Why naturalism is irrational

by Shining One 369 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • funkyderek
    funkyderek

    LittleToe:

    Numerous eyewitnesses, beginning two thousand years ago and continuing into the present time (with at least three or four on this thread). Many would suggest that eyewitness accounts precede this by several millenia, too, but that's an extended area of investigation.

    Eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable, and certainly don't meet the standards Rex mentioned. Now, of course, there are a lot of eyewitness accounts, which would certainly be taken into account in a law court. If fifty people say they saw the same person committing a crime, then a conviction is likely, even without physical evidence. However, if fifty people all disagreed about who they saw committing the crime, and the details of when, where and how it happened, then their evidence would likely be dismissed. This analogy, I think, corresponds very well to experiences of the supernatural. While there are thousands of recorded incidents, many of them contradict one another. While some see the Virgin Mary, others are given evidence that Allah is the one true god, while others are abducted by aliens. Even those who encounter the same deity are often given different instructions.

    This leaves several possibilities:

    1. All (or many) of these experiences are real, and there are different competing deities.

    2. All (or many) of the experiences are real, and there is one deity/entity or group of entities who are responsible for all of them.

    3. All (or many) of the experiences involving one particular deity/entity are real, but the rest are delusions.

    4. None of the experiences are real, all are coincidences or delusions.

    (I can't think of any other possibilities, but would consider any that people can think of.)

    Numbers one and two are, to me, essentially the same in that they require a certain dishonesty from the supernatural entities in question. Obviously, if people are seeing visions of Ganesh, then Allah's claim to be the one true god can't be true. While the idea of a pantheon of warring gods is no more ridiculous to me than many other supernatural claims, the idea of such gods each pretending to be the true one is. Similarly, the idea of some entities impersonating different deities for shits and giggles strikes me as unlikely.

    Option three makes more sense to me. It's certainly the view many religious people would have. Jesus really appears to people, but visions of other gods are delusions (or tricks of the devil).

    However, unless there is substantially more evidence for one claim than for any other, there's no obvious justification for making such a claim. It's telling that the Virgin Mary never appears in tortilla chips (or the local equivalent) in Saudi Arabia or that African tribal gods never appear in visions to Lutherans.

    Which leaves us with option four, which you won't be surprised to hear, is my preferred explanation. Humans have evolved to live in small groups with no long-distance communication. As a result, our ideas of probabilities are based on this. Living in the modern world, we tend to underestimate the likelihood of certain events, leaving us amazed by coincidences that are not really that unlikely. We also have excellent pattern-recognition techniques, sometimes a little too good, which lead us to see patterns in random events. And finally, we are influenced in all sorts of ways by the culture in which we live.

    So no, eyewitness testimony will not be enough for me, unless there is evidence to back it up. Rex claims he has some, so I'd like to see it.

  • LittleToe
    LittleToe

    But as you already know, I don't give a flying chuff about convincing anyone. Like you, I'd like to hear Rex's data, though

    You asked about a court of law, and I answered you regarding a certain subset of experiences.

    There are other answers within subset two (as per your list) such as the "name" of God varies with language and culture but is essentially the same deity. It kinda undermines the whole concept of religious war, but I'm good with that...

  • Cygnus
    Cygnus

    I'd need the eywitnesses to be independent of each other and carrying along no preferential presuppositions. Christians champion Paul's defense of himself when relating his conversion to the Roman authorities but today he'd be laughed at and tossed into the looney bin. I never did quite get if he heard or if he saw Jesus (of his "glory") anyway. edited to add since I'm out of posts for the day: The supposed eyewitnesses of Jesus who authored the gospels did a poor job getting their story straight. One has to wonder, with all the contradictions and different language (for instance, did Jesus literally say "Kingdom of Heaven" or "Kingdom of God"?) how the catholics (univeralists?) canonized them as Hoy Writ.

  • Cygnus
    Cygnus

    Well Old Soul ol' chap, I was being facetious with the JW I had engaged in IM with. I'm not really a Last Thursdayist, just as when you boil it down and ask a bornagain to dig deep and tell you what his beliefs make him, it's been my experience that they have difficulty explaining it until they run into brick walls and end up saying silly things like I did in defense of Last Thursdayism.

  • the_classicist
    the_classicist
    the_classicist:

    You apparently haven't been following the whole thread. Where have I written anything that would make you think I believe God cannot impact physical reality?

    I don't remember writing anything to that effect. Did I? If so, I apologize. Or were you adressing me as though you know my beliefs already? I am not "religion in general" nor am I "most people." I am an individual. If you're going to try to argue against my beliefs, you could at least do me the courtesy of arguing against my beliefs.

    But, if you'd rather just have a conversation with yourself that reinforces your stereotypical and prejudicial view of believers, knock yourself out. Sheez! You guys don't even see how pompous and egocentric you come across! You tell me you can't falsify my belief, but then you presume to tell me that my belief is meaningless? You don't see a sharp disconnect there?

    Really, you aren't understanding the metaphysical complexity of my argument. I said that the existence of God is meaningless for humans because humans perceive external existence by sensation, which is the only means to do so (unlesss you can think of another, which you can't). Now since God is totally unsensible, his existence or non-existence is completely meaningless as it is impossible to determine it to be so.

    The fact that you may think that God can impact physical reality is also meaningless; logically, how can a supposedly transcendent mental agent have anything to do with the physical world.

  • LittleToe
    LittleToe

    There we go with folks pulling the "transcendant" shyte again...

    What part of omnipresent don't ya get?

    Methinks great learning is sending ya mad

  • rem
    rem

    Oldsoul,

    I guess what it comes down to is that I don't accept the simple definition of "deluded". The English language is not a strict godel incomplete formal system, so when you insist on such a narrow definition of the word "deluded" it really starts to lose its meaning.

    My preferred definition of "deluded" would be: having an explicity false belief or an almost certain false belief that cannot be explicitly falsified.

    I'm happy with that since when I say you are deluded I'm using my own definition, not yours... so that doesn't make me deluded. If I were to use the word deluded in its strict sense, then yes, I would be deluded, but I'm not.

    LT,

    I'm sure I'm deluded about certain things that I don't even realize. I believe all sorts of crazy things: time slows down the faster you go, uncaused events are possible at the subatomic level, entangled particles can interact at faster than light speeds, etc. Perhaps some are wrong, but I'm just going off the best evidence I have today and I'm definitely not trusting my own perceptions. In fact, many of the things I believe are *counterintuitive*, but I believe them because they are backed by evidence.

    I don't believe I'm deluded about the spirit realm because I simply do not believe in it. If there is evidence then I will believe.

    So in a sense, we are all probably deluded in some area or another, but I'm specifically referring to encounters with the spirit realm when I say that I believe the majority of humans are deluded.

    Again, that's deluded in my special definition just because I can't think of another word that offers the same connotation of being fooled by the brain.

    rem

  • LittleToe
    LittleToe

    Rem:

    I'm happy with that since when I say you are deluded I'm using my own definition, not yours... so that doesn't make me deluded. If I were to use the word deluded in its strict sense, then yes, I would be deluded, but I'm not.

    If you intend communicating on a meaningful level, surely the use of abstract self-defined terminology is best left aside for commonality of understanding?

    Sure you might "think" that someone is deluded (using your own term of reference internally), but to express it when it obviously has such negative communal connotations is simply asking for rejection of your whole argument? It would be a little like me thinking you're "orange" and expressing it without explaining to you what I mean by that reference.

    Language evolves too...

    Maybe "subjective" is a more tactful choice of word, when dealing with individuals who are exhibiting few signs of mental illness.

  • Abaddon
    Abaddon

    hooberus

    Abaddon, there is no requirement that in order to credibly quote or reference a source for specific points that a person must also be in agreement with everything else that the source advocates.

    No, no requirement, just an expectation of clarity and openess in scientific debate.

    ReMInes's beliefs as regards chronology directly contradict the possibility of your beliefs regarding chronology being true being true.

    Personally I would not quote from someone in that way; quoting someone who thinks your beleifs regarding chronology (or whatever) are impossible without stating it when you do so is sloppy and deceptive, even if you didn't mean it to be.

    It is EXACTLY the behaviour in selective and partial quotation that the JW's get slammed for, and that I and others have criticised many Creationists for.

    I told you you would pick up bad habits hanging around the websites that you do, as I've shown equivalently bad behaviour in some of those websites...

    OldSoul

    "There is no spoon" ceases to be a convincing or satisfying argument at a certain point. Yeah, we all know we could be part of someone's dream, or that the entire Universe could have JUST NOW been created, and our memories of the past with it. But we all know that for everyday porpoises, and even extraordinary dolphins, this is probably "a load of bollocks". Most people accept reality is rather nicely exemplified by a fast moving truck, and take pains to avoid stepping in front of such exemplifiers of reality as even thought it MIGHT be a dream et. al., they like the possibley illusory reality they think they are having in place of what is objectively agreed to be subjectively terminal.

    rem

    LT is not making any claim to physical evidence or conformity to some scientific paradigm regaring his experience of x. He had a personal experience, as real to him as other things you wouldn't argue about the existence of.

    If LT says toast is real, then you would agree. LT would also say that he could prove to you that toast is real, which is non-dellusional. LT does not say he could prove x to you. As his actions clearly show he is cognisant that x was a subjective experienceannot prove (but accepts as real personally), to class him as dellusional is unfair.

    If someone insisted that such an experience was as real to you as it was to them even though they could not prove it to you, then that would be dellusional.

    Therefore I see no conflict in accepting LT's reality and your reality. I just don't expect LT to prove his reality to me, nor would he try to. Perception is reality on a subjective scale, and no matter how we kid ourselves, all we are GUARANTEED of THINKING we have as a concept of reality is on a subjective scale, as even things we think are objective are viewed, by definiton, subjectively.

    To claim therefore that something which someone does not claim to be real to you is not real objectively is both a statement of the bleeding obvious and a little dellusional in itself, as you are trying to assert that even things which no one has claimed are objectivelty real to you are not objectively real means that even though there is no such thing as objectivity, you seem to think there is.

    Belief in objectivity is dellusional.

  • LittleToe
    LittleToe

    So speaks Gyles, and he's a truly "orange" geezer!!!

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