theist in a foxhole

[Arising_uk]

It is just this sort of remark which guarantees that there is little point in further discussion. ...

There pretty much was no conversation from you as you avoid answering your interlocutors questions, so my comment was apposite as it reflected a common experience with the christian theist.

It eloquently evidences that your mind's made up. ...

Well eloquent is true but it arrived after you showed your actual metier over time.

It shows that you think you know what to expect from what you think is a "Christian," and you're content to go with that impression.

You provided the example.

I can't stop you...so it's just not clear what the next conversational move is.

Try answering the sentences with question marks.

My suspicion is that you may need to have a better experience with what you consider "Christians" -- or maybe a first experience, judging by some of your comments that are rather wide of the Christian main -- before you will be open to entertaining any further possibilities about theism. But it's also clear that for you that time has not yet come.

Your suspicions are wrong.

I'm content with that. Be well. For the moment, there's no way forward. There may be one day, but perhaps not now.

Of course you are content, as it means you can avoid the sentences with question marks. The way forward is to answer such things.

[Immanuel Can]

The problem is, the use of God as an explanation of things - either physical or moral - fails to predict and so is not verifiable. So it can't be proven or disproven because it is outside the realm of scientific reasoning, which to me is all the kind of reasoning there is.

Let's think about those two criteria you mention, Wyman: "ability to predict" and "verifiable." The latter's instantly problematic, since the Philosophy of Science since the sixties has well-established that science itself cannot be "verified." Verifications (the technical name for the belief that science is a verification of facts) has been dead for decades, following the work of people like Popper, Polanyi, Kuhn and Feyerabend. Even science's ability to produce "falsification" has been assailed, but "verification" is no longer a credible account of what science does.

The upshot: if "verification" is a criterion, then science itself doesn't have it.

What about "ability to be used to predict"? Well, the thing that permits "prediction" is uniformitarianism, meaning belief in the regularity of natural phenomena by laws. And that's fine for science: science assumes those laws, and then predicts based on them. But is it really a stroke against God that you cannot build predictions based on Him? That would seem to reverse the situation: for if you could, then God would have to be impersonal and uniform, like the laws of nature. But Theists think He's a Person, with a will of His own, and can make free choices. In fact, they even think human freedom is derived from the fact that being "made in the image of God," mankind has free will. But God has consumate free will; the free will only a Creator can possibly have. He does whatever He does when He wants to, and (even by definition of the term) as Supreme Being in the universe, cannot be constrained by our predictions. He can, of course, reveal what He intends to do; but we cannot "use" God, "predict" God without a promise from Him in advance that we can, or say what He will or will not do. But it's hard to see why that should count against His existence.

The upshot: is it really fair to say, "I can't believe in God because He's not predictable?" What would you expect a real, personal, all-powerful God to be, but larger than human predictive faculties?

Can you blame the ocean for not being in a jam jar?

Now, is scientific reasoning all that there is? Well, "science" and "reason" are related by different ideas. "Reason" can be done completely non-empirically, on the basis of known premises and formulae, and does not require physical observation (although it can make use of empirical data, of course). "Science," on the other hand, is always empirical, even when it's generating theories. Failure to be empirical is definitionally failure to be scientific. So science is tied to our human capacity to observe accurately and extrapolate correctly -- faculties which are far from infallible, but far better than raw guesses, to be sure.

So I cannot really decide what you mean by "scientific reasoning." And I'm skeptical that expecting God (putatively the Creator of the natural world) can be expected to be discovered by staring exclusively at the creation itself. It seems to me the closest one could come to that is to say that the creation itself might provide evidence of a Creator. That seems possible. But to show us God Himself? What sort of scientific instrument -- telescope or microscope, geiger counter or graduated cylinder -- would be appropriate to make our scientific measurement of God? The whole thing seems completely paradoxical: if we could do it, that would be a great reason for doubting that the Being we had discovered was God at all -- more likely some surprised alien, greater in power than us but insufficient in wisdom, so that our devices had at last caught him out...

That's what I meant by there cannot be any evidence for that theory.

And yet there can be. For as I said earlier, though we cannot pin God Himself down with our clever instrumentation, we can view his works and consider their nature. And from that, we can draw at least indicative evidence of a Creator. In fact, that's what the whole "Argument from Design" thing is all about.

As for guesses, don't despise them too quickly. Remember that every scientific hypothesis ever invented has begun as a guess. That is to say, the scientist did not know for sure what his experiment was going to show. (If he did know for sure, he could simply skip the experiment and go right to certainty.) Instead, he guessed first, designed a test, ran the test, recorded his results, and then either justified or defeated his first guess...or modified the hypothesis and continued running additional experiments. Guesses are good, if subsequent experience and testing supports them: that's very basic to the scientific method.

I'm not dissing science here. I'm just pointing out that its methodology is punctuated with human input. Hypothesizing, designing, assembling, extrapolating, concluding, and so on are human cognitive processes, and humans are not machines. Not only that, but "knowing" a bacteria (something science helps us with very much) is not perhaps on par with "knowing" the Creator. Science may not be the right mechanism for that. And if that's the case, it's failure to work on that issue may not surprise us much after all.

Thanks for sharing your concerns on that. I hope I've done something above to respond to your quandary regarding science and God. If I've missed you somewhere, please feel welcome to let me know.

[ReliStuPhD]

That's an interesting statement, RS. Can you expand on that?

http://www.personal.psu.edu/t20/papers/philmath/

Basically, if "reasoning" is "the action of thinking about something in a logical, sensible way," there are all sorts of ways we can do that. The hard sciences can't be the only source for such thinking. If they were, how would we ever know it? What sort of scientific experiment does one run to show that science itself is reason-based? If anything, we know science is reason-based because we can judge it by other, more fundamental sources of reason (i.e. logic and mathematics).

The paper you linked also shows ways of reasoning that are not "scientific" (and I don't mean that in a generic sense of being "systematic" or "methodical," since I'm assuming (perhaps a bad move on my part) that Wyman was speaking of the physical sciences).

Is that a decent expansion? If not, I'm happy to give it another go.

[Dalek Prime]

No need. I understand you now. I think it's my own definitions that need updating, as I use the term 'scientific' loosely, and I shouldn't, considering Russell says something similar. Thanks for the clarification.

[uwot]

What fascinates me most in all of this is that certain types of atheists dismiss the theist's arguments because they cannot be verified empirically and then turn to their own theories that cannot be verified empirically.

I was looking through this thread with a view to responding to Immanuel Can, but as you see fit to stick your oar in ReliStuPhd, I'll address it to both of you:
What you call evidence for your god is exactly the same evidence that any fully sentient human being on the planet can see.
Science is the business of understanding those phenomena in such a way that we can manipulate them in a controlled manner. The actual causal agent or agents are irrelevant.
Religion is the belief that exactly the same phenomena are the product of a supernatural being over which we will never have control.

Neither of you have the wit, according to all currently available data, to appreciate that. The mathematical models are empirically verified every time they are measured, they don't have to be true, they simply have to work to the degree that is required. When that requirement is exceeded, a new model is sought. To say that theories cannot be verified is crass. I suspect you mean hypotheses, but that is the nature of hypotheses; they are hypothetical, ReliStuPhD.
What makes your position so laughable, Immanuel Can, is that you believe that people who do not interpret exactly the same data in the way you do are somehow at fault:

One can approach the evidence to prove, or with an inclination to disprove. Once can even approach it with indifference. In the first case, one is open to the possibility of confirmation; in the second, one is perhaps less open or even closed altogether; in the third, one is in no frame of mind even to recognize the evidence AS evidence.

Note to thedoc: Immanuel Can used the above criteria to identify 'type three atheists'. It was my co-opting of this that gave me 'Type one theist.'

[Wyman]

IC:

I use the word 'verification' loosely. I try to avoid terms of art, but the creep in sometimes. Hypotheses cannot be Verified with a capital V, but certain hypotheses or theorems can be constructed, based upon a theory, in such a way as to make their agreement or disagreement with an experiment decisive. The most famous examples being Einstein's tests for his theories of the bending of light as it passes the sun and the orbit of mercury. As well as the experiment that started it all - Michelson and Morley's attempt to measure the effects of the ether.

Unlike such precise, tightly reasoned, constructions of theory - such construction as makes them meaningful vis a vis experiments and observations - theories about God are not subject to validation (better word perhaps?) and make no predictions to test against the backboard of reality.

For instance - God is compassionate. Well, what about the holocaust?
We are created in His image. Then why did it take millions of years to evolve into that image?
There will be a day of judgment/reckoning. When? We have no idea.
We are born with original sin and need to be baptized/cleansed, etc. Do innocent babies who die pre-baptism then go to hell?

Obviously, the list goes on and on and I'm sure uwot and Arising could come up with better examples. But I challenge you to come up with any prediction or maxim that could be either validated or invalidated - not by analysis of past history, but future observation. The problem with analyzing history is that it can be analyzed such as to fit one's theory - prediction of the future cannot be faked. That is why Marxism or Freudian analysis is like religion - they are wonderful, fascinating analyses of history, but fail to have any predictive value.

[Immanuel Can]

For instance - God is compassionate. Well, what about the holocaust?

This, all by itself is a massive question, and a very good one. It's certainly one we ought to ask. But I also think it's also one to which there are answers. I just don't think such answers can be given cold, and without a very careful parsing of the situation of Determinism versus human autonomy. I'm up for that, but wonder if you wish to invest the time.

We are created in His image. Then why did it take millions of years to evolve into that image?

That, of course, assumes human evolution. (It does not require animal evolution, of course, since animals are not predicated in that "image.") But it also requires us to delve into the question of what "made in the image of God" really means. And that's a theological question. Again, do you have the time and will to investigate? I'm loath to inflict long inquiries if they're not wanted, but willing to address it for you if you are up for it.

There will be a day of judgment/reckoning. When? We have no idea.

Hardly unexpected, I think. Why should we suppose we must know given that God Himself says we do not know and cannot know, and it's strictly His prerogative to know? Christ Himself said, "...No man knows the day or hour..." (Mark 13:32). We have no call, nor do we attempt, to prognosticate personally on its timing. Our lack of knowledge of the "when" will have no impact on the "whether," surely.

For as Peter writes, "...do not let this one fact escape your notice...that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief..."

Thieves come surreptitiously, unannounced and unexpected. The message of that: be always prepared -- it will come. Seems reasonable.

If we want to talk about a prediction or maxim that can be validated or invalidated, that would be one. For when it does happen, it will most certainly not merely be validated but actually verified as well. Yet it is the rightful care of Christians not to condemn, or as Arising supposes, to gloat; but rather, it is their earnest effort to see if they can encourage others to think of being prepared for that Day. But to say when it will happen? Nobody can do that. Just that it will.

We are born with original sin and need to be baptized/cleansed, etc. Do innocent babies who die pre-baptism then go to hell?

With a question like this, I'm never sure how to proceed. As a Christian, I naturally believe that the Creator of all the Earth does right, and as one who knows and trust Him, I'm happy to leave the question in His hands. That's not a terribly satisfying answer for anyone who has doubts about His intentions...but most of them claim not to believe in Him anyway, so they have no reason to be irate. Among those who ask the question sincerely -- perhaps who have had the experience of losing a child and wondering -- I can only say that the Bible does not explicitly address this situation. I'm sure there's an answer, but we haven't been told what it is.

Thus again, I just return to the question, "What does one think of the character of God?" Is He good, compassionate and just, or is He cruel, arbitrary and unjust? What one thinks will be the answer to this question may say a great deal about what one thinks of God. I expect justice and mercy from Him; what others expect, I cannot say.

I challenge you to come up with any prediction or maxim that could be either validated or invalidated - not by analysis of past history, but future observation.

The Final Judgment fits this admirably. But there's a cost to waiting to find out whether one is right or not, and my suggestion is to resolve what one is prepared to predict first. So you might look at other indicative evidences. For example, is faith in the Christian God predictive of charitable behaviour? Is foreign aid higher from countries with many Christians? Is a hospital or social relief organization more or less likely to be Christian? How much do various kinds of people donate to the welfare of others? Or do Atheists tend to produce more educational institutions, hospitals, social help organizations, clothing drives, prison reform programs, anti-poverty initiatives, and so on.

Or you could look at the cases of people who have converted to Christianity. To know if conversion made a difference, you would have to look especially those who have established a pattern of life before and after their conversion, so there's good data on both sides for comparison: are they better for having become Christians, or should we prefer their pre-Christian condition?

I guess you could check: and then you could decide what was predictive. Sounds scientific to me.

[Arising_uk]

... As a Christian, I naturally believe that the Creator of all the Earth does right, and as one who knows and trust Him, I'm happy to leave the question in His hands. That's not a terribly satisfying answer for anyone who has doubts about His intentions...but most of them claim not to believe in Him anyway, so they have no reason to be irate. ...

Ironic that you appear to know this 'God' is a 'he' and yet cannot show 'him' to anyone. How are you doing this?

[Arising_uk]

... I expect justice and mercy from Him; what others expect, I cannot say. ...

You think justice and mercy go together do you, so why do you think such as me will be going to 'hell'?

[Arising_uk]

Why are Christians so miserable at funerals?

[ReliStuPhD]

What fascinates me most in all of this is that certain types of atheists dismiss the theist's arguments because they cannot be verified empirically and then turn to their own theories that cannot be verified empirically.

I was looking through this thread with a view to responding to Immanuel Can, but as you see fit to stick your oar in ReliStuPhd, I'll address it to both of you:
What you call evidence for your god is exactly the same evidence that any fully sentient human being on the planet can see.
Science is the business of understanding those phenomena in such a way that we can manipulate them in a controlled manner. The actual causal agent or agents are irrelevant.
Religion is the belief that exactly the same phenomena are the product of a supernatural being over which we will never have control.

My point was clearly about atheists who dismiss theistic answers to metaphysical questions concerning causal agents and then look to science to provide answers to metaphysical questions concerning causal agents. I've sad nothing about evidence for God and everything about a double-standard concerning appeals to causal agents that cannot be verified by scientific means.

Neither of you have the wit, according to all currently available data, to appreciate that. The mathematical models are empirically verified every time they are measured, they don't have to be true, they simply have to work to the degree that is required. When that requirement is exceeded, a new model is sought. To say that theories cannot be verified is crass. I suspect you mean hypotheses, but that is the nature of hypotheses; they are hypothetical, ReliStuPhD.

You say I have no wit, and then you write this. You might revisit what it means to actually verify something rather than to simply show it's not yet been falsified. "Science" is as interested in what is true as are the rest of us.

As for my comment being crass, not at all. If a hypothesis is made that cannot be verified by scientific means, then it's little different from providing God as an explanation. Metaphysics is metaphysics, even if some scientists wish it was otherwise.

[Dalek Prime]

Why are Christians so miserable at funerals?

Yes, I see Atheists doing cartwheels at them. Question is, why is everyone so happy at births in either a meaningless universe, one with a potentiality for eternal damnation, or one with continual rebirth into Samsara, depending on your beliefs? They all suck butcher casings filled with waste meat.

[Arising_uk]

Yes, I see Atheists doing cartwheels at them. ...

Why should they? Whereas the christian presumably thinks they've gone to 'heaven' or maybe its because they know they've gone to 'hell'?

Question is, why is everyone so happy at births in either a meaningless universe, one with a potentiality for eternal damnation, or one with continual rebirth into Samsara, depending on your beliefs?

Neither, its because birth is a fraught process full of pain and possible death, so they are celebrating survival. They're also celebrating the miracle that is birth in a meaningless universe.

They all suck butcher casings filled with waste meat.

Bit bitter about something?

[uwot]

As for my comment being crass, not at all. If a hypothesis is made that cannot be verified by scientific means, then it's little different from providing God as an explanation. Metaphysics is metaphysics, even if some scientists wish it was otherwise.

You still don't get it. Immanuel Can has given up apparently and resorted to flacid proselytizing. What neither of you have grasped is that while metaphysics done by scientists is still metaphysics, scientists will attempt to devise experiments, or where necessary invent technology, that will produce objective phenomena that are consistent with the predictions made by their models. When they achieve this, a metaphysical model (ie. one beyond the current capacity of technology to produce a phenomenon) becomes a scientific model.
I refer you yet again to Newton's Hypotheses non fingo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypotheses_non_fingo , the key feature of which is that the causal explanation that people imagine to account for the observable facts is not science: it does not make any difference to the observed phenomena. The same ethos underpins the 'shut up and calculate' school of Quantum theorists. Regardless of whether you accept such an instrumentalist interpretation of science, the feature that distinguishes science from religion, or even philosophy, is that the data, the phenomena that are being observed and manipulated, are objective and repeatable in the way the whim of a god is not.

Sounds scientific to me.

That's because you don't know what science sounds like.

[ReliStuPhD]

Alright. Last attempt.

As for my comment being crass, not at all. If a hypothesis is made that cannot be verified by scientific means, then it's little different from providing God as an explanation. Metaphysics is metaphysics, even if some scientists wish it was otherwise.

You still don't get it. Immanuel Can has given up apparently and resorted to flacid proselytizing. What neither of you have grasped is that while metaphysics done by scientists is still metaphysics, scientists will attempt to devise experiments, or where necessary invent technology, that will produce objective phenomena that are consistent with the predictions made by their models. When they achieve this, a metaphysical model (ie. one beyond the current capacity of technology to produce a phenomenon) becomes a scientific model.

It's you who's still not getting it. Metaphysics has nothing to do with the capacity to produce a phenomenon, except maybe that produceable phenomena do not fall under the rubric of metaphysics. You've misunderstood the word. Metaphysics speaks to the very causal agents you've admitted that science does not. Science simply does not have the toolset to answer these questions. It never will. If it did, it would not be science in any sense that we currently understand. You seem to be arguing about what science can do, which is fine, but I'm arguing about what it can't. And so, when the atheist—nb I said nothing about scientists in the original the comment to which you replied—dismisses the theist's answer to these sorts of metaphysical questions because they are not empirically-verifiable (which is precisely the sort of question that metaphysics deals with), and then turns to science expecting some sort of empirically-verifiable answer to these questions without understanding that they are not empirically-verifiable, he or she makes a basic category error. And, as I said, that fascinates me. But, to be fair, I am equally fascinated when a scientist seems to think that it's just a matter of theorizing hard enough to come up with a scientific hypothesis to answer these sorts of metaphysical questions (the most common example being that science can disprove the existence of God) without understanding that one reason they're metaphysical questions is because science can't answer them.

I refer you yet again to Newton's Hypotheses non fingo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypotheses_non_fingo , the key feature of which is that the causal explanation that people imagine to account for the observable facts is not science: it does not make any difference to the observed phenomena. The same ethos underpins the 'shut up and calculate' school of Quantum theorists. Regardless of whether you accept such an instrumentalist interpretation of science, the feature that distinguishes science from religion, or even philosophy, is that the data, the phenomena that are being observed and manipulated, are objective and repeatable in the way the whim of a god is not.

In that last sentence, you're still arguing against something I'm not. When I speak of "scientific" hypotheses concerning causal explanations that are clearly not dealing with phenomena that are "observed and manipulated" or "objective and repeatable," Newton's right there in my corner. So when I say that the atheist who dismisses the theists' arguments of this nature because they're not verifiable and then turns to the scientist for hypotheses of this nature is something of a hypocrite, Newton's not disagreeing.

PS To which "phenomena that are being observed and manipulated, are objective and repeatable" are you referring with respect to, for example, the model concerning the cyclic nature of Big Bangs and Big Crunches? Or Multiverse models? See my point?