Thinking Christian Comments
Original Post: When Can You Call It a Prayer Answer?
I pointed to this blog post before and I think it deals, in part, with the rationality question. In my judgement, the question about the rationality of belief is asked and answered pretty convincingly.
"The issue is whether a reasoned case can be made for theism, and the answer is in the affirmative."
Tom, how can you tell the difference between God answering a prayer and the result of the prayer happening without God (for those prayers with results that could well have happened on their own)? I can imagine some *tendencies* in the types of prayers or situations that might suggest God or not God, but I can't imagine anything definitive.
So it seems like Occam's razor would apply: if the prayer answer could have more or less easily happened without God, why multiply terms?
Why is it considered a multiplying of terms to say that God is God, and that God does what God does?
Having said that, I agree there's no definitive way in many cases to know, "that wouldn't have happened without God answering our prayers." I tried to make that point, and hope that I did.
As a general rule, the more out-of-the-ordinary an event is, and the more specific the prayer was, the more confident we can be that God answered a prayer.
Tom,
We can't model individual humans' behavior mathematically at all, and we have a very difficult time modeling groups of humans mathematically in even the most simple interactions. Why should we be able to model God's behavior mathematically?A man arrives at your local swimming pool, and dives into the pool in his 3-piece suit. He swims laps, as if nothing were out of place. Likely or unlikely?
Your long-time friend is an avid swimmer, swimming long distances each week. You meet him today at the local pool where he now claims that he is too afraid to swim because he is incapable of swimming. Likely or unlikely in his case?
Probability cannot often tell you that a human act is impossible, but it can tell you whether or not it it likely or unlikely. That's how we recognize that a friend is not himself, or that a person is a foreigner or deranged or angry or what have you.
Why should God not be--at least to some degree--incomprehensible? What kind of God would he be if we understood him fully?I don't believe I argued that we should understand him fully. I don't understand my friends fully, but that doesn't stop me from predicting their behavior in certain circumstances.
The miracles that Jesus did were seen to be miracles just because they were so out of the ordinary.That's not how it works, Tom. You change beliefs by weight of evidence, not by outliers.
One problem with this is that it can be made impervious to evidence. The one who takes this position can always move the marker farther and farther down the line, until statistics allow no work of God ever to be acknowledged.
Dead people stay dead. That's the way it has been in billions of cases. If you meet a person who you believe to have died last year, you don't think they were resurrected. That's never happened. Instead, you think it's a twin, or a trick of the light, or that you imagined the funeral, or that the death was faked. All those alternatives, despite their dramatic improbability, are still more likely than the billion to one odds that the person came back from the dead. Those are the facts, and believing the person likely to have returned from the dead is not rational. You might rationally hope they were resurrected, but hope doesn't make something probable.
What you need is enough evidence about resurrections, enough repeatability, to make all your past history of the dead staying dead fit into place.
No, I (and others like me) have sufficient reason from many prior experiences and from prior knowledge to believe that God exists, and we know from God's own self-revelation (and from experience) that he answers prayer.I totally disagree. Why should we believe that any of your past experiences were any more likely to have been answered prayers than this one?
I see a pattern of prayer answers in my life that is consistent with my knowing that God really answers.It's also consistent with natural phenomena, Tom. Consistency is never enough. You need relative likelihood to make your case.
doctor(logic) says this kind of thinking is irrational. No, it's a realistic way of understanding the events of life, in view of prior knowledge that God exists and answers prayer.It's not even rational in that case. You don't know the frequency of intervention, nor the pattern.
Start from the position that God exists and intervenes. Suppose you want to determine the frequency with which God intervenes given that humans are biased and see interventions when there are none. You're a psychologist. You know the drill. Even given your grounding, you still need controlled experimentation to get an answer. For all you know, God intervenes only once every century.
You're in a situation where the noise level of false reports is deafening. Worse, you have argued that God deliberately keeps the signal below the noise, no matter how much we try to control (so as to hide until someone adopts a superstitious outlook.)
I don't think you're concerned as to whether you get the right answer to this question. At the same time, it's a very convenient tool to use to win over converts who don't think critically. (While we're on the topic, I don't count "preacher" as an indicator of zero credibility. That would be an overestimation of my opinion of preachers.)
Does it have the right eternal outcome in mind? How will it affect the second generation after me? Is there some character improvement, some sense of growing in grace or mercy for example, that would be better accomplished if I don't do what the chiropractor hopes I'll do?"Right back at you. How do you know that your miracles met those criteria? Did you stop to think whether your churches would have built more character without their mutual cooperation? Again, the double-edged sword of infinite incomprehension cuts both ways.
Those are the facts, and believing the person likely to have returned from the dead is not rational. You might rationally hope they were resurrected, but hope doesn't make something probable.
What's the difference between believing despite the odds, and hoping? You say belief is irrational while hope is rational.
"The issue is whether a reasoned case can be made for theism, and the answer is in the affirmative."
I have no argument with that view. But then, it doesn't really get one much closer to the position that the conservative, evangelical Chrisitan adheres to than it does to the ancient Greek's views on Aphrodite. Why a person today should choose to believe in a God Who demands the shedding of blood in order that humans can be brought into a loving relationship with Him boggles my skeptical mind. Why should believing in the god portrayed in the Bible be any more rational than believing in the gods prortrayed in the Iliad or say the Hindu scriptures?
Guess I'm sympathetic to the idea that one can find reasons for believing in God. But I have trouble even beginning to imagine how the god found in the Bible could be considered a legitimate candidate for such a high office.
SteveK,
What's the difference between believing despite the odds, and hoping? You say belief is irrational while hope is rational.I might hope that I win the lottery, but that doesn't make it likely.
I really hope I win, but I don't rationally believe that I will win or that it is likely that I will win.
It can still be rational to act on unlikely outcomes, especially when the odds are not known, but even when they are known.
Suppose I play bingo, and have a 1 in 1,000 chance of winning $10,000. I hope that I win at bingo, but playing isn't free. It costs, say $15, to play. In terms of pure material gain, playing bingo is a bad deal. On average, in 1,000 games, I will win once and lose about 999 times, losing me $4,985.
However, I can rationally value the thrill of winning $10,000 all at once, over saving my money a day at a time. I can also rationally value $15 a shot less than losing $5K all at once.
So, I can rationally decide that I want to play bingo. However, I think that many people who do this might not be computing the opportunity cost of losing $15 on a regular basis. If the time and money spent chasing a $10K lump sum were put towards, say, road trips, one might extract more value from life by not playing bingo.
In the case of the Resurrection, the odds are overwhelmingly against you. Far worse than my hypothetical bingo game. You can hope that the Resurrection story is true, but that doesn't make it probable.
If you think that you value the story being true above any cost you pay of the story being false, then you might be rational to act as if it were true. But that doesn't make belief in its likelihood rational.
It's like, yeah, it's a one in a million shot that this is true, but I'd much rather act as if the story is true than live life as if it were false.
Of course, this works for any highly-valued, improbable case. It may be one in a million that aliens are circling our planet in UFO's, but I could rationally decide to act as if ET is here (e.g., by trying to communicate with aliens). However, at no time would it be rational for me to conclude that it is likely they are here unless the weight of statistical evidence comes down in ET's favor.
I expect that you think that your opportunity cost is relatively small. That is, if you came to appreciate that the Resurrection etc. were highly improbable, you might act in the same way on a day to day basis, expressing the same kindnesses you do now. You might have more free time on Sunday mornings, but otherwise things would be pretty much the same. Frankly, I don't think I have a good counter to such a strategy should you truly feel that way. You can rationally argue that you want to act as if Christianity were true and not as if Scientology were true because you subjectively value the unlikely truth of Christianity far more than you value the unlikely truth of Scientology.
Some people say that humans need religion, but I think what they really need is hope. For some, religion provides that. However, we have to think what it means to have false hopes. Are false hopes just those hopes that turn out to be false in experience (e.g., I had the false hope I would get paid last Friday). Or can we say that a hope is false from probability? I think we can.
All this aside, this isn't the level of debate that the churches promote. Their message is the Jesus was certainly resurrected, and that a lot of improbable stuff is actually likely to have been the case. I have no doubt that those claims are no better than the tobacco company claims that cigarettes don't cause cancer. (And preachers are like the tobacco company executives who told that tall tale.) Furthermore, I think that most people would eschew Christianity if preachers told the truth that the story is just another improbable myth, albeit one they prefer.
DL said, "If you think that you value the story being true above any cost you pay of the story being false, then you might be rational to act as if it were true. But that doesn't make belief in its likelihood rational.
It's like, yeah, it's a one in a million shot that this is true, but I'd much rather act as if the story is true than live life as if it were false." This is exactly what I am trying to say about belief in miracles.
DL also said that he thinks people need hope, and that many find that hope in religion. But what exactly do people need hope in? Do people need hope in life after death? Is this the hope that religion supports? Or is it that they need hope in an active intercessor? But WHY? Why is it so difficult to live without that? I really don't understand.
os,
For one, I need the hope that the wrongs of this world will be put right. That, if my wife and children were to die, they would yet live. That those who suffer will be comforted.
I don't understand how one can really love in such a world as ours - such a evil, miserable world - and not need this hope.
Only a God who intercedes can do fulfill this hope. This is why I believe in an intercessor.
dl,
You assume that belief in the reality of miracles is to be assessed in much the way that, say, belief in weather predictions is to be assessed. One brings one's best mathematical models to bear - models in which one assigns weights to all possible outcomes (or, in the case of miracles, weights to all possible explanations of the putative miracle). One then chooses the most likely of the alternatives, and concludes that, relative to the available evidence, it is the one most likely true.
These sorts of evidential inquiries are not the only source of rational belief. For instance, by belief that I now sit and type is not of this sort. I don't weigh explanations, I don't choose alternatives, I don't offer evidence. Rather I know it, quite directly and immediately. No doubt the visual and auditory experiences I now have explain why I believe as I do, but they do not act as reasons for me. (Causes are not reasons.) I don't offer them up as evidence, either to myself or anyone else.
But even if I were wrong and those experiences did act as evidence, still I don't seek for evidence of the reality of those experiences themselves. Indeed there is no evidence that one might possibly bring to bear. When I'm in pain, I don't need to weigh possible accounts of my experience. I don't need to assign probabilities and then, after, conclude that I'm in pain. Rather I just know it, quite directly and immediately.
Now, my guess is that knowledge of God is, in some cases, likewise direct and immediate. We don't need evidence; we don't bring evidence to bear. Rather we experience God in some way or another, and form, quite spontaneously, the belief that God was active in some or another. Moreover, I suspect that, in the Two Churches example, God was actively present, and that the two congregations experienced His activity. I could feel it in the awe with which Tom wrote. Thus I think it wrong for Tom to take dl's bait. We don't here have a situation where it's appropriate to construct probabilistic arguments. There's another and I would assume better sort of knowledge to be had - knowledge by direct experience.
(This, in rough, is a Plantingian take on the epistemology of religious belief. Tom's right, dl: even if you reject this sort of epistemology, you should read the works of its most articulate and forceful defender.)
doctor(logic), this is an interesting point:
A man arrives at your local swimming pool, and dives into the pool in his 3-piece suit. He swims laps, as if nothing were out of place. Likely or unlikely?
Your long-time friend is an avid swimmer, swimming long distances each week. You meet him today at the local pool where he now claims that he is too afraid to swim because he is incapable of swimming. Likely or unlikely in his case?
Probability cannot often tell you that a human act is impossible, but it can tell you whether or not it it likely or unlikely. That's how we recognize that a friend is not himself, or that a person is a foreigner or deranged or angry or what have you.
But I don't think it has anything to do with the question at hand, so I'm not going to get sidetracked by it. You said God could not be known unless he could be modeled mathematically, which is patently absurd. (Did I misunderstand you on that?)
That's not how it works, Tom. You change beliefs by weight of evidence, not by outliers.... What you need is enough evidence about resurrections, enough repeatability, to make all your past history of the dead staying dead fit into place.
So if an outlier occurs--say, for example, you saw somebody rise from the dead in answer to prayer--you would not consider that (in principle) the kind of thing that should cause you to reconsider your beliefs?
Why should we believe that any of your past experiences were any more likely to have been answered prayers than this one?
If that were the only evidence I presented you probably shouldn't believe it--not unless it were of the extraordinary form that I spoke of in the blog entry. But it isn't the only evidence we have to go on.
Start from the position that God exists and intervenes. Suppose you want to determine the frequency with which God intervenes given that humans are biased and see interventions when there are none. You're a psychologist. You know the drill. Even given your grounding, you still need controlled experimentation to get an answer. For all you know, God intervenes only once every century.
I'm not actually a "psychologist" since I'm not licensed; but I do have graduate level training in a non-clinical field of psychology. "Psychologist" has a legal definition I don't fit into. But you're right, I do know about the phenomenon of which you speak.
I have independent reasons, apart from statistical studies, to believe God intervenes frequently. Thus as I wrote in the blog post I'm willing to take the risk of some "false positives." It doesn't hurt anything to ascribe something to God, since we believe he is behind all that happens anyway.
You have not even begun to touch the question I closed the blog entry with. Why is it more rational to take your risk of huge numbers of false negatives, than to take the risk I take of some unknown number of false positives? Can you come up with another answer than the statistical one you always resort to? Because it fails to address the whole answer I've been giving you. Franklin stated that quite well in his 3:03 pm contribution here; and I agree with him: I'm not taking your bait of arguing this merely on statistical grounds. That's a very, very impoverished view of knowledge and evidence.
Franklin writes,
"For one, I need the hope that the wrongs of this world will be put right. That, if my wife and children were to die, they would yet live. That those who suffer will be comforted.
I don't understand how one can really love in such a world as ours - such a evil, miserable world - and not need this hope.
Only a God who intercedes can do fulfill this hope. This is why I believe in an intercessor."
Franklin, do you believe I love my children less because I don't find a need to believe that they will live after they die?
I, too, hope that the wrongs of this world will be put right--by the work of human beings.
Those who suffer are often comforted--by human beings.
It is an evil and miserable world. It is also a good and beautiful world. The world is, actually, what human beings make it.
os,
There is much evil in the world that humans have not made and cannot put right. Would you say that we can in ourselves overcome death? Pain? Surely that's too much for us.
There's much evil in the world that can't be put right in this life. A child is murdered, and the murderer goes unpunished - as often happens. If this life is all that we have, there's no hope that it will be put right. It's a moral loose end. Parent and child will never be reunited. The murderer will never pay.
If this life is all we have, then though we may, if we're lucky, make things a bit better temporarily for a few at certain times and places, there's really very little hope for us.
Last, I don't think you love your family any less than I love mine. But I don't understand how you can make do with the tiny little bit of man-made hope that you hold out. There's no ultimate security for your family, no guarantee that, in the end, all will we well with them. Perhaps I'm simply weak, but I can't make do with that.
Franklin,
Much evil in the world that is not human made? Like what? Natural disasters? I wouldn't call those "evil." Nor would I call death and pain evil--they are simply part of the human experience. I don't think it's necessary to "overcome" either one. (It would be nice, though...)
There are definitely moral loose ends in this life. Children are murdered, and the murderers are not held responsible. Children die, and their parents are left to grieve until they, too, die. I don't mean to minimize any of that when I say that that is just how life is, and the only transcendence possible is for the person who suffers to somehow make meaning out of his/her suffering--many do this by helping for others. It's not a perfect resolution, but it's all we've got.
I don't believe there's any ultimate security for my family or for anyone else. I believe that when we die, the part of us that is part also of the creative energy source--what I call God--simply rejoins the whole, and that the only way we live on as individuals is in people's memories of us and in what we've done with our time on earth. Our contribution doesn't have to be big to be important: If I love my children well, they will love their children well, and that is all the legacy I need--my small contribution to diminishing some of the potential for evil in the world. It's enough.
os says: "(It would be nice, though...)"
Yes, it would. Indeed it would be more than nice. It would a good so great that I believe our hearts could barely contain it.
If there were a God, it would be real. What barrier is there to the hope in God's existence?
Your "It would be nice" is the seed of the hope of which I speak.
os,
A small note: when I call a natural phenomena evil, I mean that it's something such that, because of its impact, it would have been better had it never been. This does stretch the notion a bit, but it's a common stretch in philosophical discussions. Evil = (roughly) that which it would have been better had it never been.
Yes, Tom, I think it isn't multiplying terms to introduce God as the agent here.
So, I guess we could say that, given the one believes in God, an answered prayer that could just as easily have happened as if there was no God could very well have been answered by God, but we can't really tell if God did it or not.
Fair enough?
Franklin,
For something to be evil in your definition, does it have to be better not to have been, for everyone?
Just because I think something would be nice doesn't mean I believe in it. I think it would be nice if I had a million dollars, but that doesn't mean it will happen or that I should believe in it happening. I would rather place my hope in people making change, than in God making change. I think it's more likely.
os,
The probability of people bringing about a fundamental change in society so that life will become significantly better for any but a small minority? I would think that it's just about zero. Perhaps you're an optimist about humanity on its own. I'm deeply pessimistic, and I think history is clearly on my side. As one of my professors often said, "History is just one damn thing after another." It always has been, and shows no signs at all of letting up.
Who here is guilty of irrational hope? Perhaps we both are - I who hope in God (who you think is not there), and you who hope in humanity (which has shown itself to have an insatiable appetite for death and destruction).
os,
One other thing. You can say this about Christians: they hope big. A million dollars is a small thing compared to what they hope for - infinite life in the presence of God. (Anyway, a million dollars is a good fraught with danger. Money corrupts as surely as does power. Christians hope for a good that brings with it no possibility of danger. They hope for the Good Itself, that which can in no way be, or bring about, evil.)
Franklin,
But even if I were wrong and those experiences did act as evidence, still I don't seek for evidence of the reality of those experiences themselves. Indeed there is no evidence that one might possibly bring to bear. When I'm in pain, I don't need to weigh possible accounts of my experience. I don't need to assign probabilities and then, after, conclude that I'm in pain. Rather I just know it, quite directly and immediately.I agree, but what you are describing are intuitions. Pre-rational conclusions, like deja vu. If I see Bigfoot in my back yard, I don't do an instant probability analysis to determine if I have the experience of seeing Bigfoot in my yard. I accept that I have had the experience as a certain axiom. However, I do not accept that Bigfoot is in my back yard with certainty. I must add the certain fact of my observation into the mix of probability models to see whether I am likely to be seeing Bigfoot, or more likely mistaken.
So, if you are arguing that apparent miracles are instantaneous, pre-rational intuitions, I might accept that in many cases. However, by placing religious claims into the category of non-rational intuitions, you implicitly argue that such claims are not rational, and that a whole category of similarly dubious claims are just as valid. For example, one could make the same sort of argument to claim that deja vu experiences are cases of actually doing the same thing again as if in a previous lifetime, time travel or a parallel universe. Ghosts, poltergeists, auras, monsters, alien abductions can all be supported on exactly the same grounds.
Tom,
But I don't think it has anything to do with the question at hand, so I'm not going to get sidetracked by it. You said God could not be known unless he could be modeled mathematically, which is patently absurd. (Did I misunderstand you on that?)I don't know why you would say this.
The point of the mathematics is to show that we have some model of behavior. And just because we don't typically quantify that behavior doesn't mean that it is not quantifiable, or that our brains aren't subconsciously using a probability algorithm.
In your OP, you argued that we can't even model humans, but my point is that we can and we do.
Of course, in God's case, you have no proper model like you do with humans with known personalities. No action God takes could be considered out of the ordinary for him. That's why God can allow tsunami, yet still be thought of as totally good. However, if that is the case, it defeats your own argument that you can rationally conclude that certain events are God's acts. For you to rationally conclude that an event was divine intervention, you would have to have a model (albeit an informal one) that said God would do what he did, and then show that it was more likely to be God than natural phenomena.
So if an outlier occurs--say, for example, you saw somebody rise from the dead in answer to prayer--you would not consider that (in principle) the kind of thing that should cause you to reconsider your beliefs?Reconsider as in recompute, yes. However, I rationally know that resurrection is 10 billion to one against. Hallucinations occur far more frequently than this. I would need more evidence.
Stage magicians saw women in half and put them back together again. Each time we witness this, we may reconsider the odds that the woman is actually sawn in half and reassembled, but we reject that when we consider the mountains of evidence that say this cannot presently be done.
It doesn't hurt anything to ascribe something to God, since we believe he is behind all that happens anyway.On the contrary, I think it does tremendous harm. You may be willing to admit that your miraculous interpretations of events are far from certain, but that's not what churches and preachers claim. They market their religions as if it's certainly true or highly probable. I think this is unethical, to say the least. Unfortunately, the FTC can't put a stop to it the way they can with any other expensive and life-changing product that's advertised so dishonestly.
Why is it more rational to take your risk of huge numbers of false negatives, than to take the risk I take of some unknown number of false positives?Rational to what end? I'm talking about rational assessment of the facts and probabilities. You are talking about the rational assessment of how you should behave in light (or in spite) of those probabilities.
I have said that it could be rational for you to act as if the less probable is actually the case. Is that what you are saying?
Franklin,
Perhaps you're an optimist about humanity on its own. I'm deeply pessimistic, and I think history is clearly on my side. As one of my professors often said, "History is just one damn thing after another." It always has been, and shows no signs at all of letting up.
Who here is guilty of irrational hope? Perhaps we both are - I who hope in God (who you think is not there), and you who hope in humanity (which has shown itself to have an insatiable appetite for death and destruction).
You are in good company, Franklin. Check out The Humanity Delusion.
"You don't believe in God, but you believe in man? There is even less justification for believing in the latter than for believing in the former.
... I'm retracting this comment for now because I'm not happy with the tone in which I wrote it ...
I'll do that for any commenter here who requests it, by the way, provided that I'm online of course.
Actually, Franklin, I do believe in God, just a very different kind of God than you do. I believe that the power of God (ie, the creative energy source) is strengthened when a number of people act together. My hope lies there.
How can you look at history and dismiss Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and others who have changed the world without violence? Every day I find reason for hope in my interactions with people; there is so much good in us, but we need teachers and leaders who can help us use it.
Franklin,
God is immanent as well as transcendent. We have the power to create the Good Itself right here, right now.
And I don't believe money and power necessarily corrupt. They can be used for good--even toward the Good Itself.
doctor(logic),
I'm choosing not to engage you on the question of whether God's behavior can be modeled mathematically. I started to respond to that earlier and concluded that I would be crazy to pursue it. I can't see how it would accomplish anything, especially since it is so patently obvious that God is not a mathematical construct, he is a totally free person.
"For you to rationally conclude that an event was divine intervention, you would have to have a model (albeit an informal one) that said God would do what he did, and then show that it was more likely to be God than natural phenomena."
If I wanted to prove that such an event was a divine intervention, without possibility of contradiction, I would probably have to do as you say. But given prior knowledge of God, and awareness that he answers prayer, it is rational to conclude that certain extraordinary events are probably prayer answers--even at the risk of some false positives, which I already addressed.
The resurrection question you responded to--yes, things can be faked. But please go back to the context in which it was originally written, and consider again how you would answer the question there if you had solid evidence that the person was dead (say he was embalmed, for instance, as Lazarus probably was in John 11) and then became alive again.
It doesn't hurt anything to ascribe something to God, since we believe he is behind all that happens anyway.
On the contrary, I think it does tremendous harm. You may be willing to admit that your miraculous interpretations of events are far from certain, but that's not what churches and preachers claim. They market their religions as if it's certainly true or highly probable. I think this is unethical, to say the least.
I agree that there is tremendous harm when effects are faked. I've seen that done by "faith healers" and I'm disgusted by it. We're not talking about that, though; we're talking about real effects, and the question is whether they should be ascribed to God or not.
But I do think Christianity is both highly probable and true, because not every effect is faked, and because there is considerable other reason to trust the knowledge of God that we can gain through Scripture. So given that knowledge, it is not harmful to see God's hand as somehow involved in everything that happens. Not that we always call it a miracle--for that would strip the word of its very meaning!--but that we recognize that God is always involved in some way.
"Rational to what end? I'm talking about rational assessment of the facts and probabilities. You are talking about the rational assessment of how you should behave in light (or in spite) of those probabilities.
"I have said that it could be rational for you to act as if the less probable is actually the case. Is that what you are saying?"
I think up until now, the end toward which you have wanted us to be rational is making correct assessments regarding whether God answers prayer. Now you're throwing in a behavioral factor.
I'd like you to show me how it is less rational for Christians, based on our knowledge of God, to conclude that he has answered some prayer and risk a false positive, than it is for you to assume he never answers prayers and risk all those false negatives.
Regarding the so-called mathematical modeling of God:
I think you're trying to say we can't know God's work or intentions in the world without some statistical modeling. But in fact we do know these things, through his Word to us.
If we can't have knowledge apart from statistical modeling, then we don't know anything about your beliefs, opinons, or arguments. You haven't presented us with an equation in these dialogues in months.
Tom:
But in fact we do know these things, through his Word to us.
I'm not buying the mathematic model business, but if we managed to cobble together a crude model in our head there are things like the content of his word and the reliability of the testimony that tip the scales.
You haven't presented us with an equation in these dialogues in months.
I've been thinking the same thing. Is it his own personal model, one backed by members of the AAAS, or what?
Hi all,
Just popping in for a quick comment.
It seems to me that the issue of "rationality" is a red herring.
Why struggle over this mantel? Why struggle over who is and who is not the "rational" one in the debate? Is it because we can't bear being "irrational"? Does the possibility of being "irrational" undermine our claims about God?
It seems that all the focus on "rationality" looses sight of God.
It seems to me that "rationality" is not the judge of whether some claim about God is considered valid or not. It seems to me that God is prior to "rationality." It seems to me that we have inverted the relationship between God and "rationality" and somehow placed "rationality" before God. It seems to me that DL has hoisted "rationality" onto a pedestal and most everyone else has followed along.
The empirical fact is that people attribute significance to God. Is that attribution "rational"? Who cares? Can we prove that God was at work in forging a bond between your two churches? No. But we surely can have faith that God's grace was at work. We can sing and pray and call out the name of God and attribute his grace to our efforts. Do we need more than faith? Do we need "rationality" to attribute something to God?
I don't think so. God isn't rationally explicable and the attribution of God can't be reduced to some rationally explicable formula.
Come on, we are talking about faith here, not some kind of rational calculation. We are not talking about 2+2.
By arguing over the issue of "rationality" you have framed the battle in terms that favor DL's perspective.
Actually, if we could get DL to define what he's talking about when he uses the word "rational," then we would know whether we're after a red herring or not.
DL's charge is that there is something wrong with believing in God, and that has something to do with rationality. I don't really know what that charge is, because he hasn't explained it clearly enough yet.
God is more than rational, he is prior to rationality, yes; but he does not contradict himself. If it could be shown (and I don't think it can) that there was something about God that was utterly contradictory to rational thought, then he might have a point. The atheists' charge that Christianity is irrational has some force if it can be shown that Christianity is fundamentally self-contradictory.
I believe in the law of non-contradiction; in fact, I think it's quite consistent with the rest of my theistic beliefs. If there was some contradiction shown in Christianity, then yes, I would have to re-examine my belief in Christ and/or my belief that reality at its core does not contradict itself, that is, that God does not contradict himself.
So although I appreciate your trying to set the question aside, Jacob, I can't follow you where you want to go with it. But I'm not ready to follow where DL is leading with it because he's not telling us where he's headed. We still don't know what he means by "rational" or "irrational."
What does it mean to be irrational for believing in Christ? All we know so far is that the evidence, in his view, is inadequate. That's a matter on which our opinions differ, and it really doesn't explain what he means by "irrational" yet.
Jacob, for some reason I have yet to understand, it matters very much to Tom and Franklin and others that their God be real in the same way that rocks and trees and chairs and you and I are real. Attribution and meaning is not enough for them.
Tom,
If I wanted to prove that such an event was a divine intervention, without possibility of contradiction, I would probably have to do as you say.No, it's not a matter of proof, but of likelihood.
I return you to the two decks of cards analogy. One deck is sorted by rank and suit, the other is shuffled. We don't know which deck is which, so we take one at random and start turning over cards. We get 2 of clubs, 3 of clubs, 4 of clubs, 5 of clubs as the first four cards. Here I have a statistical model of what I expect in each case, and I infer that I have the sorted deck. Does this mean I have shown it impossible that I have the shuffled deck? No. I have not shown impossibility, nor have I proved beyond a doubt that the deck is the sorted one. I have merely shown that it's about 6.5 million times more likely to be the sorted deck than the shuffled one. However, despite not having proven impossibility, I would be foolish to believe that it was likely that the deck was the shuffled one.
But given prior knowledge of God, and awareness that he answers prayer, it is rational to conclude that certain extraordinary events are probably prayer answers--even at the risk of some false positives, which I already addressed.I've seen this tactic before. It's as if you're saying that given "prior knowledge of God," nothing extraordinary is improbable. This is epistemological poison.
This is how you justify the Resurrection. In human experience, resurrection is at least a billion-to-one against, but given "prior knowledge of God," you can conveniently dismiss that fact. Whenever it is convenient for you, you can say the almost impossible is now mundane.
I realize that expanding this debate to cover how you have "prior knowledge of God" is too much, but I put it to you that this "prior knowledge" cannot be Biblical or historical or experiential. None of these sources make a reliable case for God without that "prior knowledge." They are all utterly preposterous unless you cite "prior knowledge."
The resurrection question you responded to--yes, things can be faked. But please go back to the context in which it was originally written, and consider again how you would answer the question there if you had solid evidence that the person was dead (say he was embalmed, for instance, as Lazarus probably was in John 11) and then became alive again.The evidence would have to be stronger than the billion:1 odds I mentioned. Just seeing one outlier doesn't cut it, if it is unexplained. (BTW, the story of Lazarus is almost certainly faked for this very reason. It's far more likely to have been faked, or a tall tale, than it is to be true.)
Let's put it this way. Suppose I invent a resurrection machine. I test it on my buddy, Jim. In private, I shoot Jim, and kill him. Then I place his body in the machine, and resurrect him. He and I then tell the world. Should the world believe my story? I don't think so.
Okay, this time, I shoot Jim and display his dead body for the physicians to examine. Then I take the body behind closed doors, put it in the machine, and return an hour later with Jim intact. Should the world believe me, now? No. I don't think it should. There are too many loose ends. Yes, it is a mystery, but perhaps it was faked somehow. Perhaps Jim has a twin.
What do we need to justify our belief in the power of the machine? We need more statistical weight. For example, let's take someone unknown to me who is recently deceased (so I cannot collude with the test subject). Let's do DNA tests and secretly mark the body so that we can be relatively assured that we're looking at the same body after the fact as before. Let's examine the machine and its operation to ensure that I have no opportunity to cheat. By controlling the test, we gain the statistical leverage we need to make our conclusion a likely one.
I've seen that done by "faith healers" and I'm disgusted by it. We're not talking about that, though; we're talking about real effects, and the question is whether they should be ascribed to God or not.I was going to say how pleased I was to see that sentiment expressed by an evangelical. However, it occurs to me that you recently talked about faith healing as being something real. Which is it?
Besides, my accusation of unethical practice refers to things you would find harmless. I mean the claims that Jesus was resurrected and that God is intervening, etc.
I think up until now, the end toward which you have wanted us to be rational is making correct assessments regarding whether God answers prayer. Now you're throwing in a behavioral factor.I'm not changing the game, you are. You asked how one rationally decides whether false positives or false negatives are better. That's a question that has nothing to do with the establishment of the odds.
I'd like you to show me how it is less rational for Christians, based on our knowledge of God, to conclude that he has answered some prayer and risk a false positive, than it is for you to assume he never answers prayers and risk all those false negatives.
We can fairly accurately estimate the probability of a patient having bird flu. Let's say it's 1 in 10 million. When it comes to how we act, that's when we ask whether it is better to have false positives or false negatives in preliminary tests. Because the disease is so dangerous, we prefer to have false positives over false negatives. However, the question of false positives/negatives does not arise in the computation of the odds themselves. Those likelihood that someone has the disease are computed by complete (as opposed to preliminary) medical testing and by looking at population samples of healthy to infected persons.
I'm talking about rationality in determining the odds. You're talking about rationality in responding to the odds. Two different things.
doctor(logic),
I think I should start with this:
I'm not changing the game, you are. You asked how one rationally decides whether false positives or false negatives are better. That's a question that has nothing to do with the establishment of the odds.
No, I asked the question in the blog entry, at the very start of this thread, and I'm still hoping you'll try to answer.
I've seen this tactic before. It's as if you're saying that given "prior knowledge of God," nothing extraordinary is improbable. This is epistemological poison.
This is how you justify the Resurrection. In human experience, resurrection is at least a billion-to-one against, but given "prior knowledge of God," you can conveniently dismiss that fact. Whenever it is convenient for you, you can say the almost impossible is now mundane.
I don't see what is irrational about the position that if there is a God, he can be expected to do God-like things. Where's the problem with that?
I realize that expanding this debate to cover how you have "prior knowledge of God" is too much, but I put it to you that this "prior knowledge" cannot be Biblical or historical or experiential. None of these sources make a reliable case for God without that "prior knowledge." They are all utterly preposterous unless you cite "prior knowledge."
doctor(logic), there's a relevant piece of evidence that you seem to overlook, which is the millions of people who find this not so preposterous. These include 1/4 to 1/3 of all the professional philosophers in America, and many, many scientists. Have you considered how unlikely this is, given your opinion that Christianity is utterly irrational and preposterous? Don't you think the fact of so many thoughtful and sane persons accepting it might be a clue that you're missing somthing, something that makes it not quite so preposterous or irrational?
Your response to the question of resurrection is just to say that you would be hard to convince. I'm going to drop that question, because it has wandered away from its original purpose.
I've seen that done by "faith healers" and I'm disgusted by it. We're not talking about that, though; we're talking about real effects, and the question is whether they should be ascribed to God or not.
I was going to say how pleased I was to see that sentiment expressed by an evangelical. However, it occurs to me that you recently talked about faith healing as being something real. Which is it?
Talk about yer false dichotomies! I'm just going to let you solve that one yourself--it's not that hard.
I see my healthy, 28 year old friend having a heart attack. At least it looks like he's having a heart attack. Whatever it is, it looks serious.
Not wanting to think irrationally, I scan my memory and remember that it's highly improbable that a healthy, 28 year old guy is actually having a heart attack. In fact it's highly improbable that a healthy 28 year old is having health problems that correspond with what I'm witnessing. It's more likely that he's joking around because that's what young people do (statistically speaking).
My friend gyrates around for a few seconds before falling to the floor. On his way to the floor he strikes his head on the table, splitting his chin open and knocking out 4 teeth. He grasps his chest and manages to eek out the words "my heart" before finally passing out completely.
Not wanting to disappoint the Rational Response Squad by acting on an irrational belief, I say to my friend "Stop joking around you idiot" and proceed to walk out the door.
Thank Darwin for rational responses to rational beliefs.
Tom,
The brevity of your last response is losing me.
Do you understand the distinction that I'm making?
SteveK doesn't understand it at all, or he would not have given us his story about the heart attack.
I'll try to make the distinction without any analogies.
There are two questions in play.
1) What is the likelihood of something being the case?
2) Given this computation or estimate of the odds, how should I act in response?
The answer to (1) is a matter of statistics, experience, and induction.
The answer to (2) is a matter of values. That is, the degree to which I accept false positives or false negatives depends on how much I value the relevant outcomes. I can compute an expectation value for some variable (e.g., a financial return), but I whether I choose to maximize that expectation value is a matter of taste.
Tom,
doctor(logic), there's a relevant piece of evidence that you seem to overlook, which is the millions of people who find this not so preposterous.Argumentum ad populum. Millions of people also think the Sun orbits the Earth.
I don't see what is irrational about the position that if there is a God, he can be expected to do God-like things. Where's the problem with that?Your application of this is what is not rational.
Basically, you can't rationally define what a God-like thing is AND use that definition to get where you want to be with regard to divine intervention. If you define a God-like thing in opposition to a natural thing, you are forced to define a standard for what is natural. If you stick to that standard, coincidental weather changes are not God-like. Furthermore, there are natural behaviors for humans that meet this standard, among them, a common propensity to invent and believe in stories that are false. In that case, claims of resurrection are also natural.
Again, I don't have to assert that it is impossible for a god to have intervened in a God-like fashion in a particular instance. It is possible. The question is whether it is probable. If possibility implies high probability, then all sorts of things we believe will break down.
doctor(logic),
I hope we're on the same level of discussion here. You said,
There are two questions in play.
1) What is the likelihood of something being the case? ... The answer to (1) is a matter of statistics, experience, and induction.
I thought we were being more specific: what is the likelihood of some event being a prayer answer? The existence of God also enters in to this question. That is, it's a matter of statistics, experience, induction, and revelation. And other modes of learning. I don't see any irrationality here; we're including prior knowledge into the assessment.
Tom,
doctor(logic), there's a relevant piece of evidence that you seem to overlook, which is the millions of people who find this not so preposterous.
Argumentum ad populum. Millions of people also think the Sun orbits the Earth.
Of course it's an argumentum ad populum. It's also evidence that you may be missing something, because your contention is that our beliefs are "utterly preposterous." As Ravi Zacharias has said, "any time you can make your opponent's position look utterly ridiculous, you probably don't understand it." (Ravi Zacharias is an Indian by birth, a philosopher by training, a Christian apologist by vocation. He was speaking to Christians, warning them not to brush Hinduism away too lightly.) I think that the fact you can find Christian beliefs "utterly preposterous" is a sign you don't fully understand them.
I'll respond to your last point in another comment.
doctor(logic),
It's hard to see why we can't use our knowledge of God to get where we "want to be in regard to divine intervention." If the definition of God were cooked up for that reason and that purpose only, it would be circular. I think that may be what you're trying to get at. But God was not "invented" for just that reason. He exists and he has revealed himself.
The relation of God to nature is not that hard to define, though, so I'll follow that path. He created it. He is the master of creation. He superintends and maintains it. He has created it with regularities that he visibly intervenes in only rarely.
There are at least two purposes this serves him. One, it allows humans to have real effects, not thwarted by God, based on learning what happens when we do things. The same could apply to any organism capable of learning, but it has special moral significance for humans. If the world were not generally predictable, we could never predict the results of our actions, and we could hardly be held morally responsible for them.
The second purpose it serves God that nature is generally regular in its causes and effects is that it allows him to communicate with us. If nature were chaotic, there would be so much noise that the signal would not be distinguishable from it. (There's a burning bush over there that's not consumed? Big deal. I've just teleported from Australia.)
But the second purpose implies that God does occasionally break in, to reveal himself to his prophets, to accomplish miracles, to answer prayers. So we have a picture in which nature is dependent on God, is generally regular, but whose regularities can be intervened in by God as he chooses.
Your epistemology of probability would say that because miracles are rare, they don't happen. I don't know why we have to view it that way. Nobody thinks miracles are common; they wouldn't be miracles in that case. The question in determining whether miracles have happened is not their prior likelihood, the question is whether they have happened or not. Your standard seems unreasonable in that it defines them out of existence, virtually regardless of evidence.
C.S. Lewis put it this way:
We must agree with Hume that if there is absolutely 'uniform experience' against miracles, if in other words they have never happened, why then they never have. Unfortunately we know the experience against them to be uniform only if we know that all reports of them are false. And we can know all the reports to be false only if we know already that miracles have never occurred. In fact, we are arguing in a circle.
Now, how about prayer answers that don't reach the high standard of unexpectedness or rarity that we call "miracle"? How is it irrational for me to rely on my prior knowledge of God, in assessing whether he might have intervened in an event? For I am convinced that this knowledge of God actually is knowledge, a base of information that's usable in the world.
I think this is a very satisfying, rationally consistent picture. Where's the irrationality? Again, can you give us a general definition of the rationality you're holding as your standard? I still don't know what standard you think we're failing to meet.
It would probably help if we could focus the question. How about this as a proposal:
Agree or Disagree?
If knowledge of God is actual knowledge ("a base of information that is usable in the world", as I said before); then it is rational to refer to that knowledge in assessing whether an event could be considered a likely prayer answer; assigning more or less confidence in that assessment, depending on how unusual the event is and how closely matches some specific previous prayer; and recognizing the risk of some false positives.
There is that one focused question I propose to you. I also await your answer to my request for your general definition of rational (as opposed irrational) as you want us to use it here.
"It's hard to see why we can't use our knowledge of God to get where we "want to be in regard to divine intervention." If the definition of God were cooked up for that reason and that purpose only, it would be circular. I think that may be what you're trying to get at. But God was not "invented" for just that reason. He exists and he has revealed himself.
"
Perhaps God created the world with the express desire and purpose not to interfere with or interact with it. Perhaps He never had any intention of revealing Himself in the way that you are saying.
Randy, what's your point, please? We say that God exists and he reveals himself, because he has shown he exists and that he reveals himself. So obviously he intended to, if we're right. If we're wrong, then I need you to help me understand what your point would be in regard to the current discussion.
"We say that God exists and he reveals himself, because he has shown he exists and that he reveals himself."
The point is the circularity of your argument, as doctor(logic) has pointed out. I think if you try to defend the above statement you will be running around in circles.
As a side note, it is interesting how varied Christians' views of God can be. I was raised a Lutheran and what I learned of God from that tradition would lead me to concur with doctor(logic) that your view of prayer is superstitious. I was taught that God did not perform miracles like those in the New Testament anymore and that prayer was to be used as a means to communicate and share with God. My minister would have considered it an abuse of prayer to expect one could use it to change weather patterns.
Isn't there circularity in saying "we know this wasn't a prayer answer because there are no prayer answers"?
Here's where Christian theism finds its relief from vicious circularity in regard to answered prayer: We believe God answers prayer because we have independent reasons to believe in the trustworthiness of his Word. (I won't go into all of those here.) But sure, our trust is strengthened as we see things happen that we pray for. Why shouldn't it be? If God said he would answer prayer and yet never did, then we would have reason to doubt what he thought he said. But that is not what happens; we get the confirmation, in actual experience, of what God tells us to expect in actual experience.
Tom,
As Ravi Zacharias has said, "any time you can make your opponent's position look utterly ridiculous, you probably don't understand it." (Ravi Zacharias is an Indian by birth, a philosopher by training, a Christian apologist by vocation. He was speaking to Christians, warning them not to brush Hinduism away too lightly.)I think this warning would make sense coming from Mr. Zacharias. I would agree with him that Christianity is no more preposterous than Hinduism. Or Scientology or Mornonism.
God was not "invented" for just that reason. He exists and he has revealed himself.I think I disagree. I'm not saying that it's a conspiracy, but that gods were invented to explain meaningful coincidences, and that gods that were verifiable ( e.g., volcano gods) got clobbered easily when there was rational inquiry. God concepts evolved into a conception that was untestable so that it was much harder to falsify.
The bottom line is that, as Franklin's posts have demonstrated, God is a very attractive concept, and I think all the things you say about God are just rationalizations.
You say God revealed himself, but he hasn't. I think your argument is circular. I think you agree with me on the probability arguments, but circumvent them by claiming "prior knowledge of God." Yet, this "prior knowledge" came from revelation in the form of miracles which are themselves dubious.
Your epistemology of probability would say that because miracles are rare, they don't happen. ... The question in determining whether miracles have happened is not their prior likelihood, the question is whether they have happened or not. Your standard seems unreasonable in that it defines them out of existence, virtually regardless of evidence.Tom, I'm not sure why my position isn't clear.
Let's take very unusual events first (e.g., resurrection). We all agree that, by definition, in human experience, such an event is highly unlikely by induction. We understand the world because we assume that past experience is a guide to the future.
I expect that materials on my desk need not be restrained against floating away because that's highly unusual. In fact, it has never happened on Earth's surface, as far as I know. Hume rightly agrees that induction is not proof, and there's no proof that everything on my desk won't float into mid air with no regular cause.
However, if someone tells you that their stuff started to float in the air, and then fell back to the ground when you entered the room, what do you think is likely to be the case? Floating stuff has never been seen by you or anyone else except astronauts. Stuff can be expected to float on its own accord on Earth's surface once in a trillion times. Persons have much higher rates of delusion and pranking than objects have of floating at Earth's surface. You must rationally conclude that the person is MOST LIKELY loopy, joking, etc. If the person is your brother, you might prefer to act as if their claim is true, but it would be irrational to conclude that the person is likely to be correct.
Now, if the person was under independent video surveillance, and there were independent witnesses, and there are controls (to eliminate collusion), the odds of the story being true may improve to the point where it is competitive. However, the controls would have to account for perhaps trillion-to-one odds, which is a tall order.
Thus, it is not a matter of my excluding things "regardless of evidence." Nor is it the case that probability arguments never fail. IIRC, there were many people who doubted that the Wright brothers flew an airplane or that we landed on the moon. Depending on the evidence they had at hand, the doubters may have been justified in their skepticism. They were wrong in fact, but correct in method. The thing is, it has always been possible to verify these flight achievements, and to collect more and more new and independent data to confirm them. That's why it is foolish to think Apollo moon landings unlikely in light of more complete information. However, tales of one-off miracles are extraordinary, always fall below the noise level, and are resistant to verification. They suspiciously always occur in an uncontrolled circumstance.
You yourself mentioned the noise level in your comment:
The second purpose it serves God that nature is generally regular in its causes and effects is that it allows him to communicate with us. If nature were chaotic, there would be so much noise that the signal would not be distinguishable from it. (There's a burning bush over there that's not consumed? Big deal. I've just teleported from Australia.)Yes, but regularity is required for the communication, too. You can't communicate with rational beings using miracles that are statistically weak. There is noise in the eyewitness reports also. So, it is not the case that God is going above the S/N ratio with miracles. Unverifiable miracles are an atrocious way to communicate with rational people. Regularity is the way to communicate with rational people.
I would expect the appearance of a god appealing to rational folk to be simultaneously mundane and awesome, like the appearance of Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon. Or an oracle that reliably gives us information about physics that science cannot.
In the case of the Resurrection, you have effectively zero controls. All of the witnesses are from one source, namely, the partisan source promoting the story. That source can cite all the controls it wants, but that doesn't make it any more controlled than The National Enquirer citing all the sources it wants. Yet, scripture is the revelation that forms the basis of your "prior knowledge."
Now, how about prayer answers that don't reach the high standard of unexpectedness or rarity that we call "miracle"? How is it irrational for me to rely on my prior knowledge of God, in assessing whether he might have intervened in an event? For I am convinced that this knowledge of God actually is knowledge, a base of information that's usable in the world.I know you are convinced, but I don't think you were persuaded rationally.
Here's one example if why I think your position fails to be rational. You just wrote about how the world is mostly natural regularity so that we can tell the difference between nature and divine intervention. Now you are arguing that you can detect divine intervention when it's indistinguishable from natural regularity. You are effectively arguing that any time something happens that can be considered fortunate for your cause, you should call it an answered prayer. Where does that leave nature and human will? And your original argument?
dl,
There is much that we cannot prove empirically. I cannot prove that there exists a physical world external to my mind. I cannot cite the existence of that world or any part of it in an attempt to prove it, for that would be clearly circular. Nor can I cite my perception of it, for again that would be circular. I cannot perceive a thing and yet that thing not exist, and thus the claim that I perceive an external world assumes the existence of that world.
Might I retreat to the internal character of my experiences - how it is that they make the world out to be, whether it is actually that way or not? That will be of no help. No doubt I am appeared to at present as if I sit at my computer and type. But from this it does not follow that I sit and type, for illusion is an ever-present possibility. Might it be that the internal character of my experience makes the existence of an external world more likely than not? Perhaps, but I know of no argument that might take us from the first to the second that does not assume the existence of the external world.
My point is this: there is much that many of us believe about the world (in this case that an external physical world exists) that we cannot possibly prove. Why then cannot God be included in those unprovable posits? Now, I don't doubt that we in fact do perceive the external physical world. But I cannot prove that we do; I cannot rule out by a non-question-begging argument alternative hypotheses (as, for instance, that I'm a brain in a vat). But I don't doubt that in a way I and others perceive God too. I cannot prove that we do; I cannot prove, for instance, that my belief isn't some sort of Freudian wish-fulfillment. But as I hope I've shown, the mere fact that a proof cannot be given is not yet an objection to belief. For if it is, most of what we take ourselves to believe about the world outside our minds is irrational.
(This is a bit more Plantingian philosophy of religion. He argues that belief in the external world - and belief in other minds too - are in the same epistemological boat as belief in God's existence.)
DL:
You say God revealed himself, but he hasn't. I think your argument is circular.
It may be declared false if it turns out God doesn't actually exist, but the argument certainly isn't circular.
If someone describes the character attributes of a person to you in an email then that person has been revealed to you. You know something about the person, if only a little bit. At this point you don't really know if the person actually exists, but that's a separate question.
Sorry to be back-slapping, but DL hit several points right on the head in his last post:
However, tales of one-off miracles are extraordinary, always fall below the noise level, and are resistant to verification. They suspiciously always occur in an uncontrolled circumstance.Concerning how rational God's communication with us is, it seems we have two choices: either God is beyond rationality, or believing in God is beyond rationality. If God were rational (on a human level), he wouldn't be as hidden as he is (to whatever extent we want to call his hiddenness/obviousness). He'd be plainly obvious in *exactly* the same way the rock in my backyard is, or the way my friend is.
Unverifiable miracles are an atrocious way to communicate with rational people. Regularity is the way to communicate with rational people.
In the case of the Resurrection, you have effectively zero controls. All of the witnesses are from one source, namely, the partisan source promoting the story. That source can cite all the controls it wants, but that doesn't make it any more controlled than The National Enquirer citing all the sources it wants.
Now, you can say that God's purposes are fulfilled by not being obvious and rational, and that's fine, but then don't claim that believing that God who behaves irrationally (in a human fashion) is then rational (humanly).
Paul:
Now, you can say that God's purposes are fulfilled by not being obvious
I'll stop you right there because I agree with this much. There seems to be great virtue in striving to achieve one thing or another. We benefit more from something that is gained through struggle vs. something handed to us on a silver platter, hence the negative connotation of the phrase "spoiled brat". I don't claim to understand it all, but I do claim to know this is true in many areas of life.
but then don't claim that believing that God who behaves irrationally (in a human fashion) is then rational (humanly).
I don't think God behaves irrationally. We still haven't cleared up that term, have we?
Paul,
Now, you can say that God's purposes are fulfilled by not being obvious and rational, and that's fine, but then don't claim that believing that God who behaves irrationally (in a human fashion) is then rational (humanly).
"Not being obvious or not being (obviously) rational" does not equal " being irrational," does it?
Paul says: "If God were rational (on a human level), he wouldn't be as hidden as he is (to whatever extent we want to call his hiddenness/obviousness). He'd be plainly obvious in *exactly* the same way the rock in my backyard is, or the way my friend is."
This would we true if that part of our cognitive/emotional make-up that's intended to reveal God to us and make his reality apparent were in good order. But it's not. We live in a post-Fall world, and part of the evil that followed the Fall was the "retreat" of God. But in reality, it was no retreat at all. God did not move; his existence became no less obvious for those who had the eyes to see. But the eyes to see were blinded in most, and we live with the consequences of that.
The rock in your yard would not be obvious to a man born blind. We are born "blind" to God's existence, and so it is not obvious to us. But this does not bear in the least upon God's rationality. It bears only upon ours.
doctor(logic)
I think this warning would make sense coming from Mr. Zacharias. I would agree with him that Christianity is no more preposterous than Hinduism. Or Scientology or Mornonism.
I think you missed the point of the quote. I'll give up on you there, though.
God was not "invented" for just that reason. He exists and he has revealed himself.
I think I disagree. I'm not saying that it's a conspiracy, but that gods were invented to explain meaningful coincidences, and that gods that were verifiable ( e.g., volcano gods) got clobbered easily when there was rational inquiry. God concepts evolved into a conception that was untestable so that it was much harder to falsify.
This is one of those lovely "just so" stories that Daniel Dennett and others like to tell us. Is there any good evidence that this is true of Judaism or Christianity?
You say God revealed himself, but he hasn't.
*Dry humor tag* Apparently we have a disagreement here. Now, that's a revelation. Thanks for advancing the argument. */Dry humor tag*
I think your argument is circular. I think your argument is circular. I think you agree with me on the probability arguments, but circumvent them by claiming "prior knowledge of God." Yet, this "prior knowledge" came from revelation in the form of miracles which are themselves dubious.
Well, I do agree that apart from prior knowledge of God, everyday prayer answers cannot with high probability be ascribed to God. Miracles are different; they may in themselves be strong evidence for God. Unless you have prior knowledge that there is no God, and that therefore there are no miracles--which seems to me to be arguing in a circle. Or to quote a commenter here, "I think your argument is circular."
Your argument on the rarity of miracles is fine, to the extent that miracles need substantial evidence if we are going to take them as primary evidences for supernatural reality. I have no problem with that, except I see you taking it so far that you define them completely out of possibility. You wall yourself off from reality that way, I think. You are just wrong in your assertion that "They suspiciously always occur in an uncontrolled circumstance." There are many well-attested, medically confirmed healings through prayer.
[R]egularity is required for the communication, too. You can't communicate with rational beings using miracles that are statistically weak. There is noise in the eyewitness reports also. So, it is not the case that God is going above the S/N ratio with miracles. Unverifiable miracles are an atrocious way to communicate with rational people. Regularity is the way to communicate with rational people.
What on earth is a miracle that is statistically weak? What is this thing you have invented? How do you statistically strengthen a miracle? Have it happen every day? Miracles are epistemologically strong to the eyewitnesses, by the way. Whether another person believes eyewitnesses depends on how trustworthy they deem the eyewitnesses (and supporting evidences) to be. That's pretty standard stuff, isn't it?
In the case of the Resurrection, you have effectively zero controls. All of the witnesses are from one source, namely, the partisan source promoting the story.
No, that's not actually true--but we've argued that elsewhere and I want to stay on the subject we've been on, not on the Resurrection.
Here's one example if why I think your position fails to be rational. You just wrote about how the world is mostly natural regularity so that we can tell the difference between nature and divine intervention. Now you are arguing that you can detect divine intervention when it's indistinguishable from natural regularity. You are effectively arguing that any time something happens that can be considered fortunate for your cause, you should call it an answered prayer. Where does that leave nature and human will? And your original argument?
No, I said that we can detect divine intervention when an event is extraordinary and matches a specific prayer request, with varying degrees of confidence depending on how extraordinary the event and how closely it matches the prayer. I wrote that in actual words this morning. (There may be other circumstances in which God's activity could be detected, but this is the one we're talking about now.)
Now, doctor(logic), be advised that I have no further answers for you until you tell us what in the world the topic is. I've asked you this four times (not counting one in just the past hour that was addressed to Paul). I refer you to these comments:
Actually, if we could get DL to define what he's talking about when he uses the word "rational," then we would know whether we're after a red herring or not.
DL's charge is that there is something wrong with believing in God, and that has something to do with rationality. I don't really know what that charge is, because he hasn't explained it clearly enough yet....
But I'm not ready to follow where DL is leading with it because he's not telling us where he's headed. We still don't know what he means by "rational" or "irrational." ....
07.16.07 - 11:46 am | #
....
Again, can you give us a general definition of the rationality you're holding as your standard? I still don't know what standard you think we're failing to meet.
Tom Gilson | | Email | Homepage | 07.17.07 - 7:53 am | #
....
There is that one focused question I propose to you. I also await your answer to my request for your general definition of rational (as opposed irrational) as you want us to use it here.
Tom Gilson | | Email | Homepage | 07.17.07 - 9:20 am | #
....
"Not being obvious or not being (obviously) rational" does not equal "being irrational," does it?
Tom Gilson | | Email | Homepage | 07.17.07 - 6:19 pm | #
And on this earlier thread,
Would you define "rational," please?
Tom Gilson | | Email | Homepage | 07.13.07 - 4:25 pm | #
Now, I have a specific reason for asking this over and over again. I'm not just sparring, or playing word games, or even trying to be argumentative. You have charged Christians with not being rational. In order for that charge to make sense, we need some kind of reliable sense of what it means to be rational or irrational. There needs to be some overarching meaning to the word, some standard to which one ought to live up if one is trying to be rational.
Alvin Plantinga spent several chapters of Warranted Christian Belief asking, "what do they mean when they say Christianity is irrational?" He walked through a comprehensive series of different answers to the question, and they all failed to apply to Christian beliefs--all except for a couple of final options; but it was impossible to show that these applied any differently to Christianity than to atheism or agnosticism.
I'm not going to give you his answer on that, because I'm hoping you have something in mind that you can tell us about what rationality actually is. And I'm going to turn obstinate now. I'm not going to engage you any more on the question of rationality until you explain what you mean by it. What general standards ought a person live up to in order to be rational in regard to these questions?
Oh, and by the way--I'm about to go into several extra-busy days, so even though I'm eagerly awaiting doctor(logic)'s response, it might be a while before I get a chance to see it and continue my part of the discussion.
Franklin, if you can't see the rock because you're blind, you can taste it (yuck, I know, but anyway . . . .). If you can't taste it, you can touch it. Etc.
My point is that God, if he were rational, would be as obvious to us as rocks are, not requiring some other sensory mode in which some of us are incapable of sensing (like a blind person is for sight).
Furthermore, there is no other conception of this hypothetical sensory mode other than the "God-sensing" sensory mode. When a person is blind, we know that it is the eyes or the visual nerves that are to blame. Those are known structures in the body. Where is the known structure in the body that is a sensory mode for God?
This God sensory mode is really ad hoc. The plain fact is that God is not present to our senses in the way that every other objective element of our existence is.
Paul,
I do agree that God is not present to the senses as are the objects of our various senses. We have no special organ with which to sense God, if we mean something like the eye or the ear (and the various neurological mechanisms that turn their input into perception).
But we do have the faculty of reason, understand in the broad sense as that which makes possible the representation of states of affairs that are not apparent to the senses and that which allows us to conclude to their existence. Reason allows us to know not only what appears to the senses but also its significance. It's what allows one to not merely seen the strokes on the page but to know them for the words they are and to read them. I believe that this is at least part of what reveals God to us. God is not an object in the world and so cannot be grasped by the senses. But I think that he can be known by reason construed in this broad sense.
I would now add that, because of the Fall, reason is corrupt in us. It is as if we see the pen strokes on the page but cannot read them. We see sky and land but cannot "read" in them their divine cause. We cannot see their significance.
So, Franklin, it's exactly because God refuses to present himself to our senses (like rocks and friends do) that make his existence not rational. There is no earthly reason why God shouldn't present himself to us like rocks and friends do.
That's my point.
Paul:
Franklin said "Reason allows us to know not only what appears to the senses but also its significance."
You said: "God refuses to present himself to our senses (like rocks and friends do) that make his existence not rational. There is no earthly reason why God shouldn't present himself to us like rocks and friends do."
I very much disagree with your assessment, Paul. What is it about the sensory data that makes a rock, a rock rather than some other physical object? You are saying that the physical sense data allows you to know it's a rock, and that is not true. We've been over this before.
God can't be found in the physical sense data either so it seems both God and the rock are on equal footing in that respect. Both require the sense data to be interpreted.
As Franklin said: "It is as if we see the pen strokes on the page but cannot read them."
The problem with God is not the sense data. The problem is the ability to read the sense data properly.
I think what Franklin is saying actually supports my argument that we MAKE meaning. Franklin says, "Reason allows us to know not only what appears to the senses but also its significance. It's what allows one to not merely seen the strokes on the page but to know them for the words they are and to read them. I believe that this is at least part of what reveals God to us. God is not an object in the world and so cannot be grasped by the senses. But I think that he can be known by reason construed in this broad sense." It seems to me that Franklin is saying is that we interpret the world with our reason, which is informed by our experience, and in this way, we create a personal, individual understanding (that may be very similar to other's understanding) of our existence.
SteveK,
You are saying that the physical sense data allows you to know it's a rock, and that is not true.No, that's not my point. I'm saying that we *have* sense data about rocks and friends. We don't about God. God isn't a physical object that we can sense *in exactly the same way* that we do rocks, trees, friends, etc. If we can agree on that first, then we can move to the significance of that fact.
Franklin,
My point is this: there is much that many of us believe about the world (in this case that an external physical world exists) that we cannot possibly prove.There are, of course, some things that cannot be rationally justified. The rules or laws of rationality are among these.
The axiomatic nature of our raw experiences and intuitions is something we must to accept in order to be rational. It's necessary to rationality.
The external world is the name we give to experiences of a certain class. It's just a definition. Were we to discover (somehow) that we're brains in vats, then that would become the real world instead. In contrast, God isn't just defined to be a class of experiences, come what may.
You appear to be arguing for the principle that all intuitions (ideas unjustified by rational inquiry) that pop into our heads are equally acceptable, so long as there is no rational justification for or against them.
However, the axioms of rationality (laws of logic, induction and axiomatic experience) are necessary for rationality, whereas the myriad of other intuitions for which you argue are not necessary for rationality. So there's a world of difference between acceptance of non-contradiction, and acceptance of some unverifiable thing that's unnecessary.
Starting only with rationality plus our raw experiences and intuitions, belief in God is not rational. At best it is intuitive. There's no rational inference from past experience that tells you God exists. Rather, you have to have an intuitive (rationally unjustified) belief.
dl says: "You appear to be arguing for the principle that all intuitions (ideas unjustified by rational inquiry) that pop into our heads are equally acceptable, so long as there is no rational justification for or against them."
I did not intend to argue for this. Instead by argument was purely defensive in nature. I meant to argue that those who hold that because we have no good evidence of God's existence, belief in Him must be irrational are wrong. I did so by means of analogy. I gave two examples of beliefs for which we have no good evidence which yet are not irrational - belief in an external world, and belief in other minds. I did not intend to argue that anything that might qualify as intuitive is in some sense rational. I meant only that there are unproven beliefs - intuitions if you will - that are perfectly rational.
Second point. You say: "The external world is the name we give to experiences of a certain class."
This strike me as utterly bizarre. (It seems to me that you often hold yourself up as a great defender of common sense. Yet how utterly non-common sensical is this view! It seems to me as strange, and as baseless, as theism must seem to you.) Your view implies that, before there were beings able to experience anything at all, there was no external world. But presumably at the moment of the Big Bang and soon thereafter, there were (from your point of view) no such beings. Doesn't it then follow that there was no Big Bang?
Actually, this view of yours - that there the world is to be identified with our experience of it - likely entails theism. Surely it's true that there's a world whether or not we humans happen to experience it. But if it must be experienced by someone or other so long as it exists, it seems that the only other candidate is God. This was the conclusion that Bishop Berkeley drew. You share his idealism. Shouldn't you share his theism?
os,
I would say that in some cases we do make meaning where before there was none. But we do not always do so. In the case of God, I would say that we find meaning that was already present (or, even more precisely, regain by Grace an ability to "read" that meaning which humanity lost in the Fall).
Tom,
Well, I do agree that apart from prior knowledge of God, everyday prayer answers cannot with high probability be ascribed to God.Someone can believe in God, and not think that God intervenes in everyday affairs. Most Jews believe this way.
So, I want to know what this "prior knowledge" of God is, and where it comes from. Specifically, what knowledge tells you that God is busy interfering with nature and free will millions of times a day versus once every century?
[Just to clarify... I think there's no knowledge of God at all, but to avoid opening new cans of worms, let's temporarily stipulate that philosophical arguments give you reason to believe in a creator.]
Miracles are different; they may in themselves be strong evidence for God. Unless you have prior knowledge that there is no God, and that therefore there are no miracles--which seems to me to be arguing in a circle.It's not a question of prior knowledge that there's no God. Even if you assume there is a God, we should still expect that God intervenes to resurrect a generic person at a rate of 1 in 10 billion or so. Now, I have seen you argue that, given that we know God exists, it's not unlikely he would intervene to resurrect his son, but the only reason you believe Jesus was the son of God (versus the many thousands of other prophets throughout the historical and contemporary world) was because he was resurrected. That's circular.
Your argument on the rarity of miracles is fine, to the extent that miracles need substantial evidence if we are going to take them as primary evidences for supernatural reality. I have no problem with that, except I see you taking it so far that you define them completely out of possibility.And this complaint is familiar to me as well. What you are saying that rationality precludes us from thinking it likely that miracles occurred, even if they in fact occurred. That's precisely what I am saying. Furthermore, I'm saying there's no problem with this epistemology. The problem is with any being that's pranking us in this way in order to get a message across.
This leads me into your query about rationality. I'm not sure what you're missing, but here's the general scheme.
Each of your conclusions is based on a number of premises that are implicit. Let's take this last argument of yours. In detail, it looks something like this:
1) In our experience, effect E is extremely rare (1:N).
2) Some hypothetical factor G is capable of causing an effect E.
3) There is a claim that E has been observed, but the procedure that observed E has a false positive rate much greater than 1:N.
4) Induction and probability tell us that the claim in step (3) is far more likely to be error than a true observation of E.
5) It is subjectively important to have a high probability of seeing any instance of E caused by G
6) Therefore we should reject (4), and treat claims of type (3) as implying a likelihood of G causing E.
This is not rational for several reasons.
(i) It causes you to reject laws of rationality expressed in (4).
(ii) The only reason to do this is the non/pre-rational intuition expressed in (5).
(iii) Should you accept this line of argumentation, you admit that your case for belief that the claim of E is reliable is objectively no stronger than millions of other similar claims that you find preposterous. After all, it's based on a subjective statement of value in (5).
(iv) (5) is a confusion because it's not even about computing the likelihood of G causing E, but about what we should decide to do based on the odds (no matter how small).
Let's look at your other arguments about prior knowledge of God and prayer answers.
It goes something like this:
1) You pray consistently and frequently.
2) You pray that a goal will be facilitated by effects that appear to lie beyond your control (e.g., the weather, or the will of other people). You pray for one or more UNSPECIFIED beneficial effects out of an UNSPECIFIED/UNCOMPUTED total number of possible effects.
3) In the execution of goal-oriented action, you notice several happenings beyond your personal control that meet the criteria of your prayer objective, and which, if previously SPECIFIED, would have been rare.
4) Though you have not done sufficient analysis to rule out natural phenomena or other causes as an explanation for your observations, you conclude that your prayer was answered by an extraordinary coincidence.
This is irrational because it is akin to my carrying a rabbit's foot into a casino, trying to generate good luck, and then observing after several hours that a patron at a slot machine won a large jackpot in my presence. Since winning a jackpot on that particular slot machine is extremely rare, I conclude that my rabbit's foot has powers to import luck into the general vicinity. As you can see, this argument is flawed because, if you spend enough time in a casino, you'll see someone win a lot of money. The way they won that money will be via some extremely rare circumstance, were it to be specified in advance. But the fact that someone wins money somewhere in a casino is not unusual.
One more analogy. I'm playing draw poker. In the game, I win if I get any pair, and lose otherwise. So I make a wish to get a pair. I play one game, and I get a pair consisting of the two black aces. Getting the two black aces is extremely rare relative to getting any two pairs in general. However, since I did not specify what particular pair I wanted, this rare occurrence lends no more weight to my wish-making ability than does getting any generic pair. By your reasoning, I should be amazed at every pair I get because that particular pair (rank and suit) is especially rare. You would reject this sentiment, so you would be inconsistent to apply it to prayer answers.
Likewise, it's not unusual for something fortunate to happen to you in the pursuit of a goal. Yet, that particular fortune is almost always going to have something very rare about it. But when you're not specific, you have to integrate over all this rarity.
IOW, you reject the application of your own implicit rules when applied to other questions of a similar nature. That's inconsistent.
One more for the road.
1) You believe God exists through philosophical arguments.
2) You believe (for whatever reason) that God intervenes frequently in response to prayers.
3) You believe that you can often identify divine intervention when you see a fortunate event that meets the request made in a prayer.
4) When faced with controlled experiments that deny prayer answers, you argue that God always acts for the best outcome, and that we mere mortals cannot perceive that best end. Indeed, you have argued that God may answer prayer by denying the request, and even by apparently obstructing the goal so as to build character, etc.
Yet, (4) plainly contradicts (3). It means that unanswered prayer looks the same as answered prayer. In that case, you cannot make the distinction you argue for.
This is what I mean by irrational. You provide short answers that sound like common sense in isolation, but which sweep their irrationality under the carpet. In the last argument, (4) sounds reasonable to most theists when taken in isolation. In isolation, (3) sounds reasonable to many theists, also. Yet, together, they are poison.
This kind of thing is typical of non-scientific or pseudo-scientific ideas. The same principles that place the phenomena beyond the reach of science also prevent you from knowing anything about it, except by intuition/gut (which is not rational, but a matter of taste).
Paul:
I'm saying that we *have* sense data about rocks and friends. We don't about God. God isn't a physical object that we can sense *in exactly the same way* that we do rocks, trees, friends, etc.
I still disagree for the same reasons I cited above. Sense data is not "about rocks" any more than sense data is "about God". There is only physical sense data. The concept of a rock (or God) is not contained anywhere in that data.
OK, SteveK, let me rephrase: we have sense data *on* rocks - that is, we can sense rocks through our five senses. But we can't do that for God, because God is not a physical object that appears to our five senses.
Let's not get hung up on what "about" or "on" means, that's not germaine to my point.
Paul,
Neither is the number 2 an object that can be sensed. Nor is goodness. God is not alone in His transcendence of the physical world.
Franklin,
How do you know when you are creating meaning and when you are understanding God?
Franklin,
I meant to argue that those who hold that because we have no good evidence of God's existence, belief in Him must be irrational are wrong. I did so by means of analogy. I gave two examples of beliefs for which we have no good evidence which yet are not irrational - belief in an external world, and belief in other minds.I don't think the argument succeeded. There are an infinity of such things, and you only believe some of them are likely. Why not all of them? Why not reports of alien abductions? Aliens could get away with it because their technology is like magic to us. It is not rational to pick and choose. It could be non/pre-rational to pick beliefs you prefer or to have different intuitions, but it's not rational.
I didn't comment on the existence of other minds. To me, I think other people have minds because they behave as if they do. The theory of other minds is predictive, so I can make an inference. The "theory of God" predicts nothing at all that I can observe, so I can't make an inference. So there's a huge difference.
Similarly, the existence of the external world means that there are predictive models of the world in which things happen that I am not immediately aware of. That is, I have a model of, say, the weather that is predictive, even though I'm not otherwise aware that it's going to rain on Friday.
You say: "The external world is the name we give to experiences of a certain class."Actually, I hold myself up as a defender of uncommon sense, but thanks anyway. :P
This strike me as utterly bizarre. (It seems to me that you often hold yourself up as a great defender of common sense. Yet how utterly non-common sensical is this view!
...Your view implies that, before there were beings able to experience anything at all, there was no external world.
It's intuitive for us to think that there's an external world, and that we are parts of that world, and that this world is independent of our experience of it, etc.
However, when you query this view from an epistemological perspective, you find that your personal experiences are epistemologically prior to the external world (which includes the experiences of doctor(logic) and God). And when you say that the world appears to be independent of your experiences, what you mean is that the world works "as if" your mental model of the world (itself experienced) has things happening outside of your awareness.
My claim does not mean that the universe needs someone experiencing it somewhere for the universe to exist. Neither does it mean that the universe cannot predate humanity or other conscious entities by the definition of what it means to pre-date something.
Paul:
We perceive music, but where is the music that we are sensing? One can only find mechanical waves striking the eardrum.
When it comes to perceiving God, I don't think it's a sensory problem. I think it's a perception problem.
Neither is the number 2 an object that can be sensed. Nor is goodness. God is not alone in His transcendence of the physical world.Correct, but my point above (read my posts in this thread again) isn't that there can't be concepts like 2 or goodness, but that God, by eliminating the possibility of us perceiving him as directly as we do our friends, by reduing himself to a non-preceivable being (his "hiddenness) can't be said to be rational in the human sense. It makes no rational, earthly reason why God should be so much more hidden than my friend is if it is so important to believe in him. (And spare me the "it would be forcing belief in God" defense. That's an ad hoc requirement that we impose for no other belief.)
Paul:
The rebellion of mankind as told in Genesis explains our growing perception problem. Imagine every generation being raised in rebellion toward something it sensed long ago quite readily.
I imagine we could do the same thing to muddle our perception of music by repeatedly promoting the idea that music is any sound you hear. Teach that for several generations and proper music perception will all but vanish from the human mind.
Yoko Ono is evidence that this is happening now. 
SteveK,
We perceive music, but where is the music that we are sensing? One can only find mechanical waves striking the eardrum.Yes, but the music is in the pattern of the waves. And we can generally specify what is a musical pattern and what isn't. I can say that I am listening to a waltz based on identifiable properties of those waves.
When it comes to perceiving God, I don't think it's a sensory problem. I think it's a perception problem.
We could talk about more generic patterns, and talk about triangles. I can perceive triangles as patterns in the stars or in braille. IOW, the triangular pattern can be perceived using different senses.
However, the same is not true of God. We cannot pin you down to a pattern of experience that is God. What is God and what isn't? What can I see that will tell me that there is God in the same way I can sense a pattern in music that tells me that I'm listening to a waltz versus hip-hop?
DL, I am wondering whether you think it's possible that someday we may in fact discover something, sort of like sound waves, that IS a pattern of experience that we can identify is God?
DL:
Yes, but the music is in the pattern of the waves.
I can't resist replying in Dawkins-like fashion: The illusion of music is just that-an illusion. The authorities tell us that the brain sees patterns where none should be seen (or heard).
(seriously now) If music is in the pattern then, as OS asked, it it reasonable to think that God can be found in another sensory pattern?
doctor(logic), I'm still on that busy schedule for several days, but thankfully I could gloss over most of your last reply to me. I mean, normally I wouldn't do that, but I was specifically looking for your response to my last (and repeated) question. I'm not engaging you on other issues until we get this definition figured out.
(For instance, there is a rather simple answer to this, and I'm surprised you asked it:
So, I want to know what this "prior knowledge" of God is, and where it comes from. Specifically, what knowledge tells you that God is busy interfering with nature and free will millions of times a day versus once every century?
But I'm not going there, or to the other points you raised, but just to the one that I notified you would have to be answered before we go on to others.
You wrote,
This is what I mean by irrational. You provide short answers that sound like common sense in isolation, but which sweep their irrationality under the carpet. In the last argument, (4) sounds reasonable to most theists when taken in isolation. In isolation, (3) sounds reasonable to many theists, also. Yet, together, they are poison.
This kind of thing is typical of non-scientific or pseudo-scientific ideas. The same principles that place the phenomena beyond the reach of science also prevent you from knowing anything about it, except by intuition/gut (which is not rational, but a matter of taste).
There are significant problems with your definition of rationality. You didn't really lay one out as I requested; that's the first problem.
I think from your last paragraph, though, you would say something along these lines: any belief founded just on intuition is irrational.
Is that correct? I'm not trying to tie you down, but to move toward an answer to this most important question. If that is correct, it leads to another important question: on what should a belief be founded, or how should one choose one's belief, in order for the belief or the person to qualify as rational?
I'm not sure I'll have Internet time tomorrow--but if I do I'll be looking for a chance to pick this up and continue with that question.
SteveK, you are studiously ignoring my point. Please, take this one step at a time, eh? I promise that I will address your ideas, but my ideas are not only logically prior to yours, they also occurred in this thread before yours, and so should be addressed first, to be fair, right?
Please answer this question directly: Do we (including believers) perceive God in the same way that we percieve rocks or our friends? This question aims to determine whether God is (or manifests himself as) a physical object.
Yes or no?
Paul,
I hate to pull a Clinton, but it depends on what you mean by "in the same way".
If you mean, am I able to perceive God as easily or as accurately as I perceive a rock, the answer is no.
If you mean, am I able to perceive God himself in nature (like Pantheism), the answer is no.
If you mean, am I able to perceive God through nature, the answer is yes.
Paul,
Of course there was Christ, the God-man. Thus for a time God was quite literally in nature.
But that time has passed. There is now nothing to which we can point and say that it is God. God is not part of nature. God is not a rock, not a star. (Sorry to butt in on the conversation.)
You can butt in any time, Franklin. I'm here to converse and learn just like (I hope) the rest so your insight is welcome.
If you mean, am I able to perceive God as easily or as accurately as I perceive a rock, the answer is no.Thank you. Now we can go back to the point I was trying to make in my earlier posts of 07.17.07 - 5:22 pm and 07.17.07 - 9:49 pm.
Although, let me make something clear. It's not a question of accuracy or clarity. The fundamental means by which we perceive is different than that of any physical object. That is, *currently,* (which excludes the example of Jesus for the time being), God is not a physical object like my friend is, right? In that case, my points in the earlier posts hold for the idea of God being a physical object (that is, it isn't rational for God not to be a physical object, that is, a real being like my friend is). That's the problem that the argument from divine hiddenness addresses. That type of hiddenness (note, I'm not saying the hiddenness is total) makes no sense.
"I think from your last paragraph, though, you would say something along these lines: any belief founded just on intuition is irrational."
What does it mean to have a belief founded just on intuition? Are you saying there would be no other reasons for believing it than some kind of gut feeling? That there would be no reasoned argument for that belief? Or that this "intuition" would trump any other reasoned arguments that indicate the belief is unlikely to be true?
"There are significant problems with your definition of rationality. You didn't really lay one out as I requested; that's the first problem."
I'm puzzled by this, as doctor (logic) gave a number of examples of rational decision making in his last post. Seems clear that he is sticking pretty close to common usage of that term. Leastways, I saw nothing in those examples that would indicate an idiosyncratic use of the term rationality.
Tom,
I agree with Randy, but I'll assume you have a reason for me making this more explicit.
Reserving the right to make some tweaks to this, here is how I am defining rational belief more broadly.
1) An intuition is a belief that is not rationally justified (by definition).
2) In the absence of any rational analysis of an intuition, it is provisionally rational to accept that intuition. This is because experience shows that evolution generally provides us with reasonably accurate intuitions in day-to-day affairs. For example, the fact that I am sitting in front of my PC typing is an intuition that I may not have examined rationally.
3) However, historically, many intuitions have been shown false, and then eliminated through rational inquiry. If we care about the truth of our beliefs, then, time and energy permitting, it is better to rationally analyze intuitions than not to do so.
4) If we analyze an intuition and find it leads to a logical contradiction, then the intuition is irrational.
5) If we analyze an intuition and find it contradicts the principles of rational thought, then the intuition is irrational.
6) Two intuitions are irrational together when, in combination, they lead to a contradiction.
So, in recapping the arguments you glossed over:
a) You had an intuition that "it is subjectively important to have a high probability of seeing any instance of E caused by G." However, you misuse your intuitive belief that miracles ought to be unambiguous to override the theory of probability which tells you that they actually are ambiguous. This misuse contradicts the principles of rational thought.
b) If you regard your implicit claim that "it is subjectively important to have a high probability of seeing any instance of E caused by G" to mean that "it is intuitive that miracles carry great statistical weight," then this stands in direct contradiction to rational probability theory.
c) Your intuition that your unspecific prayer is answered by a rare specified response also contradicts rational principles relating to probability.
d) Your two intuitions that God is beyond scientific detection and that God is statistically recognizable are mutually contradictory.
doctor(logic), your question about where I'm heading with this is entirely appropriate. I'm taking my cue from Alvin Plantinga in Warranted Christian Belief. He says (p. 67),
But the next thing to see is that it is far from obvious just what the de jure question is supposed to be; precisely what question (or questions) is it that critics mean to press when they ask whether Christian belief is rational, or rationally defensible, or rationally justifiable, or whatever? Critics claim that Christian belief is not rationally justified or justifiable; what precisely, is the infirmity or defect they are ascribing to the Christian believer? What, exactly, is the question? Call this question the 'metaquestion.' One problem with contemporary discussions of the justification of Christian belief is that the metaquestion is almost never asked. People ask whether Christian beleif is rational or reasonable or rationally justifiable; they turn immediately to answering that question, without first considering just what the question is. What is it? That is not easy to say...
And he goes on to show why the question is nowhere near as obvious as most people have thought it is.
There you have the description of what's in the back of my mind. What's lacking still is what's in the front of my mind. This ought to proceed from here in either one of these ways: either I ought to lay out Plantinga's analysis of why this problem is not so easy to answer, or we ought to conduct this as an ongoing dialogue. I've been trying to start it as a dialogue but I see I've been doing a poor job of that. And for the next couple of weeks or so, I don't see me having time to do any better than that.
Your most recent comment would be a great step in that direction if I could only take the next step afterward. I intend to do that, but I just can't right now. I wanted to at least give you the general background of the question, but it will take longer than I have to do more than that. Will you grant me a delay? I'm sure you'll be gracious about that, and I appreciate it. In the meantime, I would suggest you look at Warranted Christian Belief if you care to do so. It's quite an interesting read.
I would hope that the problem of defining rationality is *directly* germaine to the question of God; if not, it's just a straw man.
Another approach, taken from what Randy posted: Tom, you're saying that the everyday, common understanding of "rational" isn't the right one in order to understand God?
Never fear, Paul, it's germane. That should have been clear from the quote I made from Plantinga. But if I get into answering your other question I'll have to take the time to really do it right--later.
Tom,
Delay granted.
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