Again, the 'unbiased' point doesn't make any sense. Anybody who witnessed Jesus coming back from the dead after three days would have no doubt become one of the first Christians, and then he wouldn't be unbiased anymore. If you were defining 'unbiased' in any fair way, then Paul would be your example, who say the risen Christ while a persecutor of Christians.
"Irreversible" doesn't mean anything here other than "They don't spontaneously reverse themselves", unless you intend to be making claims about what science will never be able to accomplish. Besides, this is a red herring- if medical science[i] did [/i] establish that it was perfectly natural and conceivable for people to come back from the dead after three days from time to time, then the argument would just be that there's a perfectly natural explanation for the Resurrection! It would be like a starfish claiming to be the Starfish Messiah because he grew back one of his arms that was cut off.
To the fact that people don’t tend to come back from the dead, and that medical science can’t explain how someone would? My rebuttal is that that’s precisely why Jesus doing so is evidence of His being God.
The strength of an inductive argument can only be based on background information. My argument is that we have all the evidence you could fairly expect to have for the event in question, and more besides. If the claim is incredible, it’s because of how you feel about the possibility of miracles.
Again, Paul is the perfect example of what you’re after. In fact, he was more of a unbiased witness than Pilate- he was downright hostile. But I suppose, if Pontius did encounter the risen Christ, instead of Paul, Pontius would be the biased Church Father, and you’d be asking where Saul’s independant account is.
No, because if they mentioned it to any degree that you’d consider reliable, they most likely wouldn’t be extra-biblical anymore. What you’re asking is, “aside from the best evidence we have of the Ressurection of Christ, how good is the case for the Ressurection of Christ?” Not very good, as it turns out. And no, I don’t find it odd that there aren’t any witnesses of the Resurrection or of the Resurrected Christ who weren’t His followers, didn’t immediately become one of His followers, heard enough about the Resurrection to write about it, were literate, and had their writings survive to the present day. What we have is more than adequate if someone doesn’t discard supernatural claims out of hand, and if we had more, you’d no doubt still be asking for more than that.
Right, you're demanding a scientific explanation for a miracle, such that if you get it, it will have a 'scientific explanation', and won't be evidence for the existence of God anyway. If that's not a presumption of physicalism, what is it?
Point taken. Yes, the resurrection of a person would definitely be out of the ordinary for the experiences of most people. However, your point that 'they have no good reason to believe such a thing has ever happened' is still circular. There's more an adequate reason to believe it, if one is not incoherently demanding a scientific explanation for an alleged miracle.
Or, put another way: If one is open-minded toward the existence of the supernatural, then anything goes including resurrections, virgin births, martians, fairies, elves, the luminous ether, and anything else that anyone hopes exists.
If you disagree with that, then assuming the existence of the supernatural, what possible occurrences beyond outright contradictions is it possible for reasonable people to rule out as being unlikely beyond a perverse doubt?
And if it is possible for reasonable people to rule out some claims as being unlikely beyond a perverse doubt (and I hope you respond to this if you respond to nothing else I write) then on what basis can they do so?
Alright… I now have an open mind… the supernatural is potentially possible… present me with evidence…
you show me 33% procent of the worlds population which all claim that they have witnessed some kind of personal revelation and that they therefor know god is real… I point to the other 77% of the worlds population who claim that the people you are pointing at are lying/delusional/mislead…
I win this round…
You point at the bible and state that the accounts given were true and no falsehood was made up about the miracles described…
I point to the falshoods demonstrated in the bible… and the reliability of claims made that the bible was mostly pieced together by other pre-existing myths and legends…
You show that SOME of the bible is true… I show that SOME of it is false… you then say that SOME of the miracles were true… I ask how you could possible know that? we’ve already established that the bible contains falshood… how do you determine which parts are true and which parts are made up?
Perhaps the ressurection was a metaphore for building a statue of Jesus… on which his message was written or some such… It’s not writen with any more authority than Noah’s arc…
Secondly… while you claim an open mind can see the evidence of these truthes… you somehow believe that evidence is a book… the contents of which you consider true for some inexplicable reason…
If all we need is an old book that containes some historically verifiable data then I can think of 5 gods to believe in off the bat… and i’m sure there are more
Semantics… if you want to equate the two words then that’s your beef with the english language… There is a CLEAR distinction between the nature of the chair i’m in and this “god” person…
[/quote]
EDIT:
What i’m really trying to get at here… is WHAT should be count as evidence? an open mind does not mean that we should believe EVERYTHING i take it… so I must ask… what should count as evidence?
Then I’d say that the way in which you use Christianity here would be critically important. Are you going to concentrate on the philosophical side or the historical side of Christian apologetics? In your opening post you didn’t claim much on the philosophical front – just that Christianity is not prima facie ridiculous, and that it can be the basis for a satisfying philosophical system. I agree completely, but I also find that certain atheistic systems are equally plausible and satisfying, so this doesn’t mean much to me unless you also want to critique those atheistic systems.
On the other hand if we take the historical side of Christian apologetics we need to know some history. But even using a historical approach, there are very important philosophical questions of methodology. Which brings me to the following:
I don’t believe that we are asked to read history in general in any one way. If there is a general principle to deciding whether a historical document is accurate, it would be to look at the writer, his community, his circumstances, try to figure out his motivations, etc. and thereby decide whether we likely got the whole and unvarnished truth from that writer.
As an example, some apologists like to compare the events of Jesus’ life to Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon. Jesus’ life is better documented than the Rubicon crossing, they say, so if we believe in that we should believe in the gospel accounts of Jesus, miracles and all. The implicit assumption here is that credibility is only a function of the number of documents you can wave at your opponent.
But the argument fails on that absurd assumption because credibility is also a function of who you’re listening to, and what their motives for preserving or distorting the truth might be. A small amount of historical documentation about relatively mundane happenings, like troop movements and military conquests, is very credible because nobody has any motive to distort or fabricate it. There’s no reward in getting people to falsely believe Caesar crossed the Rubicon. There are rewards for distorting history when you believe you are in the end times and salvation lies in believing in Jesus’ name.
Thus, the gospel accounts fall under greater suspicion not just because they contain miracles, but also because the writers were intensely interested in getting people to believe a certain theory about who Jesus was. And if you look at the history this way, a lot of things make sense. For example, the progression in the gospels from Mark, where Jesus is a miracle working exorcist who vaguely insinuates his divinity, to John, where Jesus the God-man is constantly making careful theological statements about his relationship to God the Father. It is rather unbelievable that Mark, Matthew, and Luke didn’t find all the stuff John claims Jesus said important, or that it wasn’t right for their audience. Most likely, the community around John believed certain things about Jesus, wanted others to believe those things, so they wrote a portrait of Jesus where he said things supporting their case.
Once you allow that the writers might have changed the record of Jesus’ life for religious reasons, the whole enterprise falls under suspicion. So yes, historical documentation is evidence of Christian claims, but it must be examined the same way we examine any claim of fact – we look at who’s saying it, how they’re saying it, what they’re trying to accomplish, etc. and figure out whether the source is credible. The fact that this is pretty difficult in the case of the Christian scriptures doesn’t mean we should just take them on faith. There are reasons for suspecting the gospels’ authors of bending the truth.
Certainly, and that’s why I hedged by saying that there are “reasonable alternatives” to the orthodox interpretation. All other things being equal, we will believe the story presented to us, in this case the orthodox interpretation of the gospels. But I find Christianity intellectually and morally unsatisfying for various reasons, so I am going to prefer those reasonable alternatives to the orthodox interpretation. There will likely be no decisive historical grounds for preferring one interpretation over the other, so our differences will come down to personal and philosophical issues with the worldview Christianity/theism proposes. And at this point I would hope we could achieve some mutual understanding.
As you have mentioned, people of various religions claim miracles to this day as well, and this is another aspect of the historical record we’d have to discuss. Again here, who is making the claim and their psychology will be relevant, as will the fact that the history of miracles is pervaded by various ingenious frauds, misunderstandings, hysteria, and other such defects of human nature. The human truth finding psychology seems to be vulnerable when it comes to miracles, and this prompts a skeptical attitude (so this attitude is not just because of a philosophical predisposition against miracles, which I’m not sure I even have).
reality check - I didn’t call appeals to authority fallacies. What I would call them is bad philosophy, under certain circumstances - circumstances which I have outlined. This isn’t empirical science we are talking - no matter how empirical anyone here tries to get. You may know some rule that you have read somewhere - but it sounds as if it was written by some “experts”. Good philosophers write their own rules, sometimes. I am attempting to examine just what a good rule for this circumstance is.
I have not misunderstood what an appeal to authority is - you have. Your example, your counter-example, is incoherent in light of your case for appeals to authority - to appeal to non-experts is just as much an appeal to authority - to the authority of non-experts. There is no logical difference within the context of my comments. You are, in other words, comparing apples to apples, and choosing apples.
I am not suggesting that one group be believed over another - a priori. I am suggesting that trusting one’s own senses is preferable to trusting others. You are merely talking politics here. I am talking philosophy.
Ucci - myself, I have no opinion on black holes. I don’t really need one, because the existence or non-existence of these holes has no discernible effect on my life.
I have already admitted that I will accept testimony (reality check - reading comprehension, please) - but this testimony must still include a common denominator with my own experience. In fact, you could perhaps back me into a corner over black holes - their presence in the Universe wouldn’t alter my behavior (accept for that admission that they exist). I have nothing to gain or lose in this.
I think anyone who calls Christians generally non-intellectuals hasn’t read any of your posts. In any event, it’s just propaganda and ad hominem - to label Christians as stupid is not relevant - these people should really be ignored.
I didn’t mean to suggest that you should be convincing me - it’s just that you don’t need to present a convincing argument to another theist. What sense it makes to an atheist is just a measure - I didn’t mean that it should be your actual mission. I was unclear about that.
What I should have asked you, but didn’t, is this (as I wanted to keep it simple) - what of these personal experiences with God? That would be the real answer to my other question, I think. If the testimony of others holds a common denominator with those. But I don’t know what those experiences are. So I don’t know about any commonality.
In all, if your reason to include an appeal to authority is to answer an ad hominem, it is not relevant. “Christians are dumb” is politics, not philosophy. And it’s not even good politics.
But your next-to-last post provides the real answer. All good philosophy recognises its assumptions. And its ultimate circularity. That rationality is the basis for your belief, in your case. That makes you, as a metaphysician, a rationalist. Or almost does. But you are taking this discussion away from evidence - which is a rationalist thing to do. You are claiming that the appeal to the senses is not enough. That there must be some rational basis upon which to do this, and that the testimony of others is a likely candidate, perhaps among others.
We would soon part ways, then - the rationalist and the perspectivist have less in common than the “physicalist” and the “religionist”. That’s okay - there are certain divides too wide to bridge. But I think I have discerned the real basis of your position - and I am not sure I have known this before, which makes the conversation worthwhile for me.
Since I haven’t seen it mentioned, I have to throw in this tidbit.
It would seem somewhat important to mention that human psychology dictates if a person or group of people is told something is true enough times, even without any kind of evidence, or even in spite of evidence to the contrary, it is accepted as truth.
Think Nazi Germany. Think Muslims. Think young earth creationists. Think the entire earth’s population who thought you could get a cold by being cold before germ theory.
The reason why I think this is an important point is because it forces us to examine evidence outside of personal experience or group think before making a conclusion. If we know for a fact that a person, if told enough times, will believe absolutely anything to be true, then word of mouth without empirical evidence becomes much less credible. I hope I’m making sense here.
Haha, it was still in the buffer, I’m a genius after all!
Reality Check
Perhaps, but before I get to that, if you’re saying that a person’s mind should not be open toward the existence of the supernatural, then why are you making the discussion of the Resurrection about evidence, if no amount of evidence would be sufficient? It seems the real disagreement here is metaphysical, not evidential.
Mad Man P
Haha, because they’re atheists, you mean? No, the vast bulk of that 77% would also claim to have witnessed a personal revelation from their divine power. Heck, Muslims and Hindus even tend to ascribe supernatural significance to Jesus. That believers haggle over the particulars is no boon for the atheist.
So, does your two sentences beat my two sentences by default, or are we actually going to open up a whole discussion on the point?
I know you aren't asking me for 100% certainty, so with that in mind, I already told you how I can possibly know that- the other 2.5 legs of the argument. All I'm doing is reading the New Testament in the way it's been understood for the 1900 years of it's history, in the company of good scholars, and wise people, and in the context of a coherent philosophy that is is useful in describing the world. Your understanding of the Bible is one, but it's not the only one, the way you present it is not something agreed upon by all the right people (like for example, the existence of Jesus), and as one who's only a moderately weak historian (but who can Google like a fiend), I don't see why I have to feel threatened by it. Any specific criticism I level of your interpretation is going to be more philosophical than historical, because that's what I know, and this is it- your understanding of the Scriptures is necessitated by an incoherent position on materialism. The evidence that the New Testament is legitimate is much stronger than the evidence that it was invented from previous myths, IF one does not feel forced to accept the latter.
Sure, show me where a 1st or 2nd century scholar of the New Testament interpreted it that way, and you might be on to something. Remember, we don't just have the Gospels, we have the rest of the New Testament, and all the extra-biblical letters that have been preserved where the first Christians talk pretty explicitly about what was meant by what they said.
No more clear than the distinction between the nature of that chair you’re in, and the nature of a radio wave. Materialism should have become extinct as soon as we discovered what a lightning bolt was. I’m not saying that material things and immaterial things have the same nature, I reject monism too. I’m saying that coming up with these two groups was completely arbitrary- we could just as plausibly had 5, or 50.
aporia
I guess I’m going to concentrate on whatever questions people ask me! I was hoping and expecting the philosophical leg of my little stool would be the one most focused on, but it’s not going that way.
The problem I have with this, as I hinted with Reality Check, is that if we actually try to describe the person who would be an acceptable source of information about Jesus (to the skeptic), we come up with such an implausible figure that we'd never accept [i]his[/i] existence without his own four gospels.
Yes, I think we completely agree on that, and that was my point. A non-supernatural interpretation of the New Testament is only as valid as the non-supernatural philosophy that underlies it. If materialism (for lack of a better word) is one of several valid options, then so is the understanding of Christ that follows from it. If materialism is actually a sub-par option compared to theism, then likewise.
This is something I don’t know much about, but I have much the same skepticism as I do for history- is there anyway to do psychology consistently in this regard, that again doesn’t just refer to how a materialist must interpret miraculous claims? I feel the same way about this as I do about determinism. If people from all conceivable walks of live and temperaments have reported miracles (granted, some more than others), then it seems to me anything we say about their psychology is going to be based on a general premise of what someone who would make up or be deluded by such an experience must be like, and not any actual facts about actual individuals.
Faust- you’re right that the sense my argument makes to an atheist is a good measure of it’s value. The argument just hasn’t gone in that direction, though. I’ve always thought the historical questions were more valuable when when one religious person is talking to another, and mostly a red-herring when an atheist is talking to a theist, since their standards of evidence are going to be so radically different.
Experiences of God come in three major types that I know of. The first is the flat out miraculous- you see or hear Christ, or an angel, or whatever, with the same senses as anything else is seen or heard. This happens more often than a person would suppose, but seems to be reserved mostly for people who are going to, again, straddle the credibility divide, like monks. If the person was not already a devoted religious figure, they immediately thereafter become one, and one just has to accept that such people 'don't count' when talking to a typical skeptic.
The second type I can think of is interaction through prayer. This is when prayer produces immediate results, like comfort, or an answer to a question, or a sense of communication with the divine in some other way. The best thing to compare that to would be an unexpected thought- though that's not precisely right, once a person has been doing it for a while. You pray for the solution to a problem, and one 'occurs' to you, but it also comes with the immediate "Oh, why didn't [i]I[/i] think of that?" sensation, as though hearing it from someone else. The experience of God through worship in Church is like this, too.
The third type would be observation of God's work in one's life. The best way to describe that would be a synchronization of events that comes together [i]just so[/i], such that it not only makes sense to understand it as having been orchestrated by a being with the qualities God is alleged to possess, but also paves the way for future actions on your own part that would be consistent with what God would want you to do. That's probably the most active sort of religious experience in my life.
Thanks, Ucci. What I am getting at is that it seems to me that you have a stronger case when you make a logical (if not quite causal) link between your own personal experience and the testimony of others than you do if you list these two arguments separately. Draw the analogy, in other words.
Surely, you shouldn’t waste time trying to convince an atheist - but sensical is sensical, presumably to everyone. In practise, that’s not true as much as we would like, of course.
The connection between prayer and results is inductive, I think - so it might not play to your overall plan here. It’s a prejudice I hold, as you may know. But even the rationalist needs a little induction. It wouldn’t bridge the gap between a rationalist and a perspectivist - but then again, almost no one is a perspectivist, anyway.
No… they are not atheists… They are simply convinced otherwise despite the same amount and “type” of evidence as you have. I made this point to show that an appeal to authority is inherently flawed… not to mention, not in your favor… whatever internal disagreements the 77% might have they all agree that your convictions about the chrsitian faith are NOT justified.
that’s a cheap shot! If you really want to debate my position on materialism then do it on the materialism thread… this is just cruel because I don’t wish to begin defending it here…
quite frankly I think what I need here is a clear epistomology on your part… I must know your criteria for knowledge if I am to investigate internal inconsistencies and how you can come to accept the “evidence” as such…
I take it we both agree that any body of evidence is inherently mute… and that it is we who must interpret them… ?`
I ask what tools you bring… what presuppositions… what epistomology…
trace for me the line to theism… if even roughly…
I believe it will prove vital to our discussion…
P.S. feel free to take your time responding to this… I know i’m asking for allot here and I would rather sit through one clear explination than getting a few one-liners that will only delay the needed explination…
Well, that's the problem, isn't it? I need a clear epistemology, ontology, and evidential support. Then, I need clear refutations of everybody else's epistemology, ontology, and evidential arguments for non-theism. Then, I apparently need concise, individual arguments against every other religion ever conceived. And then, though nobody has brought it up yet, I'll no doubt need to argue definitively for my particular sect or denomination.
But at least your request is something I'm interested in, and knowledgeable in. I'll give you some epistemological info tonight or tomorrow.
If you read perhaps a bit more carefully you will notice that I never wrote that you did call an appeal to authority a fallacy. I called the appeal to authority a fallacy for the very good reason that such an appeal is a fallacy given certain circumstances. I even outlined how those circumstances applied in reference to the question we are about in this thread.
Sorry, but I find that entire passage incredibly arrogant. It is far from obvious that you are a good philosopher or even a philosopher of any stripe, except perhaps in the broadest possible interpretation of that term.
I have no concrete idea about what any of that means but I sense that you disagree, however vaguely your disagreement is expressed, with the notion that an appeal to certain authorities under certain conditions can make a legitimate point in argument.
Again, I’ll just point out that you seem to misunderstand what an appeal to authority is. It is not always a fallacy. Indeed, the appeal to certain kinds of authority can be a very good reason, in combination with other reasons, to hold a particular belief. You yourself hold many beliefs primarily on this basis (although it’s something to which you are apparently oblivious). Almost all of us do.
An appeal to authority is a fallacy only in certain situations. One of these situations occurs when there is no obvious connection to be made between the matter under discussion and the authority on which the appeal is based.
For example, the automotive engineering community presumably knows something about car engines but it is not obvious that it knows much about heart problems; therefore if the matter under discussion has to do with car engines, then the consensus opinion of this group is relevant. If the matter concerns cardiac disease, it’s irrelevant.
See how that works?
To believe that an appeal to the consensus opinion among acknowledged experts in a specific field under discussion is the equivalent of an appeal to the opinion of one’s own circle of friends who have no specialized training or experience in that particular field is just silly.
No, you are not suggesting that but if you knew what you were talking about, you would be suggesting that.
This is because there is good reason to seriously consider the opinion of consensus, relevant, expert opinion on a matter under discussion and not likewise to just as seriously consider the opinion of people who have no obvious expertise or ability as it relates to that matter.
This clearly does not mean that anyone’s opinion should be disregarded a priori. It does mean, however, that some opinion on some matters is more relevant, more informed and more likely to reflect reality than is random opinion, and therefore that this former opinion should be given more weight in one’s efforts to find the truth of a matter than should the latter opinion.
What this comes down to in the end, as it does with most philosophy, is just commonsense.
The reason that one seeks the opinion of two or three cardiologists and not the opinion of two or three automotive engineers when a serious medical condition arises in relation to one’s heart is because those doctors are experts in the related field. Since they have specialized training and experience about heart problems their opinion is relatively more valuable than is some random group of automotive engineers’.
According to your misinformed opinion, however, one will be just as well off by consulting a few automotive engineers about one’s heart ailment as one will be by consulting cardiologists – and that is dumb, dumb, dumb.
There are several excellent online sources that explain fallacies of various kinds including the appeal to authority. I suggest you google up a couple and educate yourself on the matter. You might begin by going here: appeal to authority
Why should Uccisore’s obvious intelligence (or Richard Swineburne’s or Alvin Plantinga’s) matter in regard to what is true of the intelligence of the majority of the world’s billions of theists???
Wouldn’t the average educational levels attained by the two groups, or their relative average IQ scores as near as can be determined, etc., be a much better indicator? Of course it would! Again, this is just commonsense.
To argue as you argue here is to commit the fallacy of the hasty generalization.
I don’t recall anyone in this thread labeling all Christians as stupid but perhaps I missed it. Then again, given your penchant for logical fallacy, perhaps more likely this is just a case in which you’ve constructed a strawman to pummel.
You really should check out those logical fallacies sites, faust. IMHO, they would immeasureably improve your ability to construct a valid argument.
To make my position clearer, I never said that one should be entirely close-minded to the possibility that something which might be defined as the supernatural exists. What I’ve said, or tried to imply at any rate, is that one should not confuse this trivial epistemic possibility with any sort of tangible probability. IOW, simply because it is possible that an event with a non-zero probability of occurrence might have occurred is not the first reason to believe that it did occur. To rationally believe that such did occur, sufficient evidence or convincing argument is necessary.
Now, when you have the time, I’d really like to read your thoughts on how, given the assumption that supernaturalism is true, the more likely to be true can be discerned from the less likely to be true. If there is no such method, then supernaturalism seems to lead to epistemic chaos.
To expand on this a bit by way of example: Since it is just as possible that jets fly because tiny, invisible, flying elves carry jets on their backs as it is that they fly for reasons outlined by scientific principle (and it IS just as possible that they do), for what reasons do you believe, given your epistemology, that airplanes fly for the reasons given by scientific principle and not for the reason that tiny invisible elves carry them on their backs?
I suspect that the reason you accept the scientific explanation is not solely because the “elf explanation” is not a widely touted or believed explanation. I suspect that you hold this belief for other, more central reasons. Assuming that there are other reasons for your belief, what are these reasons and why do you find these reasons inapplicable to all other supernatural explanation?
I think I can answer this, and work towards Mad Man's questions about epistemology with one answer. I suppose this has been coming for a long time, and might be the subject of a future essay of mine, but I may as well get it established now.
Let me tell you a narrative. Back in the day, we were dualists, or we were not. A materialist was someone who thought that the everything that happened was a result of some physical object doing something, and when I say 'physical object' I mean it in precisely the crudest terms- you can see in Thomas Hobbes, for example, the belief that human movement had at it's root the vibration or tugging of tiny cords, or something similar. As contrast to this, was the 'supernatural' or 'immaterial', which some others alleged the mind to be, or God to be, or etc.
Since then, however, we've made discoveries. The nature of electricity, gravitation, atomic forces, radio waves and other sorts of radiation, and perhaps quantum behavior all completely defy a view of materialism from Hobbes' day. From his perspective, you, and any modern scientist, are already immaterialists if you think radio waves aren't made up of tiny bits of sand or other matter flying about, propelled by the movements of previous bits of sand. Materialism is a done deal. Defeated by science, no need to talk about it anymore.
Except, of course, that we love [i]words.[/i] In addition to 'pertaining to matter', materialism had the side definition of 'not-supernatural'. Not wanting to abandon this, we've expanding the definition of 'material' or 'matter' a little bit with every new discovery. As it stands right now, 'physical' doesn't mean much of anything at all, except 'not-supernatural'.
But what's supernatural? If you look at that category, you've got demons, ghosts, monsters, psychic powers, gods, angels, and a bunch of other stuff. Let's be frank here- a ghost and an angel may have no more in common than a tree and an x-ray.
My contention is that the distinction between material and otherwise is completely arbitrary. There is absolutely no good reason why x-rays, rocks, gravitation, strong and weak nuclear forces, people, horses and glass are lumped into the same massive category, and God, restless native american nature spirits, and chi are not.
Rebuttals? 'Physical' is a set of things that have causal influence on each other, that's the connection. Refutation: every supernatural thing ever proposed has an alleged effect on something the materialist considers physical, from God creating the universe, to black magic making people sick.
Physical is a set of those things observable by the senses. Refutation: Astrophysicists regularly talk about things that will never be observed by any senses, they are known through an indirect effect of an effect of an effect. No more direct, in any event, than observing God through His effects on things we can observe.
So what's left? [i]Material[/i] means nothing more than 'those things materialists have chosen to examine and take seriously' and [i]immaterial[/i] means 'everything else'. Science as a social institution is [i]applied materialism[/i], and so the central claim of materialism is nothing more than "The acceptance existence of the stuff materialists tend to accept", and that's all.
So, when I'm asked how I can justify an epistemology that includes the possibility of the supernatural, I'm left not understanding how it makes a difference, or indeed, what specifically is being asked. Something supernatural is just something that doesn't happen very often, or something that we don't understand very well, and one should examine the plausibility of that as they would anything else- evidence and so on. Now, that's not to say there aren't entities I don't believe in. Take Bigfoot for example. I don't believe in Bigfoot, so when somebody tells me Bigfoot is the cause of an effect, I don't believe them without first having some reason to change my mind about the existence of Bigfoot. But what I don't do, and what I don't think is reasonable, is rejecting the existence of Bigfoot because it belongs to some gigantic category of alleged entities that I reject [i]en masse[/i]. Not, at least, without some universal characteristic that ties Bigfoot to all those other objects, and is also the same characteristic through which I reject them. There is no such characteristic that runs common through the 'supernatural'.
I’ll stop there, I’ll deal more with my epistemology later, though you can find a great deal of what I think here:
we’re not supposed to be talking about it at all… you’re the only one who keeps brining it up…
I suppose you wish to alter the title from “materialist” to “naturalist”… alright then… let’s call it naturalism.
That which cannot (by definition) be explained or arrived at by science or the scientific method is supernatural.
Except they are both supernatural in nature.
of course it is… it’s called language… but that language must reflect that there is in fact a difference between my chair and a bolt a lightning… other than in apperence and function… one is energy… the other is matter… radio waves are EM radiations at a certain frequency. still well within the realm of “matter/energy” nothing ethereal about it… same with x-rays and microwaves and gamma-rays and various forms of radiation…
I cannot pick up “god” on my radio, however… so he is clearly something different… neither can i capture his reflection on camera, sensative to x-rays or any other em frequency… whatever the nature of this “god” thing is, it is clearly not the same nature as the rest of the things you are mentioning… clearly there is a difference… and we might as well have our language reflect that difference…
Let us call the nature of god “spirit”… and say that there is a difference between matter, energy and spirit… after which we can show matter to exist… energy to exist… but now need to show spirit to exist… how do we do that?
I’m not asking any such thing… I just want to know your epistomology… pure and simple… how do we know anything? and what is “knowledge” ?
So a black hole is supernatural?.. we certainly don’t see them too often and we can’t quite explain what the hell they are… so we don’t understand them either… it seems to qualify according to your definition… I very much doubt that’s what anyone means when they call something supernatural…
The most common understanding of the word is this:
It seems to me that much of this thread is based on a bit of confusion about the relation of cause -effect, or in the jargon, ‘materialism’, and the supernatural.
While the noumenal universe is still not known in terms of all possible causes and the attendant effects. claims beyond known causes are either testable, or are posited as theories either not tested or are untestable because of our limitations at this time. The suppositions of the supernatural attempts to explain what is not known or is not testable by assigning agency. Agency is the province of superstition, witchcraft, and the underpinnings of religious belief.
If there is a demarcation between healthy agnosticism, atheism, skepticism and religion, it is that the former sees no agency ‘behind’ causes-effect, and those with religion find agency in all noumena.
Sorry I’m a little behind the times, this thread moves faster than I do.
Going back to whether Christianity’s claims are “inductively incredible”: Uccisore, isn’t something that is only alleged to have happened once in all of human history pretty inductively incredible? I mean, if we’re talking about the even itself, and so not using it as evidence for its own probability, there are no other instances from which to decide that a virgin birth or a resurrection are inductively possible. Inductively, people are born with the input of two parents, and people stay dead. If you want to claim otherwise, I think you’re abusing the term ‘induction’. In that case, please give us an example of what is inductively incredible, so that we can see what relevance your claim has. It just seems like you want inductive credibility to be an asset to christianity, but I don’t see what such a requirement excludes, if not things that are only alleged to have happened once.
The normal, natural thing is to sense God. It is the inability to do so that is the aberration and is evidence of the fall of humankind. The arguments against God are primarily rationalizations in defence of infidelity to divine truth.
that’s a cheap shot! If you really want to debate my position on materialism then do it on the materialism thread… this is just cruel because I don’t wish to begin defending it here…