1. Dawkins transcendent

Comment #39963 by Toivo on May 12, 2007 at 11:54 am

The article says: "He has no name for it. "It's hard to have a word for it because part of it lies in the future. For example it would be hard to ask a medieval peasant for a word that sums up Boeing 747s and computers and televisions." He is indeed convinced that future physicists will discover something "at least as wonderful as any god you could ever imagine." So why not call it God?"

- This is amazing stuff. Why the need to label anything we don't know or any sense of mystery we may have as 'God'? Couldn't it be perhaps that this is a method of self-deception: if you can label something that is real 'God' (e.g. as in the laws of physics are real or that there are genuine mysteries in the world or that it's a fact that people have a moral sense), then you trick your mind into believing that "God" somehow "exists" and your "faith" is "secured". Suddenly all the things that you have always imagined about God (that it's invisible, ghost-like, extremely human-like but not human, father-figure who has created everything by magic with "intent" and "purpose", and who loves you and cares about you) are "validated", since after all, 'God' is real. Are some people really THIS STUPID that they don't realise that you cannot drag the old definition/meaning of a word with you when you REDEFINE it (if you'd redefine the word 'God')? If you redefine a word, it simply goes (or should go) without saying that any old meanings/definitions are erased from the word. Also, if you just add a new definition/meaning to a word (like some people may do with 'God'), that's fine AS LONG AS you make sure both you and your audience know precisely which of the DIFFERENT meanings you refer to (to avoid equivocation and irrational, vague pseudo-reasoning), e.g. a theist agreeing with an atheist what 'God' means a moral sense (and so "God" exists) and going from there to "prove" that "God" created the universe, there is an afterlife etc. implicitly using the usual sense of the word 'God'.

Also, why does Irene Lancaster say: "Dawkins has tried to describe some sort of power, even intelligence, which does not include the word 'God.' " ??

Unless Richard Dawkins has suddenly changed dramatically from the person I know him as (which is quite unlikely) (but please correct me if I'm wrong), he has (most likely) never tried to describe "some sort of power, even intelligence" as Irene most likely means it. Sure, he has talked and written extensively about awe towards the universe, life and ourselves, about us having a sense of mystery and the unknown, about science having great potential to reveal great things about the universe, etc. But I suspect it was never the kind of "power, even intelligence" that Irene is after. I don't think she uses that phrase to mean science (understood as a collective activity by humans) or humans (as a species), which could be called, trivially, a "power" or an "intelligence" (although you'd still have to stretch the definitions of those words to get there). It seems that Irene thinks RD is talking about (or "believes" in) some sort of "power" or "intelligence" that's ACTUALLY just another name for the god(s) some people (or even Irene?) have believed in for centuries: the cosmic ineffable, mysterious "power" or "intelligence"…who "designed" the universe and all life with certain "purpose" in mind and made it "for" humans, answers prayers and cares about humans and their sex lives (so it's not *that* ineffable all the time). Perhaps people like Irene (some theists or deists?) think that (but they will *never* say this): "Ok, perhaps we were wrong about some things, perhaps God didn't create all life as it appears now, perhaps the Earth is old, perhaps the Earth isn't the centre of the Universe, but still we weren't wrong about the most central thing. See, it wasn't all delusion after all? See, people didn't waste their lives believing in fairy tales and brainwash their children into believing myths, lies and non-sense as knowledge. It's all right; it's all good and fine after all. God exists. I have a purpose. I'm being taken care of. There's somebody out there who knows all the answers and who loves me. What a relief."

I don't know what Irene (or theists or deists) actually think when they sometimes seem to insist that there is some "intelligence" or "power" and that science "reveals" it and that Richard Dawkins would try to describe it. But it's non-sense and it's irritating. I wish they'd stop doing that.

2. Is Christianity Good for the World?

Comment #39332 by Toivo on May 10, 2007 at 10:33 am

stuartM02 ,
thanks for the comment. I'll try to reply: :-) even if this may be off-topic for this thread….and I realise I am to blame for making my post in the first place…:-(

First, I'll answer all your questions:

"1. You know that many people who experience (in both happiness and suffering) the world in the same way as you. So you have the ability to perceive the degree to which another person will be suffering."
-Yes, yes, yes....yes.

"2. This perception should allow you to realise that it is a matter of geography and fortune (or misjudgement) that you are not experiencing this suffering."
-Hmmm.... I disagree. I didn't exist somewhere already to begin with and then was assigned randomly a location, parents or whatever. It's rather the other way around: the location, parents and fortune, if you will, happened before I existed anywhere. As a consequence and as a product of the location, parents and fortune, I was born, almost inevitably, in that location to those parents. There wasn't any chance or randomness involved *IN THE SENSE* of me existing beforehand in some "pre-existence" and then my "ghost" luckily getting a "place" in some human body (and potential DNA sequence that could've happened but didn't doesn't count as ME existing beforehand somewhere). So I wasn't lucky or unlucky, since there's no "before" I can compare to (I didn't exist before!). This is getting quite philosophical and so perhaps I may be committing errors in reasoning (tell me if I do), but also, I couldn't have been born to other parents at another time in another place, since whatever the circumstances were that caused me to exist, part of my definition (i.e. what I mean by "I") includes those specific circumstances (i.e. "I" (my sense of identity) have those certain parents and lived in that certain area when I was a child.) If a person with my genetic code were born in Nepal in 1876, that person, or any other variation of the parents, location, fortune etc., would not be me, by definition. However, there have been many moments in my life, when it was uncertain what the future was going to be, and that I could've ended up in very bad situations, situations where the I would've suffered. Some people in similar situations did end up doing worse and did end up suffering, but I didn't (in some cases). Still, that doesn't compel me to value the lives of those people. I don't see how that would.

"3. Knowing this, would you not wish to relieve this suffering in entities such as yourself, not only because you can empathise with them but can identify that you could easily be experiencing the same suffering."
- Yes, the entities are like myself, but they are not myself: I don't directly, physically feel their hunger, their pain, their suffering, their joys, and their life. That's a big difference. And why on earth would I want to relieve the suffering of others in any big scale (apart from holding the lift open for 2 more seconds etc. for other people because I feel slightly better having helped them (via empathy))? Also, I could *NOT* easily be experiencing the same suffering, since I'm not in the same circumstances as they are, not now at least or not anymore. I have no risk whatsoever of somehow magically "switching places" with the people who suffer and need help.

"4. Is this not placing value on other peoples lives? How can identify that in almost every way another, unknown, person is like you but not wish to relieve there suffering and preserve their life for them and those who would also suffer? "
- What? What is "placing value on other peoples lives"? As I've said, I do place only a small value on other peoples lives. That hasn't changed suddenly. As to your "how" question: I have no idea "how", I just can. For me, currently, empathy isn't but a "whispering voice in the wind", not a strong force guiding my life.

Finally the case study:

"You are walking down the street and notice over a fence that a man is about to murder a child, unknown to you and of no consequence to your direct existence. Assume that you know for a fact that if you intervene you have a 5% chance of being killed, but a 100% chance of saving the child. What do you do?"
- Realistically, I at least would not intervene (physically). Most likely, I would make an evaluation of the situation and see if I can somehow save the child without risking myself (if it's only physical intervention by me that has the 5 % chance), since I might benefit me in all sorts of ways: small emotional satisfaction via empathy, possible fame and reward (even monetary), feeling that other people are grateful for something I did, etc. I would perhaps try to distract the man's attention, call the police, and perhaps point this situation to bystanders more self-sacrificing than me. But if nothing worked, I would still not try to intervene physically.

3. Is Christianity Good for the World?

Comment #39201 by Toivo on May 10, 2007 at 6:50 am

_J_,

(I can "sort of" see what you mean, but I'm sufficiently uncertain of what you think, so I'm going to make this comment): I don't think that atheism (lack of belief in gods) itself has any "moral" logical or other kinds consequences. Atheism itself is amoral, in the sense that it's neutral or silent with respect to morals.

You can't conclude just from atheism that "life is all we have" or anything else like that. Don't get me wrong: sure, atheism can be used in reasoning or building a set of morals, but you will need some knowledge and/or morals/ethics to begin with.

That said, I think it's fair and reasonable to conclude (from our knowledge of the world) that "life is all we have".

However, I must raise another issue: you seem to try to derive preferences, what we like, and/or morals, "oughts", from facts, "what is". I mean: we can also conclude reasonably that life is all that all humans have. But how does it follow that "life is necessarily the most precious thing we know"?? Does not compute. For me, that's correct, and perhaps for most people that's correct also, but that's not necessary or a logical deduction, but a reasonable expectation based on observation etc. For some people, "honour", "religion" or "perpetuation of family" might be the most precious (highly valued) thing they know, not (their)life (as in being alive) itself.

Also, why would every person's life be NECESSARILY as precious as our own?? If the previous part of your sentence was weird, this is doubly weird. This, if I understand it correctly, is something almost nobody believes: people tend to put their own life first, generally (I know there are some exceptions...). I certainly do not think that "every person's life is as precious as my own", and I suspect you don't either. You may value other lives (as do I), but that's just a matter of empathy (generally) and we surely value our own lives more than those of others (just on the basis that we actually experience only our own lives directly).

Or have I misunderstood what you meant by "life is all we have"? I'm very sorry if I did (please correct me in that case).

Despite the above, I think you may possibly perhaps mean to say that when people become atheists, they realise (not as a consequence of atheism, but as a consequence of all their other knowledge, finally freed from the tyranny of religion), that there is no afterlife and we only have this life, which tends to make people value their current lives more. Since people naturally have empathy and value the lives of others, and atheists see that other people have only one life, the atheists would realise the "fragility" and the one-off nature of life and feel perhaps "closer" (as in: we're in the same boat together) to the rest of humanity and be more willing to respect the lives of others. I don't know how to phrase it beautifully, but I hope you get my point.

But, that's not a logical consequence of atheism; it's just what people do, usually (perhaps, I'm mainly guessing here), after they become atheists.

Not all atheists value the lives of others: for example, I, an atheist myself, put very little value, in general, to the lives of other humans, but extremely great value to my life. Also, that value put on the lives of others is completely dependent on circumstances and who that person is. That value is, however, for most humans, very low.

4. Londonistan Calling

Comment #39142 by Toivo on May 10, 2007 at 4:48 am

One solution to the "insane religious people" problem is making them see that their religious beliefs are not knowledge (like their common, practical, day-to-day knowledge of the world) but make-believe, wishful and magical thinking, hopes (a la "hope springs eternal") etc., and that there really does not appear to be a deity of any kind, anywhere. So just as normal people don't believe in their teeth being alive, conscious beings who communicate with their owners telepathically, they would not believe in God or god(s).

That way, I think, most of the "I-am-your-God-obey-me-influence" would go away in people's minds, and you'd be left with a sort of "neutered" version of religion if not no religion at all: a group of people getting together for a sense of community, helping others, enjoying poetry, literature, ethics (or cherry-picked ethics), etc.

But that's only 1 solution. Here are some others (which I would NOT prefer, but the majority of UK people or politicians might...I don't know..?):

2. Not stamping out belief in God or gods, or improving critical thinking, but instead supporting and encouraging progressive religious people of the different sects to be an even greater majority and "policing" their own. E.g. progressive Muslims would criticize the more extremist Muslims and would try to make sure that there is no risk of a theocracy being established, or religion-inspired violence taking place, or a terrorist act (fuelled by religious extremism) being committed. This way, we all (religious and non-religious) could all happily coexist. Even if, sadly, in this scenario, a lot of people won't be able to think critically about all their beliefs, this scenario would seem to be the "path of least resistance" (least emotional discomfort to religious believers or, in many cases, the majority of any given country).

3. Teaching people, at school and elsewhere, to compartmentalize their minds, so there's one compartment for religion/spirituality, one compartment for science/practical knowledge, and perhaps one more for new-age beliefs (and homeopathy). They would be taught about "scientific knowledge" on the one hand and "religious knowledge" on the other hand with their different ways of knowing. This kind of teaching can be greatly enhanced if certain kind of wacky postmodern philosophy is added to it. For instance: all truths or knowledge claims are relative to some cultural axioms or assumptions or faiths that are "just taken on faith" and cannot be proven. So all the creation myths of the all the different peoples of the world would be equally true, because there's no "single" "truth", but only "relative" "truths". Similarly, evolutionary theory would be "true for science", while creationism is "true for religion", so there's no "conflict". And, of course, homeopathy would be true to the people who believe in it. What a Brave New World this would be, eh? This scenario would make people, I guess, more humble about their beliefs ("realising" that they are all faith-based and others have contrary but all the same equally valid and "true" beliefs) as well as more understanding and tolerating of other views. It would be much like multiculturalism, but applied to beliefs or knowledge claims as opposed to ethics. So, if you teach a young Muslim these things, the argument goes that s/he would become less vocal, less extremist, more tolerant of other faiths and views. And although this is the most cruel scenario of all: turning people into mind-bending, vague-minded vegetables incapable of "serious" critical thinking or understanding of reality or truth, this scenario would provide a "nice" solution to all the mutually contradictory belief systems existing in the world: just do enough "mental gymnastics" until you're so lost in your own philosophical smog that you no longer see the cognitive dissonance and the contradiction with reality. All religious conflict, or conflict between science and religion would just evaporate, in addition to people being more tolerant and understanding of other beliefs and views. It wouldn't be total chaos: people would still "trust" buses to take them to work, and "trust" their alarm clocks to wake them up, and "trust" scientific results in some areas of life, but they would have the ultimate "get out of jail(reality) free - card", a "philosophical" permission to believe whatever they wanted for whatever reason they wanted irrespective of reason or evidence.

What do you think?

The UK could just do nothing.... that's an option too.

5. Massachusetts Proposes Stem Cell Research Grants

Comment #38906 by Toivo on May 9, 2007 at 12:57 pm

Perhaps slightly tangential:

Why do people have or want to have moral principles? What's wrong with just living as you please... and if people want to use embryos for scientific research, and that activity doesn't cause harm to us, let them!

My point is that all kinds of moral principles are unnecessary. If we like or accept activities A, B and C and don't like/don't accept activities D, E and F, then it's not necessary for us to have some overarching "general rule" or principle to "justify" these preferences: the fact that we have those preferences "justifies" them. We need no "permission from our parents". :-)

In relation to using embryos or even humans in scientific research: Even if we generally don't accept killing or mistreating individuals, we might still accept the scientific use of embryos (or even humans) (and perhaps killing them or mistreating them) as a special case, an exception, which is justified merely by the fact that we like/accept this exception. There's no need to be "morally consistent" or have "greater" moral principles, which "bind" us. Of course, we can have those, if we really want to, but there's no requirement for us to do so. We may live and do as we please.

Generally, we don't accept killing for obvious reasons (it would cause massive unhappiness to us, directly or indirectly), but once we're past the embryo stage, we no longer have the risk of being killed or suffering indirectly (or perhaps only very little because of some natural empathy), so there's no harm to us if embryos were destroyed or used in scientific experiments. Depending of course on the magnitude of that indirect suffering via empathy, we might in some cases accept even very "cruel" scientific experiments on embryos.

6. 4 Sermon for Matins: 'Dawkins and The God Delusion'

Comment #36752 by Toivo on May 2, 2007 at 7:06 am

"Painfully, we have learnt that the premises of Christian Faith and the premises of science are different, but complementary.

The premises of science are that human beings can investigate and find out all sorts of things about the world which we can organise into a reliable body of knowledge."

So, does science really have premises? If so, doesn't a premiss, by definition, mean something that WE DO NOT KNOW but "just believe"? If we really DO NOT KNOW the premises of science, then logically, we really DO NOT KNOW any of the results of science (e.g. law of gravity), which supposedly relies on the premises, either.

Thus, we cannot have any justified confidence in any scientific statement. If so, why do we pretend that we have? E.g. the whole of evolutionary biology would be just as "likely" or "valid" as creationism and thinking that gravity will exist tomorrow is just as "likely" or "valid" as thinking it won't exist tomorrow. Neither has any more justified confidence than the other. This is purely because we really DO NOT KNOW these things, since we DON'T KNOW the premises that were used to derive them.

In fact, if science relies on premises, what's the point of doing science? We don't really learn anything. We only learn that X,Y,Z follows if premises A,B,C are true. But since we don't know the premises, we really DO NOT KNOW X,Y,Z, which is what we would've liked to know.

Equivalently, I could invent 10 premises on my own and perhaps derive that I can fly. Still, I don't really know if I can fly, since I don't know if the premises are true.

7. If only gay sex caused global warming

Comment #27015 by Toivo on March 22, 2007 at 9:17 pm

Shuggy said: "Well you can be part of the problem or part of the solution. What kind of light bulbs are you using? Do you drive when you could walk or ride or do it electronically? What do you drive? etc. Sure it's just a drop in the bucket, but enough drops will fill the bucket."

My response: Yes, I could be part of the solution if I wanted, and I know that "enough drops will fill the bucket", but I meant that since other people are doing these things, I can benefit from their work without actually contributing to it myself. My "differential" or "additional" "drop" isn't going matter much as long as everybody else provides their drop.

I guess I have to hope that I'm an exception, since if the vast majority of people are like me, there's no hope for humanity (in terms of alleviating or diminishing the effects of global warming). :-(

8. If only gay sex caused global warming

Comment #26986 by Toivo on March 22, 2007 at 6:02 pm

I don't know about other people, but I don't get worked about global warming and its future effects because, as a single person, pretty much whatever I individually can realistically do, it will not alter or cancel the effects of glocal warming significantly (and those effects will become really painful only after about 50-100 years, perhaps).Also, I can't even really "motivate the masses" to do something about it. So, whether I got worked up about it or not, I can't achieve much, and since "getting worked up" is stressful, I just decide not to get worked up in the first place. Yes, I also realise that my attitude can be described as "anti-social and selfish" and if all people thought like me, perhaps nothing would be done to combat global warming (I don't know...). But I don't care!

9. Do stop behaving as if you are God, Professor Dawkins

Comment #26083 by Toivo on March 16, 2007 at 3:15 pm

jgrice02, what do we have here? :-) Perhaps an epistemological relativist? Do you believe that all belief systems ultimately rest on unprovable assumptions or axioms? Do you believe that all belief systems rest on faith and faith alone? Science and faith being on par? Believing in astrology is no more or less reasonable than believing in astronomy? Just making suggestions...

However. Let me proudly announce that (drums)... I am the freethinker you were looking for. I make no assumptions and have 0 axioms. No faith either. Yet I am an atheist (defn: no belief in god(s))

Indeed, why do atheists demand that knowledge must be based on empirical evidence? I think they do it because empirical evidence is likely to make us acquire knowledge. You read books because you're likely to learn from them, you study scientific evidence because you're likely get knowledge out of it.

No assumptions or axioms or faith need apply.

10. William Crawley meets Richard Dawkins

Comment #23737 by Toivo on March 2, 2007 at 10:36 am

Waiting for someone to give me an example of the "fundamental/underlying assumptions of science", I did a Google search with the phrase "fundamental assumptions of science". It turned out pure non-sense:

1. Rupert Sheldrake (the pseudoscientist) claims that "...assumptions of science as we know it: faith in the uniformity of nature."

-No this is not an assumption of science. Nobody assumes this (save a few lunatic here and there). Sure, if we did assume this, we could logically deduce future events, but that's not how science/people do it. E.g. we think that "bread will nourish" because it is "likely", not because there have been past events and we assume something. It's confusing the model for knowledge and the actual thing. Similarly, the "uniformity" in nature is knowledge, i.e. it is "likely", not assumed.

2. Someone paraphrasing David Hume's ideas: "The uniformity principle is an assumption made by scientists, first identified explicitly as an assumption by David Hume."

-Well, David Hume is famous for pointing out that we have no explanation or model of how we get knowledge. Sure, no problem with that. But then to go on from there to call knowledge an assumption? a faith? That's unwarranted. We simply don't know how exactly knowledge works, but we can still use it and know what it means. So Hume's argument, if he actually called some part of science a faith or an assumption, is wrong. Also, nobody does inductive reasoning or has ever done: it's a poor model for knowledge invented by Hume to show that it doesn't lead to knowledge probabilistically or otherwise.

3. Finally, we have Christopher B. Kaiser claiming that "fundamental assumptions of science like the applicability of mathematics, the unity of nature, and the consistency of causation..." First, the applicability of mathematics is not assumed, ever. When mathematics is applied to science, we either check that the physical system satisfies the axioms of that mathematics or check that the we can understand the physical system in terms of the meanings of mathematical objects (line, point, angle), on which axioms are based on. Again, the unity of nature is the same old "uniformity principle", which I've dealt with already. What's next? Consistency of causation?? What is that? Does it apply to claims like "every time I press 'space', a space will appear in my text"? Well, again, that's not an assumption nor based on one: it's just "likely" that it will happen. So this argument is pure non-sense as well.

Does anyone know of any other (no-nonsense this time) "fundamental assumptions of science"?

11. William Crawley meets Richard Dawkins

Comment #23734 by Toivo on March 2, 2007 at 10:02 am

Can anyone, please, give me one, just one, of those so-called "fundamental assumptions of science" or "underlying assumptions of science"??

12. The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad absurdum

Comment #23610 by Toivo on March 1, 2007 at 5:58 pm

Ask yourself: what kind of rhetoric would you use if you wanted to fool people into believing in something when you had no evidence or reason to support that belief? E.g. make people believe that the Spiderman is real (exists as a person with all those abilities in the real world).

Apart from threatening people (with Hell), or bribing them (with Heaven), you could try to make people confused about ordinary common sense or reason, and force them to accept that they indulge in assumptions or faith all the time, so believing that the Spiderman is real is no more justified, no more rational, no more truthful than believing that Spiderman is a fictitious character. I.e. you try to blurr the line between reasonable beliefs and other beliefs. This makes criticism of unreasonable beliefs impossible. Now that it's taken care of, you only need to appeal to emotion: Wouldn't it be great if Spiderman was real? (of course, you musn't do it so directly). After some attempt, you might be able to sufficiently persuade credulous people that Spiderman is, in fact, real.

I don't think Alvin Plantinga thinks that Spiderman is real. But common sense/reason tells us exactly the same thing for the existence of real Spiderman and God. So, why doesn't Alvin Plantinga also believe in Spiderman?

13. The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad absurdum

Comment #23601 by Toivo on March 1, 2007 at 4:49 pm

And what's this thing with fine-tuning? Ok, so we've discovered various constants and so on that if they were a little different, then life/human life/ Richard Dawkins/ this webpage wouldn't exist. Well, what kind of values did we expect for fundamental constants? We could have "worked backwards" and given something like probability distributions or educated estimates as to the values of those constants, given what we know about the universe, without actually going out there and measuring/directly determining the constants. So, once measured, the values of the constants wouldn't surprise us at all (since e.g. human life exists, we can already guess some range where some constants must lie). In this way, there's no improbable accidents or unexplainable mysteries, and no fine-tuning.

Also, fine-tuning seems to be obsessed with human life or life at all. Why? We could as well say that since the website http://richarddawkins.net exists, then some property of atoms and matter had to be "just right" and some fundamental constants had to be "just right" to bring about http://richarddawkins.net. Indeed, this proves irrefutably that the universe was designed for http://richarddawkins.net. Ergo, there exists an Internet God that really loves and cares about this site and had a great urge to create a universe with this site in it. Similarly, the universe is also designed for Mount Everest, a certain crater on the Moon, a certain gas cloud floating in space, comets, the red spot on Jupiter, and the crunching sound cereals make when eaten, each with its own god.

Alternatively, we don't know any general law or explanation for the fundamental constants (yet), and it's completely fallacious (argument from ignorance) to infer any sort of agency, purpose, intent etc. of the universe because of this, no matter how comforting that might be.

14. The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad absurdum

Comment #23593 by Toivo on March 1, 2007 at 4:06 pm

Perhaps relevant to Plantinga's arguments and theologians in general, there's a way of doing mental gymnastics by "putting the cart before the horse".

E.g. Talking about natural selection and evolution. If you first assume absolutely true/believe fully without any doubt/have as an absolute starting point that humans have developed in the course of evolution by natural selection and that such process had no particular reason or tendency to produce the ability to form reliable/accurate/likely beliefs, then you can't help but realise that most if not all of the things you think you know are not knowledge at all but some "adaptation" that you have no reason to think had some connection to reality. I.e. you start with scientific results and use those to evaluate how good your ability to form good/accurate/reliable beliefs is. But how do you know those scientific results? They are a part of your good/accurate/reliable beliefs. In other words, you are shooting yourself in the foot by using the "knowledge-derivation mechanism" to undermine the "knowledge-derivation mechanism". It's like logically proving logic doesn't work, or proving scientifically that science doesn't work.

The "right" way to think about these things is of course put "the horse before the cart", i.e. start with the "knowledge-derivation mechanism", which is kind of the definition of knowledge, so it doesn't have properties like true/false or doubt, and then go on to scientific results.

15. William Crawley meets Richard Dawkins

Comment #23432 by Toivo on February 28, 2007 at 3:31 pm

LDmiller, Kristian Z and John Pritzlaff seem to be confused about the "justification and/or nature of science or common sense (= normal, everyday reasoning)".

For example, LDmiller says that "... many (particularly non-scientists) do not seem to realize how much of the rock-bottom tenets of science are axioms, which are pretty equivalent to "dogma"."

Kristian Z says "...atheists also make leaps of faith. And while that is true, both in science and in everyday life..."

And John Pritzladd says, "In both science and faith you do have to assume..."

What you've written in very ambiguous since the word 'assumption' has many very different meanings, all of which are relevant here:

1. Something that is assumed to be true ("absolutely"). E.g. there is a god (some people do assume this)
2. A thought. E.g. I assume I have 10 fingers = I think I have 10 fingers.
3. Something that is assumed to be true only for the sake of the argument. E.g. in mathematics, assume x>3...
4. Initial parameters or initial knowledge in an experiment or a simulation. E.g. it was assumed that g=9.81m/s^2...

If John Pritzladd means 'assume' in the sense (2), then of course he is right. However, I have a suspicion that he uses meaning (1), in which case he's completely wrong and seriously confused about these issues. Ideally, in science or in common sense nobody assumes(1) anything ever. In real life, scientists or ordinary people (ordinary people in everyday, practical life - not in church) very seldom assume anything. Also, I, for one, do not assume anything at the moment, yet I can say "Highly likely, the Earth will have the same gravity tomorrow as today". No assumptions made so far. None. I do not assume that "induction" works, nor do I assume that tomorrow the universe must be similar to what it is today. Nor am I assuming "methological naturalism" or any "-ism", you could think of. Also, I am neither assuming that "my memory is reliable" nor anything like that.

Also, there's a similar issue with the word 'axiom', which actually doesn't even make proper sense outside mathematics. In formal mathematics, an axiom is any sentence you choose it to be. Also, axioms in formal mathematics cannot be true or false, by definition. One starts with some axioms and inference rules of one's own choosing (usually chosen specifically to "do certain things") and one is off "meaninglessly manipulating symbols" i.e. (in this context) " producing theorems". That's why axioms in this sense cannot be believed (it's like "smelling 'red'": a category error). In the "other" mathematics (not-formal), axioms are "obvious and self-evident statements" and they can be true/false. Here, one derives the axioms from meanings (or certain types of "intuitions", if you will) using logic and the only axioms that are believed (with high likelihood) are those that we know (with high likelihood) have been derived from the meanings. Either way, axioms have nothing to do with assumptions(1) or faith(religious sense).

Also, the word 'faith' and phrase 'leap of faith' keep popping referring to science or common sense: it's irritating. What do people mean, exactly? Faith=assumption(1)? Or Faith=assumption(2) or what? Again, I suspect it was meant in "assumption(1)" sense. In that case, religions or religious beliefs may be based on faith, while science and common sense are not based, even partly, on faith. Are people just plain confused? Trying to appease the religious? Doing mental gymnastics to remain a not-atheist?

I have seen a slight general trend in some philosophically and/or religiously inclined people's writings that they claim that science, reason or logic is based on faith or metaphysical (or not) assumptions. I don't think any of them really understand the full implications of that claim, since it's painfully self-contradictory if you assume(1) it even for a second. No worries: they can do mental gymnastics and compartmentalize their brain so that they only invoke those claims when they choose to attack science or rationality.

So, how do I or other people or scientists gain "knowledge" and evaluate "likelihoods" (I do NOT mean probabilities in the frequentists sense, but a similar idea)? I don't know. Should I know? Why? I don't have or have to have a fully developed model of how I interact with the world and how that leads to knowledge or likelihoods. What I, and with very high likelihood the vast majority of all people, too, have is the implicit (= can't explain in words but have the ideas inside one's mind) meaning of words like "knowledge, likely and truth". So I am able to say and mean that "it's very likely that pressing a certain button (looks like a 't') will produce a 't' on the screen", without making any assumptions(1) or having faith(in the religious sense) in anything. To help you understand precisely what I mean by "likely" or "knowledge", consider this: hold up a pen above the floor and ask yourself what's going to happen after you let it go. Most likely, you will "know" with high likelihood that the pen will drop (on the floor)". That's the meaning of "knowledge" or what it means to say that something is "likely". Many people may have the urge to explain this "knowledge" by saying they somehow deduced/derived it from past experience, reason etc., but that's a model, expressed in language, of how they do it and not the "real thing". Similarly, "the scientific method" or a description of how scientists generally accept claims is a model (tests, evidence, reason and so on) (albeit a very, very highly correlated with the "real thing"). Any explicit (=expressed in words) model of knowledge we might have has to be compared with "the real thing" and it's "fit" and thus likelihood estimated (by using the meaning of "likely"). A lot of confusion, I think, flows from the inability of so many humans to recognize their implicit understanding of "likely" or "knowledge".

Now, does anyone here agree with me?

16. Faith

Comment #23045 by Toivo on February 26, 2007 at 3:04 am

When I read what stpetes wrote, my first thought was "Whoa!". It's yet another example of a text containing "religiolese" (a tongue-in-cheek name for an imaginary language or sentences) that over- and misuses terms like "religion, fundamentalism, dogmatism, faith, belief, truth, believer, myth, extremism, etc."

I mean, you can discuss these things without religiolese if you stick to the usual definitions, or otherwise make it clear why, indeed, something is a religion or a faith. But, those who use religiolese (most of them seem to be, in my experience, attacking atheists or science, trying to argue for the existence of God or some paranormal phenomenon), are very quick to call science, rationality and/or even logic a faith or a religion. Also, the scientists become the dogmatic, closed-minded believers; the scientific community or scientists as a whole becomes "the establishment" or "the orthodoxy", atheists who agree with RD or scientists who think that paranormal powers very likely don't exist become "fundamentalist militant believers of a religious dogma" or "mindless ignorant blind faith heads". (Ok, I started to exaggerate towards the end, but you get the idea :-)

It's like accusing atheists or scientists of everything the religious or otherwise believers have been accused of. The difference is that the believers have never produced any good evidence or rational arguments in favour of their claims, while atheists and scientists have, in general.

Why do people or in this case stpetes use religiolese? What are they thinking?! Are they claiming something factual (i.e. has some meaning) by implying that atheism is a faith or that atheists are believers (in the religious sense): "… Because if anyone disagrees with your [I think this refers to atheists] faith then by definition they must be resorting to lies, strawmen and misrepresentation. There have been numerous articles which have ripped TGD to shreds. But the believers [again, I think this refers to atheists] still keep the faith…" Firstly, by definition (which I think most atheists agree with), atheism is the lack of belief in gods, so it cannot be a faith! There is nothing to believe there (in atheism). However, it is possible for an atheist to be mistaken or deluded about the evidence (if there was any) about the existence of a god: let's imagine that in fictional universe scientists find evidence of Zeus. Then a person who remains an atheist after analysing the evidence and thinking about it would be mistaken or deluded.

I'm an atheist. Why? Well, because I haven't seen any good evidence or reason to believe in any god. I also know that it's very unlikely that anyone has ever produced such evidence or reasons. In addition, I've observed people, religions and how and why people believe things. All this has led me to conclude (just like I conclude anything about ordinary every-day matters), that therefore, while possible, gods are very, very unlikely to exist. My atheism is no different than most adults A-Santa Clausim or A-Russell's Teapotism. The same way I can say that you are extremely unlikely to know next week's lottery numbers, or that it's extremely unlikely that your head will explode literally after you read this, there extremely unlikely are gods.

Yet, I predict you (stpetes) will continue thinking about atheism as a faith and atheists as believers (in the religious sense). It would be quite unlikely (again) that you would not only read my post, but also really understand what I am saying and agree with me (thus changing your mind). Perhaps you try invoking extreme scepticism, perhaps you ask "But how can you trust your reason?" or "But how do you know X is likely?" That way you can put me on the defensive, and that's one of the last resorts of "sophisticated" and "intelligent" religious people who want to argue against atheism and/or science. All this, while they sit somewhere using the very same "knowledge derivation mechanism"/"common sense" to type, to read, to use the computer as a part of writing up their argument. "Hypocrisy? Mental gymnastics? Compartmentalization? Never heard of them", they would say. ;-)

BTW. My 1st post, tread lightly.