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ant wrote:Science does not tell us God exists or does not exist.

if we apply science to a specific God's text it may tell us "this book is not to be taken literally".

if we apply science to specific claims made about a specific God, for example that He answers prayer, we may get an indication if the evidence backs up this assertion.

ie. do the children of believers suffer less physical injuries as a result of all that prayer constantly being offered, or another idea, do the children raised in a specific tradition suffer injury less thus indicating that one god seems to answer prayer more often than another perhaps indicating that one particular god exists more than another, when it comes to answering prayer.

A giraffe might seem more efficient with a short neck nerve, but evolution provided no path to enable such a radical mutation, so it has a nerve that goes right down its neck and back up, iirc. Similarly with morality, we may be able to invent a theoretical morality that is ideal, but we have no path to achieve such a morality socially, because it is not grounded in precedent

This is like saying that in order to evolve further, a giraffe must first devolve. Going forward in time, there is no need for the giraffe to pay homage to his evolutionary lineage. The analogy doesn't hold. The giraffe's current form can still be said to be grounded in precedent, because his is a product of precedent, though not needing to devolve in order to move forward.

The great example of a failed moral promise is communism, which presented itself as an ideal morality, but in practice produced terror, stagnation and tyranny. Incremental adaptation from existing moral systems, such as Christianity, should be seen as a more viable method to achieve moral progress than construction of a rational philosophy severed from its context.

Pointing to a failed political system does not mean Christianity or any other religion offers the best alternative, through incremental adaptation or otherwise. This is a false dichotomy of sorts, ignoring the existence of more modern moral systems that have neither the failings of Christianity nor the failings of Communism. The context of such morals systems may be required by the scholars that develop them, but not by the general populace that follows them.

Within the scientific framework, fine-tuning is actually omnipotent and omnipresent and effectively infinite and eternal, traditionally core attributes of God.

You said that if something is not within the finely-tuned laws of physics, it simply will not happen. Therefore fine tuning is omnipresent. But that's a bald assertion that ignores the possibility of a multiverse. How could fine tuning be omnipresent if it isn't realized in all parts of the multiverse? To maintain this position, you need to fully reject the idea of a multiverse. I agree that we may not live in a multiverse, but this position is not the same as saying the multiverse theories are definitely false.

My view is that Christianity is all about how humanity has lost contact with this natural intentional structure of the anthropic direction of reality.

Modern moral systems rest on the axiom that we should promote human flourishing. They are no different from the ideals you champion - the "anthropic direction of reality". If we have lost contact with this wisdom in modern times, we've done so with Christianity as the dominant belief system. Apparently, something isn't working. Forming one more denomination amongst the tens of thousands that already exist will do no good.

But the magical dream of bells and smells transports believers to an imaginary heaven in church, and this perceived psychological benefit of the fantasy of transubstantiation completely outweighs any scientific critique of what is actually happening, when you are inside the faith structure.

Scientific critique understands the benefit of ritual and sanctified belief, as shown in psychology. If you want peaceful minds and healthy psychology, distill what has worked within buddhism, since it is so much more effective at achieving the ends. Secular group meditation and the sanctification of humanity as a whole is a demonstrably suitable replacement for superstitious ritual. Its effects are profound, but it is not popular because it is not as sticky a meme as Christianity. Christianity is sticky for all the wrong reasons, and the sticky parts will cling to whatever denomination you try to create. It's the evolutionary algorithm applied to information. What you hope to achieve won't spread beyond a few people without the unseemly sticky superstitious beliefs that give Christianity its survival power.

My view is that there is a deeply accurate cosmology within Christianity that provides an unconscious driver for its popularity.

In order to be an unconscious driver, the person must first already possess the knowledge within his unconscious. Meaning, something that has already been learned in his or her lifetime. Most people know nothing of the concepts that dwell hidden in Christian texts, so the knowledge can't be unconscious. You first have to understand cosmology, then turn around and study the bible for it to stir up hidden connections. Not only that, but the cosmology must be specifically related to the instances where Christianity may or may not refer to it, which is specialized education.

Deconstructing and analysing this cosmology, for example in the symbolism of the chi rho cross, provides a path to rebase faith in reason.

I don't see how attaching meaning to a symbol is a way to ground anything in reason. Unless it's already universally understood what the symbol means. Take words or math, for example. Unless you hope to re-educate the entire world on what esoteric symbols in Christianity should mean, you're left with what they do mean. In other words, what most people take them to mean. See Carrier's chapter on the use of words to see what I mean.

youkrst wrote: if we apply science to a specific God's text it may tell us "this book is not to be taken literally".

if we apply science to specific claims made about a specific God, for example that He answers prayer, we may get an indication if the evidence backs up this assertion.

ie. do the children of believers suffer less physical injuries as a result of all that prayer constantly being offered, or another idea, do the children raised in a specific tradition suffer injury less thus indicating that one god seems to answer prayer more often than another perhaps indicating that one particular god exists more than another, when it comes to answering prayer.

The ways and degrees to which varying Christians interpret the bible is one issue here.
I don't need science to tell me that not everything there is literal.I can demonstrate myself that it's not all to be taken that way.One obvious example; the book of Revelation is saturated with symbolic imagery, rooted in the old testament and not pagan myth incidentally. Do I then interpret the "lake of fire" image there, literally? Of course not. But it does represent something or the image is meaningless.
So my approach is determined by context. So what is poetry, narrative history and biography and what is metaphor or literal or symbolism are indicated by various structures of literary norms.
If you reject the supernatural you are indicating an apriori naturalist assumption and worldview.My worldview is Christian theism.

I think you go to the an extreme Youkrst in simply categorising it all as myth.We've had this discussion before and frankly I don't think the pagan parallels view which you and Richard Carrier espouse is one that can be justified when examined by it's critics.
It is the overwhelming view of mainstream ancient historians that an historical person Jesus Christ existed and was crucified under Pontius Pilate.
Carrier is out on a limb here.
On science and prayer;
Carrier debated David Marshall. Marshall provided plenty of examples of answers to prayer.I gave the example of Hudson Taylor.These are prima facie natural coincidences so a scientist could interpret them in this way and rule them out on this basis. How explanatory this would actually be is highly questionable in terms of probability and likelihood.
Apart from that,it is clear that guaranteed freedom from sickness,disease and death in this life is categorically excluded in any fair and extensive reading on this subject in scripture, though the possibility of healing is included.

In debating Marshall, Carrier basically attacked Christianity on the basis of what he would do if he were a divine person in Jesus' shoes at the time. Richard is a nice guy,unlike Jesus.
The problem of evil and suffering and how it relates to God is not something that can be glibly decided in a brief debate.

I personally, am very happy that world renowned author and speaker Carrier is not a divine person, as his hostility to Christianity is a troubling aspect of his psyche, and one wonders what he might do given omnipotence.

Do I then interpret the "lake of fire" image there, literally? Of course not. But it does represent something or the image is meaningless.

What do you use to interpret the passage?

Carrier debated David Marshall. Marshall provided plenty of examples of answers to prayer.I gave the example of Hudson Taylor.These are prima facie natural coincidences so a scientist could interpret them in this way and rule them out on this basis. How explanatory this would actually be is highly questionable in terms of probability and likelihood.

Such coincidences are guaranteed under naturalism. You can appeal to something supernatural if you wish, but that'd ad hoc, unnecessary. This is the fifth or sixth time I'm going to ask. What method would you use to determine whether a prayer was naturalistic coincidence, or supernatural intervention? This is at the heart of the matter.

It is the overwhelming view of mainstream ancient historians that an historical person Jesus Christ existed and was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

Given the armor that Christianity has against any contrary questioning or theses, we should expect most scholars to agree that an historical Christ was real. But that fact should also make us wonder if the consensus is based on truth or on status quo. Until relatively recently, to question Christianity would mark you as a heretic and outcast, especially the heart of Christianity, the historicity of Jesus. Given the social environment, even if I had evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, I'd hesitate to bring it to the fore. Not in fear of people such as yourself, but the extremists lurk in the shadows.

Hi Interbane. They are naturalistic events which can be "explained" by theories of possiblity, and probability of extraordinary multiple coincidence or by divine providential working by God as one would expect based on scripture and find experientially in reality.
Given Carrier's, machine gun analogy I infer design from the bullet hole less silhouette.I infer providential design from extremely improbable coincidental events tailored to specific prayer requests.
It doesn't convince you. It convinces me.
"Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire" You tell me if I should interpret this literally or not.

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 doesn't seem to have done Carrier's career and fortunes much harm,except maybe in terms of credibility.The same might apply to his scientific musings.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.