Theism and Explanation

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Tomasu, I think I see your point, and that's kind of an issue I am trying to get at. I mean, we shouldn't be to a priori in a rejection of God as an explanatory hypothesis, as this is just dishonest, but the issue will have to tie into background evidence on good explanations. Even in your example, you rely on prediction as evidence for God.

Well, the issue is whether this is dishonest or methodologically poor, NobelCynic. So, leejosepho's campaign here was always an incorrect element of the issue.

Your own comments are on target, but I would have to distrust the claim that the inductively justified belief that further scientific progress will create better more knowledge to an indefinite extent is invalid. God of the gaps is a problem because it is "ignorance, ergo God". "Science will solve it" is "historical inference from growth in science, extrapolation, ergo eventual solution".

Finally, I would distrust your claim about any notion to be considered God though, if only because if we assume that God is an agent, and one to take seriously, I think it necessary to assume rational goals. If God's goals make no sense, then inferring a projection does not seem absurd. Now, you can regard this as a dishonest approach, but let's be serious, if we are to honestly attempt an epistemology without false positives for divine agency, or even one that allows us to tell the schizophrenics to do some reality testing when voices start talking to them, how can we do this with your blind openness to mysticism? At some point, we do have to start setting up some epistemic lines, and enforcing them, and in some form or fashion, we do need to hold the line so that way people don't take actual, literal insanity seriously.

I understand, and I did not mean to be correcting you there. Rather, I only meant to suggest "Jed" would be being a bit high-minded in thinking no Science or Mathematics could/would be involved or recognizable.


Rather than from you, I think confusion comes when pseudo-philosophers who actually insist upon mutual exclusivity there.


Yes, but then they get all frustrated when my actual experience blows their theories!


Sure, and I would actually be quite pleased to be involved in that kind of further/future investigation even if my actual experience might later prove to have been a misperception of some kind.


Respectfully hearing you seriously there, I nevertheless chuckle and say that is not at all likely to happen!


You bet, or at least until they become willing to at least hear the testimony and investigate a bit.

Lee.... I think it would be more realistic to say that your belief in God gave you the strength to overcome alcoholism. To imply that God cured you means to accept that he always could have done so and was just twiddling his thumbs waiting for you to ask. Then you get into the whole "why did God let me become an alcoholic in the first place?" question. If you accept that God didn't make you an alcoholic and own up to your personal responsibilities in that area, then why can you not also give yourself the credit you deserve for overcoming it?

In regards to this entire thread.... God belief is supposition. If you can support your theories with anything other than "cuz that's just what I think" or "the Bible told me so" then it's something that could possibly deserve discussion. I'm an omnist and always up for a good religious discussion, but nothing shuts me down faster than "that's just the way I was raised"... if you want to discuss god-ideas.. have an idea.

Have you read "This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape The Future" ? Fascinating and frightening reading. Several of the scientists in it state that they think science will soon prove that God doesn't exist. How they will do this, I can't even fathom... but it's certainly interesting.

I have never known you to want to be serious before AG and I don't believe you are now (with a new election for head of the Strident Atheists coming up) but on the oft chance that I am in error, I will answer your question.

We can't considering your blind rejection of it. Mysticism is about connecting with the ultimate reality (which could be another name for God, if he exists) on an individual level; you are looking for a collective answer, one that other people can agree is knowledge rather than belief, which I don't believe is possible.

Superstition


Empirically, it looks impossible.


More will be needed. Just predictions don't seem to cut it. The person might use some knowledge and methodology to predict events by natural means, as that will be the most likely thing, and the person will deceive people into making them believe that a supernatural being did it, or the person may be actually beliving his own delusion. Anyway, there will always be a different set of explanations towards the same thing, so much as the claim cannot be that trusted, and yeah, more will be needed.


Supernatural claims are phenomena that have not been tested, it's absurd, if not irrational, to claim truth on them without being tested empirically (although as Bethie implied, once tested, it ceases to be supernatural). Well, that is from a physicalist standpoint though, but my own opinion is that it's absurd to believe in anything that can't be verified, with so much level of certainty, in any case, supernatural claims can be said to be pure speculation based on a belief system, which is culturally learned, so, it's questionable.

Nope. I had always had my "belief in God", and I had already tried believing in belief.


That might be your spin on things, but not mine.


Illnesses, conditions, birth defects and predispositions exist, and alcoholism just happens to be among them.


Whoa. Neither did I make myself alcoholic. I was born that way.


Because I did not do that.


Yes, and even this atheist's story very close to my own shows something that can happen when even mere supposition is turned into action ...

"One night, when confined in a hospital, he was approached by an alcoholic who had known a spiritual experience. Our friend's gorge rose as he bitterly cried out: 'If there is a God, He certainly hasn't done anything for me!' But later, alone in his room, he asked himself this question: 'Is it possible that all the religious people I have known are wrong?' While pondering the answer he felt as though he lived in hell. Then, like a thunderbolt, a great thought came. It crowded out all else:
"'Who are you to say there is no God?'
"This man recounts that he tumbled out of bed to his knees. In a few seconds he was overwhelmed by a conviction of the Presence of God. It poured over and through him with the certainty and majesty of a great tide at flood. The barriers he had built through the years were swept away. He stood in the Presence of Infinite Power and Love. He had stepped from bridge to shore. For the first time, he lived in conscious companionship with his Creator.
"Thus was our friend's cornerstone fixed in place. No later vicissitude has shaken it. His alcoholic problem was taken away. That very night, years ago, it disappeared. Save for a few brief moments of temptation the thought of drink has never returned; and at such times a great revulsion has risen up in him. Seemingly he could not drink even if he would. God had restored his sanity.
"What is this but a miracle of healing? Yet its elements are simple. Circumstances made him willing to believe. He humbly offered himself to his Maker - then he knew.
"Even so has God restored us all to our right minds. To this man, the revelation was sudden. Some of us grow into it more slowly. But He has come to all who have honestly sought Him.
"When we drew near to Him He disclosed Himself to us!" ("A.A.", the book, pages 56-57)


I offer no theory at all, only some actual experience.


Yes ... yet His handiwork will still always stand and speak on His behalf.

Hmmmm, were you born with alcohol in your system? Probably not, though I realize not impossible. You were born with possibly an addictive personality, but you were not born an alcoholic.. Unless your mom abused alcohol while your were in the womb. If so, I'm sorry and retract this statement.

As for your little story about the atheist... It really means nothing to me because it's based on personal interpretation.



Again, experience is interpretive.. there is no concrete validation behind it... it is inconsequential.

AND I BELIEVE IN GOD!!
However, I refuse to believe that God is a petty, insecure child sitting on his mountain clutching his magnifying glass, screaming "WORSHIP ME, BEG ME... OR FRY!"

I just find that absurd.

Yes, and also with a genetic makeup that makes controlled drinking impossible once the "addictive personality" has kicked it off.

In any case, drinking might be a moral issue, but alcoholism is not.


Not sure what you mean there. I know the specific action I took, and I know the specific result of that action ... but please know I am not trying to convince anyone of anything here.


Who has suggested He is?

My original intent was to say, controlling an addiction is hard work. You should give yourself credit for that, even if God inspires your success in one way or another.

No I don't buy that God just one day "cured you" of your addiction.. but I guess it doesn't matter what I think.

Regardless, congratulations.

I'm done.

I can't say that you've ever known me, so knowing whether or not I am serious or not seems well beyond your capability.


This will be somewhat of a biased reading of it, but there is no real difference between a mystic and a madman other than a fact that nobody except God/ultimate reality would have access to? That seems problematic to me, and as such, I'd have to say that I have to consider myself somewhat militant against the idea. After all, one of my major schticks here is to claim that minds are highly unreliable, and mysticism just seems to make that issue worse.

Your quitting drinking proves nothing about your claim of God. Is ruveyn trying to prove something about you? no, doesn't look like he is and that he cares. It doesn't matter what is it about you here , so there is no need to prove anything about you, the real issue I see here is there is no actual mechanism to justify your position, you just claim about personal experience, but claims from experience are questionable, if not meaningless, thus it is getting discredited as a serious justification. And that is the actual issue, so the burden of proof is solely on your part.

I believe it has been implied to you already that for what happened to you, plausible explanations that makes more sense to reality are psychological and neurological factors that are to take in mind, to mention those examples, and you are saying there isn't any answer but God, while, apparently, you seem to be ignoring and rejecting other plausible natural factors that need to be examined, or... have you done so or have you been under examination so your conclusion can at least be backed up to some extent? if not, then it isn't really the last option left as you have claimed.

If you haven't been able to examine your case througfully and methodolically, then you just have an ad hoc hypothesis to support your bias.


The issue is that you HAVE to prove that no natural process can explain your recovery, and you haven't shown in this forum that you have done so, you have shown to jump from position A to the conclusion X without actually examine the issue througfuly, honestly and rationally.


Hmmm, possibility, well, you seemed to be providing a fair level of certainty with your case.

The problem is that we are questioning your interpretation of your experiences. This move is justified on a number of grounds:
1) The set of all experienced things is incoherent.
2) The set of supernatural ideas justified by experience is incoherent.
3) Any experience itself has multiple possibilities for its origination, especially an issue given that you probably aren't separating what you experienced from how you've interpreted that experience, simply because minds don't work with raw facts but rather stories and things of that nature.
4) The supernatural invocation you use is, as I think I've told you in the past, rather absurd. You basically hold that God, rather than helping the starving, helps alcoholics.
5) Without even a basic knowledge of your psychological profile, and background knowledge on the science of the matter, we cannot justifiably promote your claim, as it could be a matter of a bizarre aspect of your psychology, or even just human psychology.
6) Suspicion of supernatural claims on grounds of parsimony of entities is justified.

So, not only do we have reasons to be suspicious, to feel that we lack information needed to evaluate the situation, but even further, the conclusion you draw is one that we would disfavor for philosophical reasons(occam's razor, bizarre motivations of the proposed divine being). As such, your claim is being rejected on justified grounds as a final word on the matter. I mean, I'll be honest here, I don't think *my* experiences are compatible with most notions of a being called God, simply because I believe any anthropocentric God hypothesis is going to entail strong mental coherence of created beings(a point about divine purpose and behavior, particularly as it relates to personhood, relationship, and morality), but I believe that my experiences show that strong mental coherence of human beings is a false assumption. Should I take this as evidence? Yes. Should I pretend that my evidence trumps all philosophical reasoning and critical investigation though? No, I shouldn't, and I don't.


The problem is that there is literally nothing to investigate here. If you want to make this into an argument on most plausible explanation using explanatory principles, or go into the psychology here, or your psychological profile as given by a psychologist, then that's one thing. But, "Ah experienced thuh devine hayand of GAWD!" doesn't give anybody much to go off of, and doesn't give anybody any reason to take this seriously.

I think the idea would probably be that scientists would undermine theistic intuitions through scientific study, show the poor fit of God as a hypothesis to reality, and explain more things without God. A deductive proof won't be forthcoming from scientists though. I just made a guess though, as I have not read the book. I do know that a good number of the people in the book are known atheists though.

The issue I see here though, is that AA seems to be a group that propagandizes to bring out a revivalistic mood. The issue is that a revivalistic mood doesn't seem to me to be a good evidence of divine intervention but it *IS* a very distinct psychological state noted for great alteration in a person's behavior, meaning that the revivalistic psychological state could easily be responsible for the psychological change independent of the existence of God. In fact, a number of current atheists had their "On fire for God moments" that changed their lives, but, the issue is that even though they experienced this, it doesn't make them believe it is good evidence for God. In fact, fiery devotion to divine beings seems to be a trait of multiple religions, even though the incompatibility of these religious claims seems straight-forwardly to be the case, and where this fiery-ness for God even goes to people who are clearly wrong on the matter. I mean, I have no doubt that many insane fundamentalists are "on fire for God" even though their actions driven by this "fire" disagree very strongly with the rest of us, even though who claim to be touched by God.

A lot of people do. In fact, a lot of people get "on fire" for that kind of God.