don’t see the point in worshiping the Higgs field, but I believe it, or something very like it exists. Define your god and then get back to me.
I think the scare quotes in #1 and #8 might be a nod to epistemic uncertainty.
(After all, that is why Dawkins himself didn’t want to select ‘7’)
a_ray_in_dilbert_space,
God is transcendent and ineffable.
(Now what? :) )
Eff him.
On a scale of 1 to 7 I might be a 666.
I’m a 7.5 provided there is room for a GOLEM XIV ( Stanislaw Lem was misogynic, but where technology was concerned his predictions were so spot on it is uncanny)
@Gregory Greenwood, you are loading the dice rather by using such terms as “sky wizard” and “magic”. Wizardry and magic are ways of controlling the universe by the use of something external to the practitioner – spells, potions, demons or whatnot. No Christian ever believed that God operated like that. It would be closer to say they believe God invented the universe, as Tolkien invented Middle-Earth. Dorothy Sayers used this analogy in The Mind Of The Maker.
6.6 or maybe 6.66
There is a small possibility that there is a nasty Beast out there chortling at our misfortunes, sometimes nudging Uncertainty Principles towards fuckups for his/her/its/their enjoyment.
I come from a thoroughly irreligious family. We have never worried about the nature of the supernatural being(s) we don’t believe in, and even at age 5, I thought religious education and school prayers were nonsense.
That’s basically Ignosticism, isn’t it?
The problem lies in explaining exactly what it is that I’m supposed to believe, or not believe in. Until this little question gets cleared up, then 7 is the only possible answer.
Says Deepak Chopra
How’s that for a clear definition of God? 😀
– RM
@anchor#24: The programmer would reside in either the distant future or be a resident of an advanced species from who knows where. This answer is self-evident. Why do you ask?
John @ 33:
Yeah, so ‘god’ is supreme and inexpressible. That doesn’t tell me jack shit about ‘god’. It certainly does not define a god in any way. Those are just bullshit word choices to get out of defining a god. What exact meaning of transcendent? If your god transcends space and time, then explain how and why. Are there limits? If there are, what are they? If there are no limits, explain how that is. Same goes for ineffable.
I’m just playing along here, but you know better than to just toss out bafflegab, John.
Positive physical evidence to support your delusion. Put up or shut the fuck up!
I’m a polytheist, and I’m laughing at the concept of a singular all-powerful and all-knowing capital-g “God”.
Point being that that sort of “definition” (Caine makes a good point, but its flaw is not the common one of a circular “definition”) is not amenable to disproof, and leads one down the garden path if pursued. But it’s what one gets from non-stupid goddists.
(Actually, it’s more than just that; it easily leads to the burden of proof being reversed!)
[nitpick]
PS ‘transcendent’ does not mean ‘supreme’, it means ‘beyond’.
I’m sorry, John, I checked two dictionaries before replying, and yes, supreme is one definition of transcendent.
:)
I could play along as advocatus dei as an exercise in language games, but I think I’ve made my point.
There’s notice incoherent about a creator who is all powerful and all knowing but defines what is good.
Pholiston was never conclusively disproved either.
If it’s seven clearly the state should step in and enforce proper thought.
John:
:D
@ Mak, acolyte to Farore, #18
Oh, ok. I define mercy differently, as an active form of compassion, similar to charity. Mercy being the allaying of some negative with no regard for returns, where charity is the providing of some positive with no regard for returns. I also believe that compassion is a (perhaps the) primary prerequisite for justice; that, without compassion, any attempt at justice will be mere tyranny.
Michael Miecielica #51
Your spell chequer has bean possessed by a cofeve.
aziraphale @38:
The Book of Genesis literally describes God as speaking the universe into existence, as if using a magic incantation like a wizard.
Chigau @ 55:
I remember that nym. It belonged to an idiotic asshole. The problem is not with their spellchecker.
Actually, it’s more eponymous. The term to which you allude is ‘logos’.
(It’s also why magicians use spells. And, just for fun, Popeye’s catchphrase is “I yam what I yam and tha’s all what I yam” — which I find most amusing)
I’m a 6 if it is lower case god, but a 7 if it is an upper case god. There’s a slim chance we are living in a computer simulation, which would make the programmers technically god. That said, the God of the Bible is self-contradictory and obviously fictional.
WeylGuy@44: “The programmer would reside in either the distant future or be a resident of an advanced species from who knows where.” Why stop at that great degree of unlikeliness? Go for a Gödelian universe with closed causal paths (‘circular time’) and put “the programmer” in both the distant future and the distant past! (To the extent that such a universe is incompatible with “ours” and its Big Bang, well, that’s only a simulation…)
I’m not satisfied with how any of those options are formulated. A whole lot of shenanigans happening there. I don’t know how or whether these are different from the way Dawkins phrased them in his book, but I do remember those were similarly unhelpful.
Let’s start with something easier: One or more gods exist. True or false?
I think that’s false. Done.
If you really wanted more information than that, you’re obviously allowed to ask more than one question. I’m very sure it’s false, I’m not being particular at all about which gods they’re supposed to be, I have a decent idea of how the terms in the claim are supposed to be understood, etc., etc., etc. I’ll definitely turn out to be a garden-variety atheist at the end of this, but you’d need a lot more than seven items to cover all of the combinations that other people would pick. Stupid design.
If I ever get into an debate with someone about how certain I am about the non-existence of God (however you define it) I put it this way:
If a way to definitively answer the question “Does God exist?” once and for all was discovered, I would bet my entire worldly possessions (which are considerable) against a measly $1,000 that the answer will be “No”.
Easiest $1,000 I would have earned in my life.
It is funny to see that there actually are believers or near-believers (or simulated believers) of the simulation hypothesis. I’m sure that’s false too.
cr, you do know Roko’s Basilisk has you down in the little black book, right?
me too
But John, it’s my understanding that Roko’s Basilisk never makes it onto Santa’s List, whereas I do. Also, Santa himself has probably been put in the little black book, in retaliation, so I’m in good company.
Honestly, if it’s a simulated book, then I’m not entirely sure I understand what I ought to be worried about. But if anyone could explain, I promise not to be worried.
cr:
Nothing at all — unless you are actually part of the simulation. ;)
PS more generally, I think the simulation hypothesis is akin to Pascal’s Wager.
(It only has weight if you buy into the premise and ignore Occam)
As opposed to a simulated part of the actual world?
This whole thing does seem rather unfair. Would it really be my fault that I was simulated to not give it the presents it wants?
[Utterly OT, but then this is the secular equivalent of religous thinking]
Now, now, CR. You know damn well that the hook is that it is those who delayed the instantiation of (ahem) Omega Point (to give credit to the concept’s originator) who are to be punished because they therefore delayed vindicatory justice.
(And, if you want to get to the nitty-gritty, the simulation hypothesis entails that our world is a simulated world within the real world — there is no such opposition)
It seems okay to summarize that as not giving it presents. It wants an abstract thing, not a (simulated/real) box full of goodies or whatever, but in this case that’s not a very important distinction as far as I’m concerned.
Right. You could have a plain old physical world, the real one people implicitly accept, which contains a super-AI which goes around scaring the children. (Perhaps simulates things, or maybe it has to, I don’t care.) Or you could have one simulation inside another, inside another, in the dream of a demon who was a minor character in a Jane Austen novel that was never published, and so forth.
Calling it a secular equivalent seems all wrong. Maybe we could settle on nontraditional, unorthodox, or something like that?
@weylguy #20: Well, consider: If from our distant future, the programmer is living in a simulation she has prepared after>before the fact via some closed time-like loop. A simulator simulating itself: a bootstrap fallacy.
If a resident of an advanced species, it implies a qualitative distinction between their universe and ours. Why would our universe be different from theirs? How can the advanced species be sure THEIR universe isn’t a simulation? And if ours and theirs are simulations, why not an endless and eternal slew of them? Turtles all the way down, infinite regress-wise.
If we’re in a simulation within a simulation, and our programmers are simulations within simulations ad infinitum, with all possible universes the product of some super-intelligence, it denies or at least ignores the possibility of a natural original universe. All it takes is just one – but where would it be placed in an infinite ensemble of simulations?
That’s why I asked. Just because the putative programmers have been removed to an arbitrarily distant location in time or space doesn’t in the slightest resolve the fundamental paradox that renders all simulation scenarios nonsense ‘what if’ fantasies. They’re as circular and therefore as worthless at explaining the origin of the universe as ‘anthropic principle’ scenarios are. Nature doesn’t need intelligent beings to validate acts of observation. It performs an ‘observation’ with every quantum particle interaction. Similarly, nature doesn’t require intelligent beings to justify it, program its operations or invent it. It flies splendidly without the contraptions of explanation necessary for fallible beings (however ‘intelligent’) to gain an understanding.
Never mind defining “God”, how about defining what “exists” is supposed to imply.
I would not say that I know definitively and absolutely that no God or god or gods exist, because such a statement implies a burden of proof that I think cannot be met.
Instead I would say that I know no God, god or gods exist with as much certainty as is realistically possible to have about any other phenomena.
But on the whole? If it were not for believers, I would never even consider the idea of a God, god or gods really existing. Until I learned about the existence of religion at school, gods were just another fairy-tale creatures to me, like dragons and veelas.
[Trivial and OT]
CR @72,
My feeble phrasing, my bad, sorry. Equivalent is not the right word, and if there is one which is not circumlocutory, I don’t know it.
I intended to express this (symbolic improvement):
[Xianity:Pascal's Wager :: Extropianism:Roko's Basilisk].[Also OT]
anchor @73, are you familiar with Greg Egan’s oeuvre?
I dunno, I just hold out the feeble belief that Zeus or Death or any of the other pantheons in all of historic culture could possibly exist in some form or another. I guess that makes me a 6 on Zeus and Odin and Loki and the like? I don’t know unequivocally that a being like Q doesn’t exist. I think it’s unlikely, but I don’t deign to know it. Yeah it’s a bit weak, but I like my stories.
Well, I guess I could agree that Chopra is basically saying God is the potential in the quantum states of the universe, which I think we could pretty much all agree exists and influence reality. Quantum states of matter in the universe, of course, is what I’m referring to. If quantum theory is God, then I guess I believe in that God, since it’s not like a claim that there’s an actual being or anything? I dunno it’s awfully metaphysical and would make more sense to just say quantum relativity governs the universe.
7 myself too. The whole concept of gods is stupid.
1/7 would be vastly improved if amended to simply “I am certain”. The business of “knowing” is fraught – for the powerful reasons PZ cites and the common agnostic excuses about our finite knowledge.
The interesting angle (here) is what call people are willing to make based on the available information. We sevens all feel we’ve seen quite enough to discern that the man behind the curtain …is a mirror.
Personally, I think it changes according to definition of what exactly is meant by ‘God’. For me, I am definitely a 7 when it comes to a being that exactly fits any of the plethora of gods descibed by the various religions of the world (especially as different sects of what are supposed to be the same religion can have wildly different ideas of what that god is supposed to be). However, if you widen that a bit and say that ‘God’ includes any being that is god-like or could be mistaken for a god, then I’d have to drop to 6 – it is possible such a being exists, and it is even possible they have some contact, influence and/or interference with humanity, but the probability of that is roughly on par with Santa actually being a highly advanced, generous, extra-dimensional creature who can only express its generousity in our dimension when the subspace waveforms of our two dimensions are in alignment, which is the night of Christmas Eve (and that is something I made up as I was typing this, so that should tell you how likely it is).
It seems rather unlikely that someone would think there’s precisely a 50% probability of existence (of whatever the g-definition is). Here I’ve quantified what the uncertainty ranges might be if I had asked the question:
1. 99-100% probability of existence
2. 95-99% probability of existence
3. 80-95% probability of existence
4. 20-80% probability of existence
5. 5-20% probability of existence
6. 1-5% probability of existence
7. 0-1% probability of existence
John Morales: “God is transcendent and ineffable.”
That is not a definition. That is an adjectival phrase with two vague adjectives applied to a noun that has not been previously defined.
Transcendent–what does said god transcend.
Ineffable is essentially an admission that the term cannot be defined. Well, thank you for playing and have a nice life. If you ever feel you’ve effed your god, then get back to me. ;-)
As far as the definition of god as “…post-human computer programmer who created a simulated digital universe in which conscious digital “entities” exist…” (per Weylguy) OK. Where is said programmer? Where is there evidence of the “code”? What sort of hardware does it run on? How does one imbue consciousness on a digital entity? It’s at least plausible that this could happen, but having seen zero evidence for it, I’d be at a 6.9, and there only because you can’t do Bayesian probability properly if a possible outcome is assigned zero probability in the prior.
Deepak: “John Morales: “God is transcendent and ineffable.”
That is not a definition. That is an adjectival phrase with two vague adjectives applied to a noun that has not been previously defined.
Transcendent–what does said god transcend.
Ineffable is essentially an admission that the term cannot be defined. Well, thank you for playing and have a nice life. If you ever feel you’ve effed your god, then get back to me. ;-)
As far as the definition of god as “…post-human computer programmer who created a simulated digital universe in which conscious digital “entities” exist.” I would ask where is the evidence for an underlying “code”? Where would said code run? How would one imbue a “digital entity” with consciousness. I’d be a 6.9 here, as this is at least some sort of definition that might conceivably have some evidence for or against. So far, all the evidence is against.
Deepak: “God is the infinite potential that becomes the universe and the awareness of the universe in conscious beings.”
Either “potential” means something different than any of the dictionary definitions or Chopra is implying a singularity in some sort of Higgs-type field. I suspect the former, in which case he is defining an undefined in terms of an undefined. Next!
If “transcendent”=supreme–this implies somebody is driving the bus. There is zero evidence for this. Or the driver got tired and opted not to drive the bus–which would by definition lead to zero evidence of its existence. Next.
The trend toward ever more vague definitions of God is just another game of “God of the Gaps.” At some point the gaps become so small, that whether or not there is a god becomes irrelevant.
@a_ray_in_dilbert_space:
I think that’s kind of the point. Morales is well aware of the vagueness, and is highlighting the tendency of Chopra and other theists to refer to God with vague word salad.
==========
How about a pantheistic-type definition?
God is literally everything — the entire universe/multiverse and all the laws of physics (and meta-laws of physics, and meta-meta laws, etc) interacting.
(For myself, I think that the term “God” used by most people, and the pantheistic God, are sufficiently disjoint as concepts, that I would reject it)
I think that many theists might agree with something like:
God is the supernatural person whose actions and decrees are described in $HOLY_BOOK.
I’ve been encountering the probability ‘argument’ for god more often lately. I guess because it sounds all sciency and stuff. People who use it (misuse is the more accurate term) really don’t know what they are talking about. The 50% probability argument for god is nuts. That’s the coin flip method. Heads no god, tails there is god? Really? And then there is the attempt to use statistical probability to infer that there is a god. What these people don’t realize is that this use of statistics requires a sample of some size to compute a probability accurately. How does one come up with a god sample? I don’t even know where to begin. And then there is probability theory which is high order mathematics, but it is not designed to answer the question whether god exists. It deals with events, not things as such. If you want to call god an event I say go for it. I would really love to see your methodology.
John Morales @77
I’m afraid it’s been a very long time since I’ve read any science fiction. I’m aware of Egan and admit to years of procastination into checking his stuff out. I’ve heard its quite good. What would you suggest I start with?
But, as this morning’s Tax Scam amply demonstrates, The Devil is DEFINITELY in the details.
Hmm. 7, with the caveat that “god” doesn’t; refer to some unknown, as yet undefined, force, and/or thing, that hasn’t yet been described, and actually have properties that make it, for now, undetectable. In that case, I might go with a 6.5. lol
Owlmirror, well, I believe in a physical Universe subject to laws. I call that reality, but if you want to call it god, go for it. I just won’t be lighting incense or praying to it, but if you want to get together and read from the problems in Jackson’s Electrodynamics for old times’ sake, I’m there.
anchor @86, perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City
a_ray_in_dilbert_space@89 “I believe in a physical Universe subject to laws”
Well, I don’t.
“Laws” in physics are mathematical formulations that reliably describe certain regularities, (symmetries) that we observe in the universe. The universe is what there is and saying that it is “subject” to laws implies something greater than the universe and which it is “subject” to, which seems to me to imply a belief in “god”.
Nope, the universe isn’t “subject to” anything, it is what it is.
methuseus:
Zmidponk:
It’s interesting that you both seem to assume that going from 7 to 6 — that is, going from certainty to a lack of certainty — is a matter of whether or not it is possible. (The two of you aren’t the only ones I’ve ever encountered, but you are in this thread.)
Consider the claim “Elvis is still alive.” That’s logically and physically possible: it doesn’t imply a contradiction, and it wouldn’t be violating any known fundamental physics. I don’t see anything about that claim which should make me sincerely think it’s impossible in either sense, which means simply that it is possible in both senses. So, I’m going to tell you (correctly) that it’s possible (at least in those senses, if not others), and what I just described is basically what I’ve got in the back of my head, when I tell you such things about what I think.
But then I ask myself about how certain I am that “Elvis is not still alive.” It rarely ever crosses my mind, but I am pretty fucking certain that he’s dead. The fact of his death is also something which I think I know about. If I’m not justified in saying that “I know he’s dead”, then it isn’t at all obvious why I’m not, so you should explain why I don’t really know all of these perfectly ordinary things that I think I know about the world.
Of course, as I said, it’s possible that he’s still alive; thus, I’m possibly wrong. Even so, I’m still thinking to myself, “yep, Elvis certainly is dead, I know that, no doubt about it.” When I report that thought to you, I’m not telling you that I believe it couldn’t be true that he’s still alive (i.e., it’s a contradiction, breaks laws of physics, or anything of the sort), but that I’m very sure it isn’t true that he’s still alive. Beliefs which I couldn’t possibly be wrong about are not the only things which I think I can be certain about. Those are two very different standards, which don’t seem to have much to do with one another.
microraptor @56:
Every wizard or magician I ever read about had learned their incantations from some source outside themselves – a human or non-human mentor, or a book. God in Genesis doesn’t need to learn, he is self-sufficient.
a_ray_in_dilbert_space @89: Finally, an interesting idea! Which edition? Mine’s the second.
I am definitely a 7, despite all the qualifications. I know for certain that God does not exist. However, I do not know for certain that the things I know for certain are true. I guess that I am somewhat agnostic about being an atheist.
If we really want to put the belief in God on some sort of probability scale, then we could get those who say: “I am not 73% certain that God exists, but I am certain that 73% of a God exists.”
While this blog and the associated comments (including mine) just show how nonsensical this type of exercise is, I think the probability scale approach would work well in jury decisions. Instead of being restricted to a trinary Guilty, Not-Guilty, Hung decision they could produce their opinion as to the probability that the accused is guilty. So if they find that the accused has a 25% probability of being guilty of a crime that carries a 20 year sentence, that defendant would get 5 years. Not sure how this would work for life, or for death sentences, but the concept is sound.
I agree with Matt Dilahunty’s dislike of this scale. It obscures in favour of the theists.
There are two seperate propositions that are mutually exclusive.
1 a god exists
2 no god exists
However proposition 2 is the null hypothesis. You don’t have to “know” no god exists in order to stand firm on it.
Should evidence come forward to support that a god exists (whatever that god thing is) then it can be tested and a move toward 1 becomes warranted.
DanDare, you (and others) are now discussing this scale as the purported probability of God’s existence, whereas the scale is supposed to be about someone’s personal degree of belief in its existence.
I think you nailed it. “God” is an utterly undefinable concept, so belief doesn’t apply. I’ve had this argument with believers of many faiths and not one could name or describe anything about any kind of supernatural entity. There is only one statement to be made about God: God doesn’t exist.
I have no clue what “stand firm” means. It sounds like you’re making a tough or contentious political decision. Or it’s like you think we’re lined up for a Roman-style battle (against theists presumably), and our duty is to hold the line. Who gave you those orders? I mean, if there is something pushing back against you, what is that, against which you’re standing firm? You may have that kind of agenda or motivation — maybe it’s not even such a nefarious one — but I don’t get how that’s supposed to be an improvement over expressing what you do and don’t know about the facts.
I also don’t get why we should start treating it as two propositions. There is a single issue at hand: how many gods there are. We don’t need to bring in any notions about epistemology to ask simply what that number is. How many gods are there? The answer could be zero. It could be any other non-negative integer. It couldn’t be anything like 5π/47 – 3i. And it couldn’t be “the Gettysburg address” or “this is just how I was raised” or countless others which wouldn’t do the job. All you’re doing at this point is giving an answer to that simple question, in the form of one of those valid options (there are more than two, obviously).
How or why did you come up with that specific answer? Well, I think that’s an interesting question too, but it’s not the very same question. And it’s wrong to pretend as if there were some built-in need to ask about your methodology. I could just want to know what you think the number is, and I don’t need to presuppose that nobody could have any other way of getting it except for what you happen to recommend.
Some people definitely will have totally preposterous ways of coming up with an answer. Go ahead and criticize them for it … but you’ll be doing that later, after they’ve had a chance in the first place to simply express what they think the answer is, which they can certainly do without the aid of your commentary. Steering the conversation, so that right from the beginning it’s supposed to biased toward your view, is no different from what you’re accusing theists of doing with Dawkins’ scale. I think we’d do just fine if we simply cut out all of that confusing crap.
@Ed Seedhouse:
I think this is going a bit too far to avoid the appearance of theism (or pantheism?). I am pretty sure that a_ray_in_dilbert_space just intended “subject to” in the sense of “affected by”.
Does the subject of a sentence have the object as a God?
aziraphale @ 38;
microraptor @ 56 very effectively covered the incantation-esque aspects of the Judaeo-Christian creation mythology which bears more than a passing resemblance to folkloric depictions of magic. If you prefer, think of the language this way – the Christian god supposedly created the universe by an exercise of unknowable power as a manifestation of some superhuman will. No physical processes were employed, and the deity itself and all its actions are supposed to be fundamentally non-amenable to study or scientific understanding of any kind. Describing a being that can manipulate (in this case actually create) physical reality by an act of will alone as a ‘wizard’ is not unreasonable, nor is describing the supernatural, inherently mystical means by which this feat was supposedly achieved as ‘magic’. The meaning is pretty clear, even if the form of words might cause some Xian pedants to try to pick holes in entirely reasonable language.
Also, if god wrote the universe into existence like an author, why is he so darn afraid of iron chariots? Why not just rewrite that chapter? Does he have divine writer’s block or something?
@consciousness razor:
I am pretty sure it just means “remain confident” [that the null hypothesis need not be rejected]
The universe is obviously a committee effort.
The thing of it is, back when Yahweh and Asherah and Chemosh and Moloch and the Ba’als and all the rest were running their campaign in the Levant, Yahweh managed to get a few natural 20s, and ended up with a ridiculous amount of mana; orders of magnitude more than everyone else. So he was able to blow through that with a bunch of really flashy miracles, like Create Life, Cause Death, Manipulate Water, Create Food (for 40 years!), Mass Revelation, and so on. The others said “Will you knock off the munchkining?”, and Yahweh just laughed maniacally.
But after doing all that, Yahweh’s mana levels dropped to almost nothing, and then he got a few 1s on mana generation, and a couple of the others colluded and used Revelation to get their peoples all working together on ironmongery, and yeah, they kinda kicked Yahweh’s ass that one time.
But Yahweh was so naturally vindictive that he came up with the idea of monotheism as revenge, getting his people to get rid of the worshippers of other gods. That’s when that “sole author” propaganda came out.
Anyway, everyone else got kinda sick of Yahweh being so petty and vindictive, and then some gods who had been running campaigns further East got on a conquest binge, and the whole thing just kinda fell apart.
I’m sure that explains everything . . . !!
Owlmirror @ 103;
I love it. I laughed myself sick.
Ed Seedhouse@91
Horsecrap. That is not what I said at all. Subject to laws merely means that the Universe exhibits order–and undeniably, it does. That fact is important evidence that suggests objective reality to the Universe. It makes science possible. Learn to read for content and not project your biases on what others say.
a_ray_in_dilbert_space@105: “That is not what I said at all. Subject to laws merely means that the Universe exhibits order–and undeniably, it does.”
Well, I think it *is* literally is what you said though, and I think that’s an important thing to recognize. I think one reason so many people believe in gods stems from the way our languages are structured. Once you buy into the “cause and effect” format you are naturally lead to the belief that every “effect” must have a “cause” and thus to “god” since the universe is an “effect” that must have a “cause”. Admittedly this kind of reasoning is built in to our language and is not going to change, but I think it’s a good idea to be explicit about that from time to time.
English is full of linguistic “ghosts” like the “it” in “it is raining”. This implies very strongly that there is some conscious agency behind the rain. Of course we can’t say stuff like “a complicated pattern of events that is currently involving rain is in our vicinity is in progress” because that’s just too damn hard to say very often.
Still, I think it is important to be aware of the fact that the universe is not structured according to the way our languages are structured.
In science we make use of a wonderful language that does not contain so many ghosts, the language we call “mathematics”. Even it is not perfect of course (just what the hell are infinitesimals actually?) but it is an improvement. On the other hand we are not going to have a satisfactory conversation by passing equations back and forth, are we?
Owlmirror:
I wouldn’t agree with that either. Physical laws are ways we come up with succinctly characterizing what happens in the universe. They’re our descriptions of it, using our concepts and math and so forth, for our use in understanding it. We don’t have the ability or the interest to describe every single event everywhere, so we attempt to come up with some true statements which paint the right sort of picture about it. The point however is that they don’t affect the universe, as if they were something existing in addition to it. It isn’t subject to them in that sense at all. It’s more like the reverse: if we manage to write down something which is basically correct, then what we wrote down is dependent on (inter alia) what the universe is like.
Believing that they do affect or govern things doesn’t imply a belief in gods, as Ed Seedhouse claimed. It apparently does have historical roots in ideas that God is a kind of ruler of the world, imposing laws which govern it, like our laws govern our societies. If you dropped the legal/political analogy, if God is going to do anything to the world (change it, sustain it, whatever), then it would follow more or less immediately that God’s “affecting” the world. But you could also have a view that they’re not gods but something else, which are supposed to be doing this job that the universe supposedly wouldn’t be doing all on its own.
Anyway, there is plenty to say in favor of a Humean theory of laws, which rejects all of that. I won’t try to go into it here; but to start with, it’s fairly obvious that, gods or not, these additional law things wouldn’t make it a parsimonious theory.
Pope John Paul 2 described God as an all-knowing absolute.
The logical fallacy here is that an absolute would be an essence, not an ideal. For instance, a spiritual absolute would be the elemental essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of knowledge, wisdom and judgement from which we fell.
More the new born babe, than the wise old man. Yet religion is far more about social order, the frame, so to speak, than any deep spiritual insight.
In fact, the whole concept of artificial intelligence is based on this top down assumption; That if we can sufficiently program an information processing machine, it will become conscious. In other words, that knowledge is the basis of consciousness, rather than sentience as the precursor to processing information and thus knowledge.
Consciousness and perception/thought are inextricably linked, but still distinct. For instance, they go opposite directions of time. As consciousness goes from one thought to the next, it goes past to future. As these thoughts form and dissolve, they go future to past.
The fact remains we really don’t have a good explanation for biological sentience and so making it an axiom, a bottom up spirit, might be useful int he medium term. While this might offend die hard atheists, it would also seriously undermined conventional monotheism.
For instance, good and bad are not a cosmic duel between he forces of righteousness and evil, but the basic biological and emotional binary of attraction and rejection. Seeking a universal good/bad would be like a universal on/off, yes/no, left /right, etc.
If we consider this binary as the elemental code of conscious thought, it might go a long way to explaining the navigational basis of this process we call thinking.
consciousness razor@107: “Believing that they do affect or govern things doesn’t imply a belief in gods, as Ed Seedhouse claimed.”
I don’t believe I claimed that. Observably people tend to believe in gods. Others using the same languages do not. I think the structure of some of our languages does impart a bias towards belief in gods, in my opinion. But our minds are capable nevertheless of overcoming that bias and seeing through the god idea.
Yes, we do, if you mean by “sentience” simply the capability to detect and react to aspects of the environment: we know why this has evolved, and we know quite a bit about how it works in various organisms. If you mean the capability for subjective experience, then it is not a necessary precursor to processing information – which bacteria, plants, robots and thermostats all do.
Similar to others, I’m not on that scale at since various terms are not defined nor is any reason given for thinking that, even with definitions, the scale is or could possibly be one-dimensional. As a hypothetical example, suppose I accept there is a certain specific pantheon of magic sky faeries, but do not accept that every single one of the particular magic sky faeries said to be in that particular pantheon exist; that is, there is at least one in that specific pantheon which does not exist. Where would I be on that scale?
KG,
What is it’s source? As in the “hard problem.” It seems both the origin of consciousness and biology have a similar origin, but remain beyond current explanation.
My point is a strategic one. This world, especially the western view, is dominated by a top down platonic paternalistic ideal, which is validated by implying to be the source of this conscious experience. Given it claims to be both absolute and nebulous, this allows various cultures to claim their particular beliefs are absolute. The result is often political extremism, as any deviation from the most conservative application is deemed heresy. Yet the primary intellectual response to this is not to understand it is, at heart, a theory and examine it from every angle, but simply to dismiss the most simplistic and popular concepts as nonsense. Which only feeds the political need for an adversary by the religious communities. Keep in mind their function isn’t reason, but social order. As in sit in the pew, shut up and listen. Illogic actually serves to separate the true believers, from the less committed.
So my point is that if science was to agree to some element of being, that is pushing upward and outward, rather than a top down father figure, it would a more coherent explanation for what we actually experience as consciousness in the present moment and remove the validation for the monotheistic assumption.
Not to mention undermining the basis of patriarchy as well.
The scale is about belief but it treats the proposition as a complimentary line. You ad 10% to belief in god you take away 10% from belief there is no god. It assumes the total is exactly 100%. Its true it cannot be more but it can be less. That’s because there are twp propositions. You can hold 0% belief in both.
As for “stand firm” thats just my colloquial way of expressing that a null hypothesis is what we should hold as true until an alternative has been advanced that is supported by evidence. In this case “there is no god” is the null hypothesis. I have seen no evidence for “there is a god”. So I’m holding that tentatively as the state of affairs.
If we get specific about gods like Allah or Yahweh or Thor I am convinced they do not exist. The claims for them hold no water and many can be shown to be false.
DanDare:
Leaving aside that this is not applicable to my observation, I think you are mistaken (also, you meant to write ‘complementary’, which itself presumes a 100% sum — cf. set theory).
I am in accord with your first proposition, but not with your second. It’s not that they’re necessarily that they are false, it’s that they are (in order of salience) incoherent*, vague or unwarranted.
The range is between minimal and maximal belief — it is meaningless to assign it any other value outside the applicable range.
—
* obviously, if something is incoherent is cannot be true (principle of non-contradiction).
John I don’t believe I am understanding your objections clearly. I feel you are not applying charity to my use of words. I gather you are talking from a discipline that has very specific meanings for words. I am not. Can you try and paraphrase my position back to me so I can see if you are objecting to what I actually meant.
DanDare,
Sure.
Regarding to my first quotation from you, I paraphrase your claim as “The degree of disbelief in the Dawkins Scale is treated as the converse of the degree of belief, but this treatment does not encompass the totality of the spectrum of belief”.
Regarding the second, I paraphrase your claim as “I disbelieve in specifically denoted deities, because the claims for their existence are not convincing”.
John Merryman@112
It would be helpful if you answered my question about what you mean by “sentience”. I suspect you (unintentionally) slide between the two meanings, and that that is the source of much of your puzzlement.
What is it’s source?
What is what’s source?
I don’t believe that the “hard problem” as usually stated exists (see the explanation of Daniel Dennett’s view here). Sure, there’s much we don’t yet understand about the interaction between brain, body and external environment (the “easy” problems of explaining consciousness are actually hard), but I don’t believe that it’s necessary to postulate either top-down Platonic forms or or bottom-up magic dust* to explain it, or that zimboes could exist. (In case you’re not familiar with the term, a “zimbo” is a being that is behaviourally indistinguishable from a conscious person, but is actually unconscious. A zimbo will assert that it is conscious, that it has subjective experience, it might well express itself puzzled about how matter can generate consciousness and pontificate on the “hard problem”.) The place to start thinking about consciousness, in my view, is in the difference between a person when conscious (in the sense of awake), and the same person in a coma.
So my point is that if science was to agree to some element of being, that is pushing upward and outward, rather than a top down father figure, it would a more coherent explanation for what we actually experience as consciousness in the present moment and remove the validation for the monotheistic assumption.
It wouldn’t be a coherent explanation of anything, because “some element of being, that is pushing upward and outward” is not coherent, and explains nothing at all.
*In the style of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. Pullman is an excellent fantasy writer but a crappy philosopher.
Sorry, blockquote fail@117. “What is it’s source” is quoted from John Merryman.
Oh drat – and the whole paragraph beginning “So my point is” should also be quoted. I’ll try again:
John Merryman@112
It would be helpful if you answered my question about what you mean by “sentience”. I suspect you (unintentionally) slide between the two meanings, and that that is the source of much of your puzzlement.
What is what’s source?
I don’t believe that the “hard problem” as usually stated exists (see the explanation of Daniel Dennett’s view here). Sure, there’s much we don’t yet understand about the interaction between brain, body and external environment (the “easy” problems of explaining consciousness are actually hard), but I don’t believe that it’s necessary to postulate either top-down Platonic forms or or bottom-up magic dust* to explain it, or that zimboes could exist. (In case you’re not familiar with the term, a “zimbo” is a being that is behaviourally indistinguishable from a conscious person, but is actually unconscious. A zimbo will assert that it is conscious, that it has subjective experience, it might well express itself puzzled about how matter can generate consciousness and pontificate on the “hard problem”.) The place to start thinking about consciousness, in my view, is in the difference between a person when conscious (in the sense of awake), and the same person in a coma.
It wouldn’t be a coherent explanation of anything, because “some element of being, that is pushing upward and outward” is not coherent, and explains nothing at all.
*In the style of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. Pullman is an excellent fantasy writer but a crappy philosopher.
Urrrrgghh! Now I’ve forgotten my link. See #117. Apologies – I seem to be writing in a state of very limited consciousness today!
*slides @KG a voucher for a free energizing beverage of choice*
[No worries KG, my own editing was mangled above]
Ed Seedhouse: “Once you buy into the “cause and effect” format you are naturally lead to the belief that every “effect” must have a “cause” and thus to “god” since the universe is an “effect” that must have a “cause”.”
Dude, where are you getting this crap? Because it is not stated or implied in anything I said. Quantum mechanics allows both causal and acausal phenomena. Emission of a photon can be either stimulated or spontaneous. Physical laws do not imply a law giver. Please do me the courtesy of actually reading the words I write without projecting your own garbage onto them. Thank you in advance.
@a_ray_in_dilbert_space:
Possibly from Edward Feser, or other Thomists. There is a peculiar insistence that if the universe has some sort of fundamental cause, that cause must be God (even if that God is not a person–I think). It’s a very weird way of thinking. It seems to involve a weird sort of philosophical/linguistic prescriptivism to insist that any use of the terms “cause” and “effect” (or “subject to”) must involve a God.
I do recall that Sean M. Carroll [“The Big Picture” lecture] explained that modern physics has moved away from talking about causes and effects and instead views the universe as evolving from one state to the next by way of the laws of physics. But I also seem to recall him saying somewhere that physicists are fine with talking about causes and effects informally.
a_ray_in_dilbert_space @123:
Oh, not this rubbish again. Spontaneous emission is caused by the interaction between the electromagnetic vacuum and excited atomic states. Once again, just because you can’t predict when something will occur does not make that something “acausal”.
Because God doesn’t do irony.
KG,
“The place to start thinking about consciousness, in my view, is in the difference between a person when conscious (in the sense of awake), and the same person in a coma.”
My interest is not so much neurology, as sociology and politics. The fact is that whether they are zimbos, or conscious beings, there are billions of humans around this planet and there are a limited number of concepts on which significant numbers of them can be reached. You don’t seem interesting in the political point I made, so we are not reaching each other’s area of interest.
Would you agree we are conscious in the present and what we are conscious of is a sequence of perceptions our senses derive from our physical being and interaction with its environment?
What I see in this is a distinction between the element of being conscious and that of which we are conscious. That consciousness and its perceptions effectively go opposite directions of time. That as our awareness goes from one thought to the next, it goes past to future, while these thoughts coalesce and dissolve, thus go future to past.
To use a movie projector analogy, the frames of film are like thoughts, going from future, to present, to past, while the projector light goes the other way, from prior frames to succeeding frames, thus going past to future.
So in this example, consciousness is analogous to the light, while thoughts are analogous to the frames.
Though the whole list is suspect from the standpoint of grammar and usage, I think my favorite is #2: “I highly believe in God”
The obvious inference is that you’d have to be high to believe in god…..
Sadly I only see 3 women on the list. I went through quickly but this saddens the hell out of me. We are screwed and are now a banana republic.
I don’t think trying to substitute one myth about the nature of consciousness for another will achieve any political goal.
Not entirely. Over short periods, the apparent sequencing of perceptions is itself experimentally manipulable; it looks as though you still subscribe to what Dennett describes as the “Cartesian theatre” picture of consciousness: percepts appearing to an internal “audience” separate from them.
I can’t make any sense at all of the remaining paragraphs.
Rob Grigjanis: “Spontaneous emission is caused by the interaction between the electromagnetic vacuum and excited atomic states.”
Really? And the evidence for this would be? If the electromagnetic vacuum acts on the excited atomic states, then we should be able to measure that influence in reverse, should we not? So where are the measurements. That spontaneous emission is acausal is the standard interpretation in quantum mechanics. If you are advancing another explanation, you’d better bring evidence.
a_ray_in_dilbert_space @131: The “evidence” would be how we calculate decay rates for excited atoms. You can do this by starting with the classical expression for the Hamiltonian of a charged particle in an em field, and then quantizing the em field, and taking its ground state. For details, see here and subsequent pages.
There’s nothing standard about using “acausal” in any QM course I’ve taken, or textbook I’ve read.
Or you could just read some of the wikipedia page.