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There might be...

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ant

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Re: There might be...

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Still a bit shallow,
So is your self imposed purposeless universe and your false analogies.



Are you running your air conditioner in your house this summer?
It's making climate change worse
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Re: There might be...

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With such beliefs, skepticism goes out the window and we're not so interested any more if it's actually true, only how we can rationalize it to make it sound good
This is really the very typical misunderstanding and ill informed opinions that were disseminated by the new atheists who are absolutely ignorant of the truly great theological discussions over thousands of years regarding faith and reason.

Augustine, Scotus, and Aquinas come to mind for starters. Not once do you hear any of the celebrity atheists mention the thoughts and reasoning of these man related to matters of existence.

I think new atheists that argue skepticism is incompatible with personal matters of faith are stupid and bigoted.

I practice skepticism in my life daily.
If you'd like to measure your quality of life against mine, we can begin by comparing bank accounts, if you want to be shallow about it, and go from there.

Who's first?
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Re: There might be...

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Staying on topic, it's obvious there must be an approach to a list like this. But where could you possibly start? Maybe a second list is required, a list of filtering strategies.

So, here's a list of strategies to sort through the list of "There might be's..."

We select based on emotion.

We start with the most basic statement possible to use as a brute fact.

We prioritize the list based on which statements are more popular.

We prioritize the list based on the age of the claim.

We pick a conclusion that most other statements mesh with, and make everything else fit.

We select the one our parents tell us to and go from there.

We select the one the president tells us to, and go from there.

We circle only the statements we can verify with our own eyes.

We circle only the statements that the most accredited scholars believe are true.

We pick a generic one at random and test it against reality for veracity.

We spread the list out to mankind and have everyone test one.


How do you even begin? What happens after you've begun? Does the strategy change?
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: There might be...

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ant wrote:
With such beliefs, skepticism goes out the window and we're not so interested any more if it's actually true, only how we can rationalize it to make it sound good
This is really the very typical misunderstanding and ill informed opinions that were disseminated by the new atheists who are absolutely ignorant of the truly great theological discussions over thousands of years regarding faith and reason.

Augustine, Scotus, and Aquinas come to mind for starters. Not once do you hear any of the celebrity atheists mention the thoughts and reasoning of these man related to matters of existence.

I think new atheists that argue skepticism is incompatible with personal matters of faith are stupid and bigoted.

I practice skepticism in my life daily.
If you'd like to measure your quality of life against mine, we can begin by comparing bank accounts, if you want to be shallow about it, and go from there.

Who's first?
I'm basically saying that cherished beliefs don't get scrutinized to the same degree as non-cherished beliefs. Do you disagree with that statement? It seems self-evident to me. By the way, this is my own observation and has nothing to do with Neo Atheism. Please tell me how I am misinformed, but leave your strawmen at home.

As for your Middle Ages philosophers, really? Seriously? I've read some of Aquinas' work and I can't imagine anyone but true believers and those otherwise besotted by an appeal to antiquity to be genuinely convinced. Please, let's discuss Aquinas' concept of the trinity or First Cause. (We've actually discussed the First Cause argument before here on BT.) While Aquinas and Augustine were important philosophers for their time, I don't see them as having a lot of relevance today. But by all means, I'd love to hear about them from a genuine advocate.
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Re: There might be...

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Interbane wrote:Staying on topic, it's obvious there must be an approach to a list like this. But where could you possibly start? Maybe a second list is required, a list of filtering strategies.

So, here's a list of strategies to sort through the list of "There might be's..."

We select based on emotion.

We start with the most basic statement possible to use as a brute fact.

We prioritize the list based on which statements are more popular.

We prioritize the list based on the age of the claim.

We pick a conclusion that most other statements mesh with, and make everything else fit.

We select the one our parents tell us to and go from there.

We select the one the president tells us to, and go from there.

We circle only the statements we can verify with our own eyes.

We circle only the statements that the most accredited scholars believe are true.

We pick a generic one at random and test it against reality for veracity.

We spread the list out to mankind and have everyone test one.


How do you even begin? What happens after you've begun? Does the strategy change?
You start by asking yourself if this opinion you hold is based on evidence or based on emotion. Are you seeking the truth or are you trying to confirm what you already believe.
-Geo
Question everything
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Interbane

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Re: There might be...

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Sorry geo, I don't think that works. By the time you're auditing your beliefs, you've already built an unseen scaffolding of premises that support this belief. Unless you examine everything underneath, you may be fooled that one belief is based on reason, when it's actually a fallacy. Or there could be a series of premises used, nebulous in the associative part of the brain, that you rationally consider to be evidence. Or you might not know what evidence is. Or, you might mistakenly use heuristics as pieces of evidence. Or you might suffer from a theory-laden observation where you instrinsically assume something you see is evidence(coincidence worshippers).
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: There might be...

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Interbane wrote:Sorry geo, I don't think that works. By the time you're auditing your beliefs, you've already built an unseen scaffolding of premises that support this belief. Unless you examine everything underneath, you may be fooled that one belief is based on reason, when it's actually a fallacy. Or there could be a series of premises used, nebulous in the associative part of the brain, that you rationally consider to be evidence. Or you might not know what evidence is. Or, you might mistakenly use heuristics as pieces of evidence. Or you might suffer from a theory-laden observation where you instrinsically assume something you see is evidence(coincidence worshippers).
I see what you're saying. No matter what, we're going to cherry pick evidence that supports what we already believe. And we're going to rationalize. I think this is unavoidable to some extent. Not sure of a way around that except to try to be aware of one's own biases that will close you off to alternative explanations. It helps to have a spouse who knows you well enough to call "bullshit" when she sees it.

How do you think we get around these human foibles?
-Geo
Question everything
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Interbane

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Re: There might be...

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There's no surefire way around them, but some approaches are better than others. Basically, you have to collect "sets" of facts. The methods you use to collect them should be methods other humans have used. At some point, when the methods spread enough, you can place provisional trust in the people who use such methods. But they are just people, and their devotion to proper method might be outweighed by their desire to see an outcome. It's only human.

The simple laws of physics are a start. For society and for a worldview. I say the laws of physics because they are simple enough and tangible enough for us to test and "abstract" with math and language. We can "bite onto reality" more easily with regards to the simple laws of physics. By all accounts, the simple laws appear not to change, there is a regularity to the universe that we can detect. These sets of facts have to be anchored to a "brute fact" about the world. The universe exists, and it's understandable. The sets of beliefs you can anchor to this core become more and more complex, branching into different types of physics and eventually different fields of science.

To isolate and identify the laws of physics, there are methods to control variables, hypothesizing and testing, and allowing the tests to be performed by others. Rinse and repeat enough times, and we can become more confident these sets of facts are truthful. As we layer this core with more complex information, we need logic to ensure the linkages are all proper. It doesn't serve to have a ton of independent facts without linkage. The strength of each fact is proportional to the size of the entire web it's a part of.

This foundation is necessary, so that your "scaffolding of premises" is intact. You can audit what you currently believe to align with this, as long as your views aren't too woo.

But I think all of this takes a certain amount of mechanical intelligence. It's basically building a worldview around the way things work, until you see how more and more complex things work at higher levels. This sort of spatial reasoning and logical reasoning might not come naturally to people. Even then, the best of us make mistakes and get things wrong. Misapplied logic, misinterpreted evidence, misunderstood studies. These problem spots are found through endless debate with other intelligent people. As David Hume so aptly stated, truth springs from argument amongst friends.

At some point, when you have a solid core to serve as the yardstick, the strategy for sorting through the "there might be" list is to see how well each statement fits in your web of knowledge.

With all that said, the entire point of this thread is to ask what we do with that infinite chunk of the list that is "plausible, but without evidence in either direction." Do we hold it as possibly true, for future examination? Or do we simply dismiss it? Or do we archive it in a computer and move on? What happens when the discussion is about the nature of evil, and the existence of demons are brought into question?
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: There might be...

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Interbane wrote: What happens when the discussion is about the nature of evil, and the existence of demons are brought into question?

I would say two discussions are possible there. One being that the concepts of any non-measurable aspects by our current abilities be removed (such as supernatural forces) from the premise as plausible and one that it is not removed. To me it does not matter, only that it is clear we are discussing the same 'thing'. I would really like to see more about the nature of evil beyond how to define it but I do believe that we agree on a working definition, not because we are right but so that we are looking at the same question.

Another discussion on the potential of supernatural existence would also be fantastic, however, it does not really serve this discussion when it really is such a messy topic in and of itself potentially. However, when we were using naturalism and possible animal survival to describe the nature of evil, we do once again get into something that may very well not be directly measurable (hence the demon analogy was tossed in). The one regarding Hitler and those who followed commands was really a more interesting discussion regarding evil when they were unaware of direct evidence of what they were doing but I guess the demons were really a trigger for discussion.

:) gari
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Re: There might be...

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geo wrote:No matter what, we're going to cherry pick evidence that supports what we already believe. And we're going to rationalize. I think this is unavoidable to some extent. Not sure of a way around that except to try to be aware of one's own biases that will close you off to alternative explanations. It helps to have a spouse who knows you well enough to call "bullshit" when she sees it.

How do you think we get around these human foibles?
Interbane wrote:There's no surefire way around them, but some approaches are better than others. Basically, you have to collect "sets" of facts.
Interbane wrote:The simple laws of physics are a start. For society and for a worldview. I say the laws of physics because they are simple enough and tangible enough for us to test and "abstract" with math and language. We can "bite onto reality" more easily with regards to the simple laws of physics. By all accounts, the simple laws appear not to change, there is a regularity to the universe that we can detect. These sets of facts have to be anchored to a "brute fact" about the world. The universe exists, and it's understandable. The sets of beliefs you can anchor to this core become more and more complex, branching into different types of physics and eventually different fields of science.
Interbane wrote: It doesn't serve to have a ton of independent facts without linkage. The strength of each fact is proportional to the size of the entire web it's a part of.

This foundation is necessary, so that your "scaffolding of premises" is intact. You can audit what you currently believe to align with this, as long as your views aren't too woo.
I wasn't aware that theists dispute with atheists was about the the laws of physics or facts in nature. There may be disagreement on hypotheses and interpretations of facts as well the question of explanations for things.
Don't you have to explain your "brute fact" that the universe exists at all? Why is it that we are rational and can describe the physical world in abstract mathematical concepts?
Einstein thought this very remarkable.
Your foundation of facts and logic doesn't explain the existence of laws of logic.
On the standard model there is a beginning to your facts of space,time,energy and matter. From what?
The law of gravity doesn't cause an apple to fall to the ground.

Stephen Hawking says,quote; "Because there is a law of gravity,the universe can and will create itself".
This is rational gibberish. Nothing can create itself.

Some speculate on a multiverse or big bounce hypothesis. I came across a recent article on an I.D.website where they reported on and discussed some recent thoughts of physicist Paul Davies on the multiverse hypothesis.

See what you think.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intellig ... ultiverse/

The informational content of biological life is extrinsic to the physics and chemistry just as the arrangement of this sentence and the letters is complex specified information, which is extrinsic to the physical material on which it is expressed.

Arguably information is foundational to life. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqiXNxyoof8
Last edited by Flann 5 on Sun Aug 16, 2015 7:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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