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II. How We Know - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

#133: Sept. - Nov. 2014 (Non-Fiction)
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Interbane

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Re: II. How We Know - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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It doesn't convince you. It convinces me.
This is still dancing circles around the heart of the matter. It isn't whether or not it convinces or fails to convince. It's about the method or reason it convinces or fails to convince. We both recognize the profound bias we each have. How do we overcome that to establish the truth of our convictions? Yes, you believe. I'm asking how you justify that belief.

Most common appeals that we think justify our beliefs in fact don't. It is harder to justify belief than most people realize - thus people believe in all sorts of weird stuff. The spectrum of cultish, esoteric, satanist, alienish, transpermic, hollow earth weirdness in our world is all believed with utter certainty by large groups of people. They all make appeals to this or that or the other thing. The vast majority of those appeals are fallacious, which is obvious due to the things most people believe. How do you know your beliefs are truthful? How do you justify them? Are you sure the unconscious appeals(support) you have for your beliefs are not fallacious?
"Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire" You tell me if I should interpret this literally or not.
What is your hermeneutical approach? Do you seek to combine the passages with modern understanding to harmonize them? Or do you attempt to understand the intent of the original biblical authors? Did they believe that the passage they wrote is a true accounting of Death and Hades? It's very possible they did believe it. In this case, that is what your interpretation should be, if you're to stand by your belief that the bible was divinely inspired. How could the authors have been divinely inspired, have written something they believed to be true, but also be wrong about it? This is contradictory.

There is nothing you can appeal to in order to show that the original authors did not believe this passage was literal(and vice versa, to be fair). This is the issue with hermeneutics. It's all ad hoc harmonizing of the bible with no justification.
There is a scientific establishment too, and dissenters from neo Darwinism have lost jobs for not toeing the party line.I'm not trying to be inflammatory here, but certainly I hear of such cases.Well ,Tacitus must have been in on the conspiracy.
It's not a game, Interbane.
I fully understand it's not a game. I'm sure the fear of losing your job may motivate some people to toe the line. Still, it's a molehill compared to the motivational mountain of an eternity burning in hellfire. Imagine the impact such a belief would have on historical scholars who had even the slightest belief in the bible.

For those that have been fired for not toeing the line, were they fired because of ulterior motive? Were they fired because they failed to adhere to proper method? Were they being objective in their pursuit of knowledge? They could always find work at thinktanks more amenable to their beliefs. The Templeton foundation gives out grants and funds such people.

There is no conspiracy. Scientists search for the truth no matter where it hides. The truth comes out in time if we use proper method to attenuate and dampen our biases, and shows a universe that is naturalistic. Scientists who enter the establishment with ulterior motive - prior belief that the entire system is rigged - will ultimately fail to follow proper method. Their bias will contaminate their findings. This is also true of scientists trying to disprove Christianity. Peer review is neutral, a review of method but not ulterior motive. Ulterior motive is discovered through examination of adherence to method.

If you follow proper method, you come to the same conclusion as the vast majority of scientists. It is only by deviating from proper method that you come to supernatural conclusions.

Are we then to criticize proper method? Which part of the scientific method is faulty? Or logical method? We shouldn't generalize here. Provide a link to an example of someone who was fired for not "toeing the line". I'll do some research and try to suss out the cause.

Or read through Carrier's section regarding method, and point to where you think it fails to provide the best bet we have to pursue knowledge.
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Re: II. How We Know - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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This is still dancing circles around the heart of the matter. It isn't whether or not it convinces or fails to convince. It's about the method or reason it convinces or fails to convince. We both recognize the profound bias we each have. How do we overcome that to establish the truth of our convictions? Yes, you believe. I'm asking how you justify that belief.
How do you justify a belief in a scientific hypothesis like a multiverse?


Section 1.1.5 "Distinguishing Fact from Theory"
(my emphasis)
Another surprise is revealed in confusion between facts and theories. In scientific jargo, facts are what have been carefully observed to be the case. Theories are explanations of those facts, This differs from colloquial and philosophical jargon where fact are 'whatever is established' and theories 'whatever is speculated'. But to scientists fact is observation, theory is explanation.
How is belief justified when the facts related to an infinite sea of multiveres - (a "scientific" hypothesis Carrier introduces as nearing fact ) - are unobservable, and therefore inexplicable?


The proposition "The multiverse exists" most certainly can not be verified as either strong or weak:
"A proposition is said to be verifiable, in the strong sense of the term, if, and only if, its truth could be conclusively established by experience", but is verifiable in the weak sense "if it is possible for experience to render it probable"
. - Ayer


If a proposition is "a picture of reality" (Wittgenstein), by scientific criteria it must be a depiction or near depiction of our reality that is observable or possibly observable.
What is the abstract concept (be it math or logic) that predicts this is possible?

Personally I think there's a lot of glossing over and dancing that metaphysical naturalist perform when asked to justify belief in hypotheses that are introduced as a "naturalistic" explanation to replace something that must be ruled out as unjustified belief (ie God). - "The Math proves it is possible a multiverse is all there is and is all there ever has been"

EDITED:

Ps

Math, I think, is synthetic a priori propositions:
Analytic propositions are true by virtue of their meaning, while synthetic propositions are true by how their meaning relates to the world
wiki

If so, how does mathematics relate to multiple universes if they are not directly related to our world?
Mathematical models are models of our world, right?
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Re: II. How We Know - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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Hi Interbane,
Do you want me go into an elaborate study of the book of Revelation?
I'll just say a few things.
On it's own term someone called John has supernatural visions.
Most involve strange images,composite beasts etc.In the narrative an angel provides interpretations of many though not all of these images.
For instance talking about one of these beast images,the angel says, "The ten horns which you saw are ten kings which have received no kingdom as yet," and "The waters which you saw,where the harlot sits,are peoples,multitudes,nations and tongues." So symbols,with real equivalents in the material world; people,kings,kingdoms etc.
Much symbolic imagery has roots in narrative history accounts in the old Testament.
Babylon for example.
Symbolic use of numbers, 12 tribes of Israel,12 apostles. I44 thousand followers.Dimensions 144 cubits etc.
Images are presented which are seen to be symbolic (if you hadn't guessed!) through internal interpretive keys such as what the angel does in explaining and against the backdrop of the old testament narrative.
When it comes to the lake of fire,consistency in following the clear pattern of the book makes literalism completely out of sync with the rest.The devil is cast into the lake of fire.This is literally incoherent. A spirit in a literal fire.
I have never studied hermeneutics. Most of my life I have worked as a care assistant in a nursing home.
I recognize literary forms in much the same way as everyone else does.

I don't see why I should be expected to interpret this literally. The book of revelation uses a genre of symbolism.It's not typical of what's in a great deal of the rest of the bible, but the rest is by no means all literal either.
Last edited by Flann 5 on Thu Aug 28, 2014 1:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: II. How We Know - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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Flann wrote:I don't see why I should be expected to interpret this literally. The book of revelation uses a genre of symbolism.It's not typical of what's in a great deal of the rest of the bible, but the rest is by no means all literal either.
I'm not saying that you should interpret it literally. What I'm saying is that every interpretation is by definition ad hoc unless and until it's verified. Only by going back in time and interviewing the authors can you verify any given interpretation.

At least, that is the case if you are looking for truth in your interpretation. But there is also a case to be made for finding meaning in interpretation, which is not the same thing as finding truth.

-meaningful interpretation
-truthful interpretation
-truthful reference

Truth of interpretation would be reverse engineering what the authors intended. Truth of reference would be correlating what they wrote to facts. For example, they say Jesus existed. What do we have that corroborates that?(don't answer this, it's just an example). They say there are 12 disciples. Truth of interpretation would be that they believed there were 12 disciples. Truth of reference would be that the number 12 came to them through cultural evolution from the signs of the zodiac.

Compare this to meaningful interpretation. You can interpret the 12 disciples to mean anything you wish. This does not mean you've located a truthful interpretation, let alone a truthful reference.

There are varying facets of interpretation. Most people mistakenly believe their meaningful interpretations are also truthful interpretations or even truthful references. If you believe the bible is truthful, rather than merely meaningful, then your interpretations need verification by method.

Sorry if I came across heated. I've had this same conversation a dozen times over the years, and after a while I wonder if people truly understand what it means to justify what they believe before criticizing contrary beliefs.

Let's move on from this, shall we?
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: II. How We Know - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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How do you justify a belief in a scientific hypothesis like a multiverse?
I don’t know that it is currently scientific, and I highly doubt it can be justified in the strong sense. I wish I had the book to quote from, but I do remember Carrier using soft language. “It is the best bet going”, or something of that nature. Until we have a better bet, the multiverse is it.

What could a better bet look like?
See:
http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/ ... -of-scale/
How is belief justified when the facts related to an infinite sea of multiveres - (a "scientific" hypothesis Carrier introduces as nearing fact ) - are unobservable, and therefore inexplicable?
Through inference. We see the apparently fine-tuned nature of the universe and infer an evolutionary algorithm. You’ll have to quote Carrier referring to the multiverse as a near fact. This sounds stronger than I remember. If he did, then I disagree with him.
If a proposition is "a picture of reality" (Wittgenstein), by scientific criteria it must be a depiction or near depiction of our reality that is observable or possibly observable.
What is the abstract concept (be it math or logic) that predicts this is possible?
We could see another universe at the edge of our own in the process of colliding with ours. It is possibly observable.
Math, I think, is synthetic a priori propositions:
That’s mathematical Platonism(I think). I disagree that math is synthetic a priori, although it is analytic a priori, true by definition.
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Re: II. How We Know - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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No problem Interbane, You are more patient than most.
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Re: II. How We Know - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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I don’t know that it is currently scientific, and I highly doubt it can be justified in the strong sense. I wish I had the book to quote from, but I do remember Carrier using soft language. “It is the best bet going”, or something of that nature. Until we have a better bet, the multiverse is it.
No, his language in his manifesto isn't "soft" ..,
particularly when he introduces the multiverse as a "theory" - a reasonable theory, on more than one occasion.
He also says dimensions have been proven to exist. Really, which hypothesis has proven dimensions to exist?

Carrier states that a theory in science must be "extensively tested or confirmed - and it must continue to survive attempts to disconfirm its predictions in order to win and keep its title"

Tell me how the a mutliverse "THEORY" like Lee Smolin's has been extensively tested and confirmed. Tested against what?
Confirmed empirically how? Inferential speculation is not what makes a theory a theory to Carrier.

Also, I'd note for your attention that Carrier seems to approve of falsification ("disconfirm" being the operative word) but says nothing about how science would go about falsifying one of his favorite multiverse theories. What evidence and how much of it would falsify the Smolin theory?

Carrier states that we have enough of an understanding about how symmetry could be broken and from this "they can predict all the different universes that might arise"
That seems like an ad hoc assumption as well.
If our understanding of symmetry is "enough" (how he's determined what "enough" is was not stated) how is it that we are in a position to infer that other dimensions are a reasonable inference to make?
.

Let's be real about this - you can say "inference" is our evidence here, but it really boils down to your faith (call it justified , or rational, or whatever) that this is science, as glorified by Carrier as scientism, which is really a philosophy that defines theory and fact in an entirely different manner than hard science does.

Also, there is an issue of the inadequacy of our language with all this multiverse confirmation theory talk:
our language and how we are speaking to ourselves prior to formulating a descriptive hypothesis modeling an aspect of nature we have not experienced at all.
Is our language adequate enough to model a multiverse theory?
WHY?
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Re: II. How We Know - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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Flann wrote:and one wonders what he might do given omnipotence.
yes he might wipe out nearly the whole population of the earth :-D perish, the thought.
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Re: II. How We Know - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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I'm still reading this section, but I would say that Carrier makes it very clear that there are several plausible possibilities to the beginning of the universe, each far more plausible than the God "theory." I continue to find it strange that Carrier actually talks about the God "theory" at all, let alone give it so much space in his book. Because God is never on equal footing with science and it seems to me that pitting the two against each other must be a fallacy of some sort. (False dichotomy?) Obviously Carrier does have an axe to grind when it comes to religion.

And, yet, Carrier makes it very clear that science doesn't have definite answers to the big questions. He states this several times. Here's the first paragraph of 3. The Nature and Origin of the Universe:
Carrier wrote:Where did the universe come from? Why does it exist at all? Why is it the particular way it is? These are some of the Big Questions, which scientists are now attempting to answer. But no one really knows the answers yet. We have too little information, and too many possibilities. Any explanation that anyone can offer, including “God did it,” would only be hypothetical at this point. But our worldview must suggest some answers, it must make predictions, or else it won’t be sound. No one can claim scientific certainty yet. But our answers can still be plausible, a good metaphysical inference from all the facts at hand—maybe even the most plausible, the best inference yet.
What follows is an exceptionally well written section on what makes a plausible hypothesis. And why the "Goddidit" response always causes many more problems than it answers. Carrier then discusses two theories in partiicular—Chaotic Inflation and Smolin’s ‘selection theory’, explaining the strengths and weaknesses of each. The state of Cosmology is clearly very speculative. Here's why Carrier personally favors Smolin's theory.
Carrier wrote:While Chaotic Inflation theory was primarily developed by Andrei Linde in the 1980’s, and it has gained wide support today, another theory was developed by Lee Smolin in the 1990’s, which most scientists agree has some merit, too. Unlike Chaotic Inflation, Smolin’s ‘selection theory’ requires one completely ad hoc assumption: a new physical law. This is still fewer than the many ad hoc assumptions required for a god theory, involving numerous new laws governing his many amazing powers and properties, and countless maneuverings to explain, or explain away, all the strange evidence we actually have. So even if Smolin Selection is less plausible than Chaotic Inflation, it is still more plausible than a god. However, unlike Chaotic Inflation again (and very much unlike any god theory), Smolin’s theory actually has some evidence that supports it over all contenders. And for that reason I think it is, at present, the strongest candidate, the best prediction yet.
When Carrier says that Smolin's theory is "at present, the strongest candidate, the best prediction yet" he is very obviously ready to relinquish it as new evidence comes in. You would be pretty foolish to get too attached to theories that are obviously in a constant state of flux.
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Re: II. How We Know - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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No, his language in his manifesto isn't "soft" ..,
particularly when he introduces the multiverse as a "theory" - a reasonable theory, on more than one occasion.
His language in the book is soft, see Geo's quotes. Regarding the use of the word "theory", he also says the idea of a god is a "theory". What connotation of the word is he using?
Let's be real about this - you can say "inference" is our evidence here, but it really boils down to your faith
Hmm. I don't believe the multiverse theories are true. I believe they are possibly true. You forget I'm in this game for the truth, not to take sides and win points. The multiverse theories are speculative at best, but they do arise from inference. A convergence of data "suggests" them. Not to say there is any evidence for them. To infer something is have a reason for it.

You're looking for a hard stance in either direction, and we simply don't have enough information for that. The best bet going doesn't mean we put all our chips on the table. Here's an interesting read on the conclusions some had over bicep2's gravity wave discovery:

http://www.nature.com/news/gravitationa ... cs-1.14910

"the findings would agree remarkably well with ‘chaotic inflation’, a simple version of inflation Linde developed 30 years ago. In Linde's model, inflation never completely ends, stopping only in limited pockets of space, while continuing with its exponential expansion elsewhere. Chaotic inflation would produce not just our Universe but a multiverse containing many pocket universes, each with its own laws of physics, an idea that critics say would be untestable."
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