Theism and Explanation

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No, you said "I certainly can prove nothing else did". So, prove to me that nothing else BUT god could have done this. After all, the claim (x happened and God did it), is logically the same as (x happened, and only God could have done it), as both claims are (x happened and God did it). So, make your case. Even further, argument by elimination, for a person who probably doesn't know a thing about neuroscience, isn't plausible. You can't eliminate all hypotheses, as you can't know about all of them.

In any case, I already provided my argument:
1) Alcoholism is a part of the neurological functioning of certain brains.
2) Neurological functioning of the brain can be altered, or removed through physical processes. (lobotomies are physical processes, so are drugs)
3) Alcoholism can be altered or removed through physical processes. (1 and 2)

1 and 2, therefore 3. This means that your alcoholism going away can happen naturalistically.

Even further, if the rate of recovery without divine intervention is not 0%, why would you require divine intervention to recover and not anybody else? Are you special? How do you know that you didn't just recover in a manner more similar to how they did, but not know it because of differences in how it all played out experientially? How do you actually know what your neurons were doing during your recovery, did you have brain scans during the process? Please oh please, tell me leejosepho, how you can determine that any neurological explanation that could ever be given has to be false, that any alternative theological explanation also has to be false, and so on and so forth?

Then deductively prove that natural processes cannot explain your recovery. If there is no other explanation, I want the proof, and for there to be no other explanation, this proof pretty much has to be deductive in nature.

Note to onlookers, I am not making a stand on the broader question brought up by the thread, but I do regard leejosepho's method as ridiculous and insane, and a way not to develop the idea. I, obviously, do not think God can work as an explanation, but I really really really think "God of the gaps" is ridiculous.

But there are other explanations of a physiological and neurological nature.

There is no other explanation YOU have thought of, but that is hardly proof there is no other explanation. Your ignorance is no proof of anything.

We are physical beings right down to the sub-atomic level. Anything that goes on in our bodies have physical causes.

Failure to come up with a natural explanation and therefore attributing the thing to God is a form of the argument from ignorance fallacy.

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 03 Apr 2011, 7:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

... yet you began this thread with this question (among others):


I am simply suggesting it is "just and fair" to suspect or consider "God" when "powers" that are "dependent or emergent from natural laws" are insufficient. You might well believe "God of the gaps" is ridiculous or insane or whatever, but you have still asked:

"What principles are just and fair to use to argue that something is explained by powers that are not dependent or emergent from natural laws?"

Please feel free to completely reject the fact (principle) that nothing else worked for me and "God" was the only thing left. I will make no complaint about that ... and please forgive me for jumping so far ahead of you and tripping up your plan/hope/intent to show there are no "just and fair principles" for arguing the possibility of something that is not dependent or emergent from natural laws.

you mean nothing else that -you- knew of. Your are substituting your ignorance for proof.

This is a common fallacy, especially among believers and ideologues.

It is called Argumentum ad Ignoratium or the Argument from Ignorance.

In addition you have committed principii petitio or begging the question. You have assumed the existence of God without providing proof.

Your "argument" is this: I am no longer a drunkard. Nothing else I tried seemed to work so it must be God. Glory Halleleluya! Aside from poor logic you don't give yourself sufficient credit for the hard work you did in giving up a bad habit.

ruveyn

@ leejosepho:
http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm
#10.

Except you haven't meaningfully engaged any philosophical problem here, or any background science, or anything else. You haven't really engaged the difference between "I went to God and he helped me" and "my brain started engaging in a religious construct, and this engagement had the effect of removing alcoholic desire from me" or any of the issues put forward.

Now, sure, you can say "You just want to show that God is invalid", but the heart of my engagement with you, is that you have no awareness of philosophical problems. Could you use your experience as part of an argument? Yes. Could your experience increase the probability we might assess the statement "God exists" as true? Yes. Does this mean that your experience forces us to accept God as the explanation of it? No, it does not, at least not in the way we've seen it presented. What we've seen it presented is a God of the Gaps that acts in an arbitrary manner to do something to alter the psychological characteristics of a person who is already apparently very emotionally and psychologically troubled(and perhaps having some instability because of that), and where alteration of these properties can and does occur without the invocation of God as an acting agent. So.... that doesn't really prove anything to me. It feels so subjectively satisfying to say "God did this", but, an outside party, trying to be fair to naturalistic hypotheses on the matter isn't going to just leap up to that same conclusion at all, but rather a more thorough investigation would have to take place. It may be a theory of mind issue here, but I have difficulty understanding why you don't understand that a more rigorous discourse would be important on the matter.

As Hume would say, a supernatural explanation must be more likely than whatever natural explanation could be contrived to produce the phenomenon. A miracle is a miracle if and only if one should be more surprised that the phenomenon had a non-miraculous explanation, than a supernatural one.

^^^^^^^^^^^^

I think a person can validly use personal experiance for a reason for why he belives in God.
Just not as why I should.

I always have a split mind on private evidences. On one hand, I hate them because of how able people are at being freaking insane. On the other hand, I can't see how to meaningfully avoid them.

Is it possible you are confusing the power of your god belief over your psyche
with said god existing and helping you?

Not even close.


Same again: Not even close.


Please forgive me if I had given any impression I had intended to do so. My only intent is to let other people know "God" is still a viable option for deliverance and/or transformation.


Yes ... and that is actually a core principle here.


I clearly understand what you are asking, and that certainly could be a possibility ... but I am fairly sure that is not what is going on. Where rightly-placed faith is truly at work, mere "wishful thinking" is actually abhorred.

^^ Greetings again Awesomely Glorious. I am very sorry that I was not very clear. I believe I mean that Mathematics may be part of the evidence of the given claim, and perhaps the majority of those humans who watch weather prediction do not understand very much how Mathematics may be applied to predict the weather and therefore may not understand this evidence - however, if they were told that Mathematics and Physics etc. was used to predict this weather, I suspect they would believe that these methods were use all the same as this appears to work consistently. We may link this directly to your scenario.

Suppose we have a human, named Paul, who, hypothetically, does not have the ability to understand Mathematics in the way we need him to ( to convince him that we can predict the weather etc.). We wish to prove to him that we can predict the weather using Mathematics and we claim to him that we can use Mathematcs to predict the weather. We cannot use Mathematical arguments to show him that this is the case, because he does not understand Mathematical arguments. So, we can only us our ability a sufficient number of times correct to convince him of our abilities. (Also, perhaps we can create a similar scenario with Science etc.)

Now, suppose that a happy man comes along, named Jed, who claims that he too can predict the weather. But instead, Jed claims that God gives him the ability to predict the weather and he uses no Science, Mathematics etc. Indeed, he demonstrates this to Paul a number of times like we have with our ability, successfully.

Who is Paul to believe? (The key here is to imagine that we are Paul - the methods used by the Mathematicians and Jed are equally mysterious).

Also, I believe I the possibility magical, that I could indeed be like Paul. I may be blind in some way that I do not understand. Perhaps prophets and believers in religion have some gift (like the Mathematical gift that Paul lacks) that I lack.

Indeed, I shall not necessarily act in the fashion that all Science and Mathematics is arbitrary - I feel that I must act according to some beliefs and I shall act by the ones that I feel most likely to be the case. However, I feel this helps me to recognise that others, who have different beliefs to my own, are exactly the same.

I do hope that this was clear for you.

I think it is an error to assume he must choose one over the other, and especially if/when/since one method (typically utilitarian) might be dependent upon the other.

^^ Greetings leejosepho. I am sorry for that. However, I think that I tried to embed within my scenario that, seemingly, the two methods are independent of each other. I stated "Jed claims that God gives him the ability to predict weather and he uses no Science or Mathematics etc."

^^ However, I believe that you are very correct, leejosepho, as perhaps Paul does not need necessarily to choose one over the other if he does not wish. When I have asked "Who is Paul to believe?", this does not mean that he must necessarily select precisely one, but since the two methods are claimed to be independent of one another, then I think this would be difficult to come to a compromise - that is, assuming he wishes to come to any conclusion. In addition, perhaps he has some theories of his own - but this was just designed to be hypothetical based of AwesomelyGlorious' scenario. I am very sorry for any confusion.

This is what you are up against here Lee, and it is why your campaign is so futile. People who wish to can always find a theoretical naturalistic explanation of the supernatural and even if they can't they can easily believe that science will one day find one: sort of the God of the gaps in reverse. I suggest you give it up, lest you get so frustrated that you start drinking again.

If God does deal with people on a personal level, then it is personal and undetectable to any third party.