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Author | Topic: Immaterial "Evidence" | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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This Straggler has simply pointed out that citing a form of evidence that is both undetectable without an immaterial sixth sense and that is utterly unable to be distinguished from blind chance, biased guessing or even just intentionally making things up in terms of it's reliability as an indicator of reality, is a rather weak position. Some might go so far as to say desperately weak. Its weak to the person who hasn't had or wasn't convinced by, the experience(s) that lead(s) to the position in the first place. To the others, it being "weak" doesn't make it any less real. Although, it being weak relies on:
undetectable ...which if that was the case then the experience wouldn't have been
without an immaterial sixth sense ...can't really rule that out as a possibility. (However, we could discuss and compare our experiences to see if we think that's a plausible explanation.)
is utterly unable to be distinguished from blind chance, biased guessing or even just intentionally making things up ...not sure how you're measuring the reliability of the experience here. And what about experiences that don't really predict anything to guess at or make up or leave to chance? Also, doesn't the whole idea of it being "undetectable without an immaterial sixth sense" kind of preclude it from being "distinguished from blind chance, biased guessing or even just intentionally making things up in terms of it's reliability as an indicator of reality"? Isn't this really just a long-winded and confusing tautology? That non-empirical things can't be scientific. And going further that non-scientific things are unreliable?
Some might go so far as to say desperately weak. Well, you do know what it does to assume, right? It makes an ASS out of U and ME.
If the proponents of immaterial subjective "evidence" cannot see that they are effectively rebranding personal conviction and subjective notions of "believability" as "evidence" then I am not sure what else there is to say on the matter. And if you can't accept that people are being honest and simply trying to make sense of their real experiences by discussing them along side ways that are more reliable, and that they're not really trying to "rebrand evidence", then you are not going to have anything else to say. And frankly, I think its the people who bring up the IPU that are the ones who are trying to "rebrand evidence".
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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If you find convincing forms of evidence that are both undetectable without an immaterial sixth sense and that are utterly unable to be distinguished from blind chance, biased guessing or even just intentionally making things up in terms of practical results and thus demonstrable reliability as a true indicators of reality then - So be it. How are we going to measure the practical results of my belief in god to demonstrate its reliability?
If the "evidence" being cited is simply unable to be distinguished from the results of making things up [snip] in any practical sense whatsoever then the fact is that there is no rational reason for anyone else to accept such conclusions as any more or less true than simply making things up. Key words: anyone else But for myself, I can tell that my belief in god is not made up. And I maintain that it is different than a belief in the IPU (which is made up). And also, its not that I decided to accept shoddy evidence and then as a result formed a belief in god. I find myself with this belief in god and as a result, have accepted some shoddy evidence.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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But for myself, I can tell that my belief in god is not made up. And I maintain that it is different than a belief in the IPU (which is made up).
How can you tell the difference?
Because I didn't make up my belief in god. I can tell when I'm using my imagination or not.
How do you know that the IPU is made up, as opposed to being an idea "inspired" by the Real Thing? quote: source How do you know that your God isn't made up (after all, you don't have to be the one to make it up)? I don't know that God wasn't made up, but I do know that my belief in him was not. I'm not saying that I can tell if somebody else's sincere belief is made up or not. But sometimes you can tell that they're not sincere, the IPU being an example.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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I didn't ask whether you had made it up. I asked how you can tell the difference between a made-up belief and a non-made-up belief without any evidence or method for reliably testing accuracy. You haven't answered that question. Its beside the point. I have a belief in god. Subjective experiences support my belief. The majority of people agree with me. I have reasons for it. I don't have any reason to believe in the IPU. I don't care if other people are capable of determining whether or not I've made up my belief. I know that I didn't make it up. I know that the IPU was made up. There's the difference in the beliefs.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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Nobody is asking you to believe in the IPU. Nobody ever has. The argument goes that if I believe in my god without evidence then I should also believe in the IPU. Even so, the IPU was actually brought about to make a point about believing in unfalisifyable entities that are self contradictory (ie being both pink and invisible)
My question is, and in fact always has been throughout this extended discussion (with you, RAZD and others): Why should I give any more credence to the objects of your respective beliefs than I do the IPU? And how many times have I said that if you don't have any reason to believe it then don't?
The answer in previous threads was "subjective evidence". The answer was never that our subjective evidence should be used to convince you, yourself. It was that our subjective evidence convinces us and that you'd have to find your own subjective evidence.
We have now established that with respect to immaterial gods this form of evidence requires: A) That an immaterial "sixth sense" exist.B) That we accept a form of evidence that is indistinguishable in terms of reliability to simply and unconsciously making things up. That the evidence is subjective presupposes the reliability (ahem... your favorite tautology), besides that you never answered how we'd measure the reliability of my belief in god in order to distinguish it from a made up belief.
C) That to accept this form of evidence at all requires as much faith as the object it is supposed to be evidencing. I think the object would still require more faith than the evidence, but oh well, I don't want to get into that.
So remind me again - Why is agnosticism, rather than a degree of atheism, the rational and logical conclusion for me when all of the objective material evidence suggests that such experiences are the product of the human mind? The purely logical default state is agnosticim. If you have evidence to suggest atheism then so be it, or you could certainly rationalize atheism too, that's fine. But that's different than the anti-IPU argument. Lets come at it from the other side... If you look at the evidence with a blank slate, you can see for yourself that populations evolve and that can account for the diversity of species on this planet (assuming some Flying Spaghetti Monster isn't mucking with the lab equipment, so to speak). But we can't know that there isn't something mucking around, we just have to assume that there isn't. That we cannot tell if there is or is not, means that it has to remain unknown. Now, if you want to go further and say that some specific entities can be shown to be non-existant and therefore we should not be agnostic towards them, then that is moving into a different argument.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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Would it kill you to respond to my entire post rather than one sentence? Kill me? No. Bore the living shit out of me? Yes.
So again, CS, King of Evaders and Ignorer of Nearly Everything in a Post, Responder to Single Lines in Multi-Page Debates... More like: Person with limited time that doesn't want to waste reading 1000s of words of a tangential discussion that they're not very interested in.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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That has never been my argument. My argument has been (and remains) that there is rationally no more reason for me to be agnostic about your gods than there is for either of us to be agnostic rather than atheistic about the Immaterial Pink Unicorn (IPU). But weren't you arguing in the IPU thread that, with a lack of evidence, choosing to believe in god and not the IPU is special pleading? Isn't that a round-about way of saying that you should believe in both?
And as I keep telling you based on any evidence that is demonstrably superior to biased guessing the rational conclusion is not to believe in the IPU. Or any other deity. And I keep asking you how you are demonstrating that that the evidence is equal to guessing. And I think this is one of the flaws in your argument. You say that because we cannot show that it is better than random guessing then it must be equivalent to it, but that is an illogical leap. Allow me to bring up another example that I ran across last night on TV. It was a show about lottery winners. A woman said that she wrote the number 112,000,000 on a piece of paper and put it under her pillow before she went to sleep. The next day she bought a lottery ticket and won a $112,000,000 jackpot. She said that this time she knew that she was going to manifest it. So, do you believe her or not? The default position would be agnosticism but I'm guessing that you do not believe her. Now, how can we demonstrate that her ability is no better than random guessing? Putting her in a lab and trying to get her to make predictions and then watching her fail doesn't prove that she doesn't have the ability (maybe she has poor control, or could only do it once, etc.) But your saying that because we cant show that she is better than random guessing then it must be equal to random guessing and that because we know that people make shit up like that, then the rational position would be disbelief. I disagree. Another flaw in your argument is that because we've shown some gods to false (or some of these kinds of abilities), then we can argue that we've shown all of them to be false, which just isn't true. So, because some is not all, and because not demonstrating something is better than random guessing doesn't mean that its equal to random guessing, is why your argument is wrong.
All of the objective evidence suggests that the visions, voices, feelings etc. you cite as evidence are products of the internal human mind. Correction: All of the objective evidence suggests that some of the visions, voices, feelings etc. you cite as evidence are products of the internal human mind.
The answer was never that our subjective evidence should be used to convince you, yourself. It was that our subjective evidence convinces us and that you'd have to find your own subjective evidence. If you find forms of evidence (visions, feelings etc.) that have been shown to be equivalent in terms of reliability to guessing convincing then that is up to you.
They haven't been shown to be equivalent in terms of reliability to guessing.
There is simply the very obvious fact that having any confidence at all in a form of evidence that in practise is unable to be distinguished in terms of reliability to randomly guessing is irrational. This is phrased better at least. But, using my new example above, how have we demonstrated that this lady's ability is unable to be distinguished in terms of reliability to randomly guessing?
The purely logical default state is agnosticim. In a complete vacuum of objective evidence, a complete absence of evidence either for or against, you may well be right. You mean like the kind of evidence we have for the IPU? Just kidding. But yeah, that's the default. But it doesn't require a complete absence, it just where we start without enough evidence to suggest one way or the other.
But there is no such thing as a vacuum of all objective evidence. What objective evidence do we have for my new example above? We can see that she did, in fact, win the lottery. And that's about it.
If you have evidence to suggest atheism then so be it, or you could certainly rationalize atheism too, that's fine. But that's different than the anti-IPU argument. No it's not. The objective evidence suggests that the IPU is a human invention rather than a real entity. The objective evidence also suggests that any experience attributed to any immaterial deity is more than likely a product of the human mind.
I don't think so. This is where you start making that leap from some to all.
That some specific god concepts have been falsified is all but indisputable. That humans invent gods is all but indisputable. That humans are very prone to creating such concepts is all but indisputable. That the default rational position regarding any immaterial god claimed by humanity should be a degree of atheism as opposed to belief in a sixth sense that has allowed the chosen few to experience some aspect of an otherwise unknowable supernatural entity, is all but indisputable. There, right there. You jump from some to all.
If you look at the evidence with a blank slate Hmmmm. If you look at the evidence with a blank slate then you must also include evidence in favour of the mutually exclusive alternatives. Namely the possibility that gods are human inventions. Are you willing to include evidence for that possibility in your blank slate assessment?
Yes, of course.
CS - Given that there is no objective evidence in favour of gods and given that there is a great deal of objective evidence to suggest that humans are prone to inventing god concepts for various reasons which is the more rational conclusion? 1) 50-50 "I just do not know" agnosticism OR2) A degree of atheism When you get into specific god concepts that can be shown to be false then a degree of atheism is the more rational conclusion. But some kind of god in general, or my new example above, without a sufficient amount of objective evidence, we resort to the default of agnosticism.
I didn't know whether you wanted a long and full point by point response or a shorter "pick the main points" response. Given our recent history I went for the safer former option. I hope I don't "bore you shitless". I don't expect a point by point responce, but I don't want to waste my time if your just going to ignore the main point and repeat your position (which you didn't this time). I get bored when people go on and on and on about the same point.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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Belief in gods is irrational yes? We agree on that? I don't think that it has to be, no.
The difference between us is that I say a degree of atheism is the rational and evidentially consistent response and you say that agnosticism is. Well, I think that one degree of atheism is practically the same as agnosticism, that being simply a lack of belief in gods. Without evidence to believe, a lack of belief would be the same default as saying that you don't know if they exist or not (i.e. "I don't know, but without any reason I don't believe"). Now, to go further to say that you believe that they do not exist would require some kind of reason/evidence to sway that way.
If you tell me that I should be agnostic about a particular god whilst accepting my atheism as justified towards the IPU then you are special pleading one over the other. Why would I be agnostic to one and atheistic to the other when the objective evidence suggests that both are human inventions? Because there isn't objective evidence to suggest that all gods are human invention. Some particular gods, like the one that pulls the sun across the sky with a chariot, have been shown to be an invention but a non-descript high-power type god has not.
No. I am saying that unless you can distinguish a form of evidence as being superior to randomly guessing in practise then having any confidence at all in such "evidence" is irrational. It relies entirely on personal conviction. Faith by any other name. Not necessarily. I don't have any way of showing that the women who manifested the lottery winning is superior to random guessing but she seemed sincere with her story and I don't have any reason to think she's lying about it so I can believe her without the need for faith.
Another flaw in your argument is that because we've shown some gods to false (or some of these kinds of abilities), then we can argue that we've shown all of them to be false, which just isn't true. No. I am not making an illogical IF SOME THEN ALL statement as you imply. I am making an evidence and reliability based statement. I am pointing out that if you have someone who after thousands of proclamations on a particular subject has a 100% failure record then you would be an idiot to put money on them making an accurate statement regarding that subject any time soon. Especially if you have other objectively evidenced reasons to think that they will continue to make such inaccurate but sincere proclamations for reasons that have nothing to do with external reality and everything to do with their own innate and internal needs. Especially if with every proclamation the claim in question gets ever more sophisticatedly undefinable and immune from refutation.
Well that's different than saying that all the subjective evidence has been shown to be a product of the human mind.
Dude if you can show that visions, voices, feelings etc. etc. lead to conclusions that are demonstrably more reliable than guessing with regard to the material world then I would be much more open to you claiming that they should be given some sort of consideration with regard to less refutable things. To my knowledge the forms of evidence you are citing lead to results that are no more reliable than guessing in the material world. So you are assuming that if we can't show a difference then they must be the same.
Thus your assumption that they are any more reliable with regard to the immaterial is a question of personal conviction alone. Faith by any other name. I'm not assuming that they are more reliable, I'm saying that you having shown that they are not. You're assuming it because it hasn't been shown otherwise.
Why? Why is "some kind of god in general" immune from the objectively evidenced fact that humans keep inventing gods to fulfil their need for explanation, higher purpose and the feeling that there is "something" else out there? Because those gods have not been shown to be the product of human invention like specific particular gods have been.
Is the claim that humans have invented gods, are deeply prone to inventing gods and will continue to invent gods better evidenced than the actual existence of gods? That is the question here.
and my answer is I don't know, it hasn't been shown either way. But taking into account my subjective evidence, I'd say that the actual existence of gods is better evidence.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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I thought you said that you believed agnosticism to be the rational conclusion? Now you seem to be saying that belief in gods is rational. I thought belief in gods was based on faith. If we cannot even agree on the irrationality of faith I think I am going to just stop here. We are back at square one all over again. Yes, by default agnosticim is the rational conclusion but this does not preclude theism, or atheism, from being rational too. It depends on the evidence. Belief in gods could be based on evidence and not faith, although not for some specific gods like the IPU and possible the deistic god (depending on the belief structure) just like disbelief in some gods can be based on evidence (like us know there isn't a chariot pulling the sun).
Well that's different than saying that all the subjective evidence has been shown to be a product of the human mind. Which would be why I never said that. Stop arguing against proclamations of certainty when the position of your opponents is evidence based likelihood.
If its only based on likelyhood then you cannot say that it has been demonstrated that subjective evidence is no better than random guessing.
So you are assuming that if we can't show a difference then they must be the same. No. I am saying that unless you can show a difference assuming that there is one is irrational.
I've never assumed that there is a difference but you have said that there isn't.
Because those gods have not been shown to be the product of human invention like specific particular gods have been. So which gods exactly do you think the evidence in favour of human invention does not apply to? And why are they immune? Remember we are talking likelihood not certainty here.
Heh, once I start specifying gods then we're getting into particulars. But using my lottery winner example I don't think we can say anything confidently about whether or not she invented her claim, we just don't know. You can't use your argument that its probably an invention and justify the disbelief with that because we can't be confident in your probabilities.
Well given that I don't share your faith in your subjective evidence and given that there is overwhelming and undeniable objective evidence in favour of the fact that humans are prone to inventing supernatural answers can you explain why a degree of atheism rather than "It's 50-50 I just don't know" agnosticism is not rationally justified on my part? If your degree of atheism is simply witholding belief because of a lack of positive evidece, then it is a rational answer much like the I don't know one, but to jump to active disbelief based on faulty probabilities would be irrational because the jump is unjustified.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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I said that immaterial subjective evidence is indistiguishable to randomly guessing in terms of reliability in any practical sense. And I asked how you're measuring the reliability to determine if its better than random guessing.
By citing subjective evidence as a reason to think something actually exists as superior to simply guessing that it exists you must be be assuming a difference between the two in terms of reliability. Otherwise you might as well call guessing evidence. How do I measure the reliability to determine if its superior?
Are you denying that there is evidence to suggest that humans are prone to inventing supernatural answers? I'm denying that you can know enough about which answers are invented in order to make the leap that some specific one probably is invented.
So does the evidence available to me rationally result in "50-50 I just don't know" agosticism or a does it rationally result in a degree of "the evidence suggests human invention as the most likely answer" atheism on my part? If the fact that some gods are known to be invented is enough to convince you that all gods are invented then you can certainly rationalize your atheism that way, I just think that its an irrational leap because we don't have a way to measure the reliability of the answers to determine the probability of them being invented.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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And I asked how you're measuring the reliability to determine if its better than random guessing.
You take the process by which you are determining this specific belief and apply it to another situation in which you can compare it to the expected outcome of a guess and see if it results in a statistically different outcome.
And for processes that can't be repeated or replicated or that might yield varying outcomes?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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I am not measuring the reliability. You are assuming the reliability. No, I'm not. I'm allowing for the possibility of reliability. You're the one claiming that its been demonstrated that there's no difference.
You can't. Which is exactly why assuming any reliability at all is irrational. Or assuming no reliability. You just don't know. I'm not assuming it does have reliability, I'm just not accepting that it doesn't.
The human proclivity to invent gods is objectively evidenced. The ability of the human mind to hallucinate etc. is objectively evidenced. The actual existence of gods is not objectively evidenced. Unless you require me to accept the subjective evidence of others (which you have explicitly stated you are not doing) I only have one evidenced answer available to me. Based on the evidence available to me the likelihood of human invention is the most rational conclusion. I really don't have a problem with you rationalizing your atheism that way, although I don't find it convincing to me. But I don't think you can say that because you have the rational that it must be the one and only rational position. And I don't think it helps the IPU argument much at all. I don't think that because its been shown that people have invented specifics about god means that it has been shown that some kind of god in general has been shown to be invented.
With regard to any claimed supernatural concept for which there is no supporting objective evidence we have two mutually exclusive possibilities. 1) The concept in question is a human invention and experiences cited as evidence (visions, voices etc. etc.) are products of the human mind.2) The immaterial concept in question actually exists and has been detected by an immaterial sixth sense. One possibility is objectively evidenced. The other is not. There is only one rational and evidence based conclusion regarding the relative likelihood available to me. Which part of this do you actually disagree with? 3) The concept in question actually exists and has been detected by sporadic objective evidence. 4) The concept in question actually exists and has been detected by a sole objective evidence. 5) The concept in question actually exists and has been detected by objective evidence that we are currently unable to identify. 6) The concept in question actually exists and has been detected by something other than an immaterial sixth sense. 7) The concept in question is a human invention and experiences cited as evidence (visions, voices etc. etc.) are actual but products of something else. You've presented a False Dichotomy.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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As for processes that can't be repeated or replicated, why do you give them any credibility to being with? I'm saying that the default state would be not-knowing. I'm not necessarily giving them credibility, but I'm not assuming they are not credible either. With my lottery winner example where do you draw the line? That she did win the lottery (we could potentially verify that one but as of now we have not)? That she wrote the number on the paper the night before? That she knew she was going to win? Without any measure of the reliability, I'd leave it at I don't know. But just because I haven't verified doesn't mean I'm going to disbelieve her.
If they can't be shown to be accurate, why hold the belief that they are? I'm not jumping to believing her either. I just don't know.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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there isn't objective evidence to suggest that all gods are human invention.
Just most of them, then?
If we're including every god concept ever, then okay. But still, the disproving of the specifics doesn't mean that there isn't anything there at all. You know the 3 blind men and the elephant analogy?
Some particular gods, like the one that pulls the sun across the sky with a chariot, have been shown to be an invention but a non-descript high-power type god has not. Like in Ezekiel?
Sure.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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I guess that's where we differ. I'm a skeptic. If I'm not shown a reason to believe something, I hold it as unlikely to be true, especially when the claim being true would severely disrupt what we think we know about the way the universe works. Right. You deny it because it would disrupt your worldview, not because of the evidence. Essentially an Argument from Incredulity. Irrational in itself
BUt, that one's verifiable...we can try and replicate the outcome. We can have her write something she wants to happen on a piece of paper, keep it under her pillow, and record, before-hand, her feeling on whether it will work or not. For everything she feels strongly will work, we compare the hits and misses. We can look at the ones she doesn't feel will happen, and record those "hits" and "misses" as well. We can then compare the two sets of data and see if the percentages are statistically different from each other. If they're not, then the method isn't reliable, and is therefore to be dismissed until it can be shown to give better than random results. But you're assuming the ability itself is repeatable, reliable, not a one-time thing, etc. That wouldn't prove that she didn't do it the time in my example.
Maybe in the lottery number situation...but you did just that with your belief in God. Shouldn't your default be "I don't know" rather than, "I know it's true." The default, yes. But I'm taking into account the entirety of my experience which includes the things that suggest to me that god does exist.
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