Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Thu Jul 03, 2025 3:45 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jul 03, 2025 2:29 pm
Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed Jul 02, 2025 10:46 pm
(a) Just about all orthodox = fundamentalist Christians in my experience. They're all on a spectrum of terrified to hard damnationists. I find no significant difference between Muslims and Christians.
(aa) You'll maybe need to look closer, then. As I think you'll then discover, that's one of the serious weaknesses of the skeptics: having decided before they even began to investigate to dismiss all of what they call "religion" as bunk, they have no incentive to look closer. So they end up offering critiques that, say, might apply to something like Islam as if they should be telling against Quakers or Hassidim: because all three are "fundamentalists," but the key question is "Fundamentally WHAT?" And it really does make a big difference.
When Islamists shoot up a theatre, it definitely doesn not imply that Hassidim or Quakers would do the same. You're not going to find any Mennonite child bombers, nor any Baptist or Hutterite or Brethren terrorists. Yet all get called "fundamentalist." So I think it behoves a thoughtful skeptic to be discerning about those differences...unless, again, all he plans to do is insult and dismiss them all without knowing anything in particular about them. But if he does that, can he be surprised when the Baptists, or Mennonites, or Quakers, or Hassidim don't take his critique seriously? They can see that nothing he says applies to their case, so he's not doing very well at critiquing them, is he?
(b) I'm not a skeptic. I have no doubt at all. Beyond the inherent, correct skepticism of science. There is knowledge. True belief. There is no doubt in that. In commons sense reason.
(bb) I think doubt is something that any healthy mind experiences. Human epistemology only inductive and probabilistic. Even in experimental sciences, a set of experiments, however successful, never eradicate the worry that the very next trial would expose different results. Since nobody has performed the set of all possible trials, we can only speak of science as being
highly probable, not
certain. In fact, theses once regarded as solidly "scientific" are often disproved by further experimentation, which produces an even higher probability thesis, but still never is able to eliminate doubt.
I don't fear doubt. I am familiar with it, as the reasonable counterpart to knowledge. And I know that high-probability convictions are much better than low-probability ones, on average -- so I don't find it fearful at all.
In fact, that's why I came here: to find out if there are higher-challenge doubts to be considered. And as I said, I've found a few, but not many. And I've found it quite affirming to tackle some of them and find that they have answers. Still, I'm always in the market for new challenges of that kind.
(c) Faith is impervious to critique, as the completely honest faithful admit, despite knowing that reason obviates it. We are believing machines down to the neuron.
(cc) I consider myself honest, and I would wish to be found faithful, but I do not avoid critique, nor do I think that faith and reason are in conflict. I think that if one defines-away "faith" as being "belief contrary to reason," or "belief contrary to knowledge," or something like that, what we have is not actual faith at all, but rather indoctrination of a toxic sort.
And I think the same is quite true of Atheism: those Atheists who believe their position is unassailable by reason and needless of proof are guilty of just the sort of toxic "bad faith" indicted by Sartre. Only those skeptics who remain open to reason and evidence, and don't imagine they have certainty instead, are better than indoctrinated themselves.
Look at it this way: if religious people can believe things in bad, toxic ways, why cannot an Atheist disbelieve in exactly the same sort of bad, toxic ways? How is a religionist who has never thought about critiques any worse than an Atheist who refuses even to entertain the possibility of critiques? It seems to me that, in regard to "faith" they turn out to be identical twins. Neither one has any actual faith or knowledge: they just pretend to.
No reference to present company intended, of course. I'm merely reflecting generally on the state of skepticism and belief, not accusing you or anybody here present of having "bad faith." But I think it's worth reflection, just as a general observation on the issue.
(aa) Why bless your ignorant, presumptuous young heart!
Now, that's interesting...so far, I've stayed miles away from anything
ad hominem...But go on. Let's see what you follow it up with.
You are all fundamentalists in that you all are slaves to sacred texts.
Which "text"? If the text is good, then it's not at all bad to be governed by what the text says. Do you not govern yourself by the "text" of civil laws or at least by moral precepts? If you do, does that make you a "slave"?
Everything depends on the text that's being questioned...is it a good "text" or a bad "text"?
As for skeptics' weaknesses, I have none. I am no skeptic, I have no doubt whatsoever of nature's fully explanatory power, and our risible incapacity to understand it.
Wait a minute.
You say, "I have no doubt whatever..." and then also say we have a "risible incapacity to understand [nature's full explanatory power]." Those are your exact terms, are they not? How can you "have no doubt" of what we have, by your admission, no capacity to understand?
Christians and Jews are bombing apartment blocks, schools, playgrounds, hospitals, the odd theatre every week.
Really? Well, I suppose that you're thinking of Gaza right now, which is a war instituted and sustained by Hamas. But the problem is that it doesn't involve "fundamentalist" Jews like the Hassidim, because Hassidim are not Zionists. Did you not know that? Perhaps that's a good illustration of the critic not knowing enough about the object of his ire to make his critique work.
As for Christians " bombing apartment blocks, schools, playgrounds, hospitals, the odd theatre every week," you'll have to give me some evidence for that. The press is remarkably quiet about it, if it's happening. But I'm prepared to view your evidence for that claim.
(bb) I doubt myself constantly. Unhealthily, fearfully as well as healthily, fearlessly. But doubting nature would be truly utterly bizarre, unsound, irrational. Unhealthy. Fearful. I have no warrant, no justification, no need, no fear to do so.
"I doubt myself," you say, but not "nature"? That's got two problems: one is that if you doubt the instrument on which the information is registering (yourself), then how can you not doubt the reliability of the data that instrument is delivering to you? It would be like looking through a coloured telescope and declaring, "I have no doubt the moon is red." The other is that there is no such thing as absolute human empirical knowledge. No matter how long you look at nature, you should -- as a scientist does -- always recognize the margin or error that exists in all theorizing and all empirical data. To fail to do so wouldn't be a strength, but rather a weakness -- it would actually end science itself, since one never has to look further into what one is sure one absolutely knows.
(cc) All untrue belief is contrary to reason, knowledge, by definition.
Actually, it's not. Knowledge can be falsified, of course. And reason depends on the quality of the premises offered, which must be valid and true, or it produces only invalid or unsound conclusions.
What untrue belief is contrary to is actually
reality.
I have no faith, bad or otherwise.
No faith in science? No faith in the universal explanatory power of "nature" explanations? But you just said you did. In fact, you said you were so certain you don't even doubt anymore. But since you also admit that "nature" has not currently supplied us with every possible explanation, and indeed, you insist that our "incapacity to understand it" is at the level of "risible," it's impossible to see how your premise warrants the conclusion you assert here.
Apart from good faith, good will, of course. I believe in kindness, social justice; I know the latter can never be attained except in the grave.
There's no "good" in a world of "nature." Nothing there is either "good" or "bad." So there's no "good will" to which a "nature" adherent can refer...at least, no objectively real "good." I suppose one could
imagine something...but no more than that. Likewise, there's no "justice"; for justice is a moral quality, and a "nature" kind of world has no moral content of any kind. Nature is whatever nature is, and that's the end of it.
You say you have no faith. But now you say you have faith in "good will." And now you say you "believe in kindness, social justice." But what need is there to "believe" or "have faith," if you will, in a thing you currently have? But if you recognize this world as having a lack of "social justice," and even insist that it "can never be attained," then what kind of faith or belief is it that you have? And how will the grave provide some "justice" you don't see in this life?
You're not addressing common sense absolute certainty.
I am. See above. There's no such thing. There is, however, the self-deception of believing one can have it. That, at least, is a real thing.
Even science does not purport to provide certainty. And, as Oxford mathematician John Lennox has astutely pointed out, even mathematics requires the mathematician to accept as axiomatic certain principles he cannot prove from mathematics itself. So even in maths, the most seeming-certain of all disciplines, faith returns: one has to have faith in, for example, the stability of reference of numerical terms, or one cannot get good results even from maths.
So there is no such thing as absolute certainty. There is only the bravado that claims to have it, when it simply cannot be had. There is, however, such a thing as a rational, firm, relative conviction of the truth of a proposition, provided the evidence for it is sufficiently probabilistically strong.
Did you notice? That's a claim. "I make no claims" IS a claim!