MiracleQuest Continues: But How Do You Know You’ve Been Stabbed??
Posted in Atheism, Blogosphere, Epistemology, Faith, MiracleQuest, Skepticism, Thinking Critically on | 5 minutes | 25 Comments →
"How might we reasonably define a miracle?" asks cl.
"Regrow a limb on video, empty out a cancer ward, levitate a bunch of Christians out of a burning church and I'll be on the road to belief," says cl's opponent.
"I don't mean give me your own particular examples of a miracle," cl says.
"Oh, well what a disputationist and sophist you are!" quips cl's opponent only a little irrationally.
(Anyways) "Why those things? What characteristics or qualities about those particular things persuade you? How do you quantify their persuasiveness, so that I might identify a similar amount of persuasiveness in another account?" cl clarifies, trying to avoid further polemical nonsense.
"Been covered from dozens of angles. If you’re not getting it, you never will," quips cl's opponent again, while nothing intellectual is offered again.
"All we've established is unambiguous and stringently verified," says cl. "And as we can see from the fact that we're still arguing over Zeitoun, those must not be very decisive criteria."
"Those terms are just fine and everyone knows what they mean," demands cl's opponent. "Quit rejecting my examples and quit asking for definitions. We've already given them to you."
"Well yeah, but again, I don't want specific examples. I want the reasoning behind those examples, so we might develop some rigorous criteria we can apply any alleged miracle to and hopefully do some excluding," says cl.
"And what would be the verifiable connection between any of those things and God anyways?" cl presses further.
No answer.
"Back to the original argument, how can we possibly know that God has never manifested Himself to some person in some disparate occasion between Genesis and Revelation?" asks cl in a related attempt to get his opponent to justify the so-called Undeniable Fact, that God has never shown up in real life.
"I’ve already covered the epistemology angle," says cl's opponent, who earlier said, "…the plea to required agnosticism due to non-omniscience overrides any and all evidential concerns, due to hypothetical counter-factuals which might exist outside our knowledge base concerning ANY EVIDENTIARY CONCLUSIONS WHATSOEVER."
"Nonsense," says cl. "I’ve been stabbed."
"How do you know? Could be a dream, a delusion, a subterfuge by some magical creature playing games with you, a simulation, etc. etc. etc. Your ‘non-omniscience’ domain leaves open all these possibilities and more. Next time you’ve been stabbed, I suggest you adopt a ‘null’ opinion concerning whether it’s actually happened or not. Just playing by your rules," says cl's opponent.
Nonsense.
My opponent suggests that because I questioned the cogency of DD's so-called Undeniable Fact on appeal to DD's lack of omniscience, that I must abandon all appeals to evidentiary persuasion in any direction regarding anything. Friends, this is simply stupid. Here are what I see as the straightforward facts, and if you happen to be reading this, please, by all means speak up if you agree or disagree:
DD claims it is an Undeniable Fact (yes, he even capitalizes it; I know, it's weird) that God does not show up in real life. I object, on the grounds that no one person can possibly know that God has not ever disparately manifested Himself to some individual. It is simply an epistemological nightmare to call such a thing an Undeniable Fact.
Right? Or wrong?
Now does anyone see what I mean about wanting to argue with a computer? Think about how stupid this is. What if somebody says, "Aliens have never landed on Earth." Can anybody know that? Why is this argument even taking place!?!?!
My opponent extends the reasoning I applied in an isolated instance to other instances where such reasoning is surely not valid. Gee, that's conducive to sound logical principle. People are so stubborn and proud and judgmental and all sorts of other unsavory things! How can not only one person but a group of intelligent, ostensibly rational people defend these idea? Can we know that no Alien has ever set foot on Earth? Of course not! I have no idea and absolutely no evidence to justify my claim that God has never shown up in real life to some person here on Earth. Nor does anyone else sans omniscience. Does that mean we must say one needs omniscience to know they've been stabbed? Of course not!
Yeah, it could be a dream or a delusion of being stabbed. Meanwhile,
"What 'cogent subject matter' do you claim I am ignoring?" asks cl.
"Another turn on the roundabout? Not tonight, thanks. Not interesting," replies cl's opponent.
And my opponent continually denounces me for sophism! And running in circles!
Please, for my own sanity, can somebody show me exactly what it is I'm misunderstanding when I say nobody can know that no Aliens have ever landed on Earth, or that God has never shown up in real life?
pboyfloyd
says...“Back to the original argument, how can we possibly know that God has never manifested Himself to some person in some disparate occasion between Genesis and Revelation?” asks cl in a related attempt to get his opponent to justify the so-called Undeniable Fact, that God has never shown up in real life.”
Really? What does ‘real life’ have to do with the fictional accounts in Genesis, supposedly happening some 6000 years ago and the reinterpretation of the anachronous dreams of Daniel by John in Revelation?
I’m sure the that the God character DID ‘show up’ to diverse characters in Biblical stories.
There were talking animals too!
cl
says...Correct me if I’m wrong, but this takes the discussion in a tangential direction, taking the focus off the epistemological validity of the Undeniable Fact and on your opinion that Genesis and the like are fictional. I’d be willing to discuss the latter, but for this post, let’s say you’re talking to a friend, and they say, “It’s an undeniable fact that aliens have never visited the Earth.” Can they possibly know that without omniscience? I say the answer is no. Similarly, we cannot say it is an undeniable fact that God does not show up at disparate points in pre-Revelation history. How can we know?
pboyfloyd
says...cl, you say, “this takes the discussion in a tangential direction..”
But you just said, “Back to the original argument..”, which included this part which Genesis and Revelation seem to be being taken for granted to mean something other than ‘the first and last booklets of the Bible’.
Seems to me that if you are taking the Bible stories to be truth and you are asking another larger question in ‘light of this truth’ then obviously you’re asking a trick question because ‘it is written’ that God DID show up at disparate times according to the stories ‘between Genesis and Revelation’.
Seems you only want clarification from your opponent.
Does Jim aka “cl’s opponent” even come to your blog to answer you? Last I heard he was saying that he was fed up going round in circles.
cl
says...That’s not it. Whether the stories are true or not is irrelevant and I don’t need to assume they are for the purposes of illustrating the epistemological problem. To eliminate the potential for further hangup here, for the sake of this conversation, let’s all agree that zero Bible stories are true.
So, nothing the Bible says about God is true. Even so, can we know that God has never once shown up in real life between the emergence of human beings and the current epoch? Can we similarly know that aliens have never shown up in real life?
No thanks, I really don’t want to discuss jim with you other than that I’ll say his preference for insult over explanation is precisely what allows the circles to persist. Yes, he’s around and always welcome, but I want to move forward with whoever is willing.
cl
says...That’s not it. Whether the stories are true or not is irrelevant and I don’t need to assume they are for the purposes of illustrating the epistemological problem. To eliminate the potential for further hangup here, for the sake of this conversation, let’s all agree that zero Bible stories are true.
So, nothing the Bible says about God is true. Even so, can we know that God has never once shown up in real life between the emergence of human beings and the current epoch? Can we similarly know that aliens have never shown up in real life?
No thanks, I really don’t want to discuss jim with you other than that I’ll say his preference for insult over explanation is precisely what allows the circles to persist. Yes, he’s around and always welcome, but I want to move forward with whoever is willing.
Brad
says...“Right” is my answer to the question, cl. This online stuff must really be eating at you if you’re stretched to pulling a “!?!?!” stunt. ;)
What you’re missing is listed in the book, Things Cl Has Been Missing In This Debate, which include such profound and elegant chapters as Come On, Get With The Program and We Can Know Some Things For Certain, You Know. Also included is I Could Have Sworn I Won This Argument Already Back There.
I think the question at the moment is, can we be certain it has nothing to do with real life? Now, rhetorical questions don’t logically entail certainty on the issue, so your response appears kind of aversive. The conclusion cl’s shooting for, if I understand correctly, is that certainty cannot be claimed on the matter, and if it is, it is an irrational claim.
I don’t think cl is saying ‘sans omniscience, nothing can be called a fact for certain.’ Rather, he is saying ‘sans omniscience, unfalsifiables cannot be shooed away from the domain of possibility.’ Have you falsified the theory that miracles occurred or that God has worked in the world? Or have you merely intuited the opposing theory as the better-fitting explanation?
pboyfloyd
says...“How might we reasonably define a miracle?” asks cl.
“Regrow a limb on video, empty out a cancer ward, levitate a bunch of Christians out of a burning church and I’ll be on the road to belief,” says cl’s opponent.
“I don’t mean give me your own particular examples of a miracle,” cl says.
Okay, I think that a variety of specific examples is a definition of a thing like a miracle.
If we simply admit to the dictionary/etymological definition then, it seems to me that you are just asking for atheists to concede that miracles are ‘wonders’.
This would make it easy for you to suddenly get a dose of the ‘deductions’ where you get ‘all logical’ and claim that by atheists ‘own definiton’ THEY are being disingenuous.
e.g. “Miracles are wonders”
…..”The Universe is a wonder”
…..”Therefore the Universe is a miracle!”
…..”Therefore atheists admit miracles happen!”
…..”Therefore atheists are poo-poo heads”
…..”Case closed!”
How dare, you cl-of-my-imagination, call atheists ‘poo-poo heads’!
The ‘affront’ to my sensibilities is nothing short of miraculous! (i.e. imaginary)
cl
says...Exactly, and thank you. And no, we don’t need 100% certainty to justify atheism or theism, but when we call something of which we cannot possibly be certain an Undeniable Fact (caps original), we claim certainty.
Thank you again, Brad, because I never did say that. That was commenter jim’s runaway conclusion that I unfortunately get to live with.
cl
says...I don’t. A variety of cars does not suffice to explain what cars are. For example, and to repeat myself, why would a limb growing back convince you? Explain that with detail.
No, that’s not what I want atheists to concede. I have no idea where you get that from.
Believe me, the last thing I want to do is sling around charged terms like disingenuous. I couldn’t compete with jim anyways.
cl
says...I don’t. A variety of cars does not suffice to explain what cars are. For example, and to repeat myself, why would a limb growing back convince you? Explain that with detail.
No, that’s not what I want atheists to concede. I have no idea where you get that from.
Believe me, the last thing I want to do is sling around charged terms like disingenuous. I couldn’t compete with jim anyways.
Quixote
says...Hey cl,
A few quick thoughts jotted down on the run. They’re correct, but don’t hold me to an exacting standard, and my reaction to DD’s Escapable Opinion argument is taken from memory.
Your argumentation in this regard is spot on. The only advice I would give you is to simply develop (yes, I will split an infinitve from time to time) the habit of ignoring those like you’ve described in “The Errors of Logical Treason.” Anyone rational following your discussion already knows who the irrational parties are, and if they are unable to distinguish between such, you wouldn’t be able to explain it to them anyway:)
I noticed that the epistemological nightmare offered in support of the Escapable Opinion was dropped fairly quickly in favor for a version of the “As evident as the sun” argument. What surprises me personally about DD’s argumentation, is that he appears to be too clear a thinker and gifted writer to set forth an argument fraught with such simple error.
As I mentioned before, his argument is defeated by the Bible’s forward predictions that God would not appear in the future in the manner DD seems to demand, ie Hebrews 1:1. In the face of this citation taken directly from the text he’s criticising, he constructs a model predicting the manner in which he thinks God should behave, and measures all his reasoning against that false standard.
Moreover, while DD’s argument perhaps presents some intial, but not insurmountable, problems for Arminian theologies, it does not even register with Calvinistic or Molinistic Christian theologies, which would not predict God to be readily observable by all with regard to His special revelation. Interestingly, the Molinistic system achieves this within the parameters of a full-blown free will configuration!
Furthermore, DD’s argument commits basic logical fallacies. For instance, he appears to argue: I know that God does not appear; therefore, God does not appear! I think he could develop this argument into a stronger and more palatable form, but as it sits, I wouldn’t get too excited about any of the criticisms lodged against you on this one. They’re obviously partisan, with no care for what’s actually rational. The object of pure argumentation is to figure out where your own arguments are weak, in order that they might be refined-or rejected completely if they’re demonstrated to be incorrect-not to create an argument and defend it at all costs.
cl
says...Thanks! The Illusions Writers Face Part Two piece you asked about should be up by Monday BTW…
It’s good to hear you say that, because it’s something I’ve thought of before, and confirmation is always nice now and again.
I noticed that too!
In this particular case, I couldn’t agree more.
That was mine and Jayman’s concern as well. And when you get into the distinctions between different denominations, you know damn well what they’re going to say: The Courtier’s Reply!! Nah-nah-na-na-nah-nah!!
I agree, and that’s where the idea of debating a computer came from.
pboyfloyd
says...Okay, cl, I am certain that God has never manifested Himself anywhere, because as defined God cannot exist.
As defined, God is not made of matter, and He lives outside of time and space.
I define existence as the space-time continuum and all that is within, as I’m sure you do too.
Now, God ‘could’ be defined as a character in a book(the Bible for example) and as such He would certainly be real to the extent of the reality of characters in books are.
But the thing is, no matter what powers we can imagine for, or invest in, characters in books, we can be sure that they don’t manifest themselves, but they CAN be ‘manifested’ by trickery! (a person dressing up as The Amazing Spiderman or Santa Claus for example.)
There’s more about the history of gods etc. and exactly how wrong entire races of peoples can be about their sincere beliefs in miracles/magic that I could expound on to bolster my certainty that gods in general are non-existent, for example the fact that many were personifications of weather phenomena or mountains and such.
Then there’s the very human motives for having stories about God. A land-claim, a claim that ‘this land was given to us by God’ etc.
If your question is even more towards the philosophical, as in, “How can we be certain of anything at all?”(obviously including the certainty of Godly manifestations), I’m sure that philosphers have expounded on that subject in the first chapters of their books.
So:-
a)You already knew this. Therefore you are being disingenuous, asking a question that you already know the answer to.
b)Your dad was a philosopher and he taught you all the jargon without going into any detail.
c)You simple man. You no understand this philo-something word.
pboyfloyd
says...Okay, cl, I am certain that God has never manifested Himself anywhere, because as defined God cannot exist.
As defined, God is not made of matter, and He lives outside of time and space.
I define existence as the space-time continuum and all that is within, as I’m sure you do too.
Now, God ‘could’ be defined as a character in a book(the Bible for example) and as such He would certainly be real to the extent of the reality of characters in books are.
But the thing is, no matter what powers we can imagine for, or invest in, characters in books, we can be sure that they don’t manifest themselves, but they CAN be ‘manifested’ by trickery! (a person dressing up as The Amazing Spiderman or Santa Claus for example.)
There’s more about the history of gods etc. and exactly how wrong entire races of peoples can be about their sincere beliefs in miracles/magic that I could expound on to bolster my certainty that gods in general are non-existent, for example the fact that many were personifications of weather phenomena or mountains and such.
Then there’s the very human motives for having stories about God. A land-claim, a claim that ‘this land was given to us by God’ etc.
If your question is even more towards the philosophical, as in, “How can we be certain of anything at all?”(obviously including the certainty of Godly manifestations), I’m sure that philosphers have expounded on that subject in the first chapters of their books.
So:-
a)You already knew this. Therefore you are being disingenuous, asking a question that you already know the answer to.
b)Your dad was a philosopher and he taught you all the jargon without going into any detail.
c)You simple man. You no understand this philo-something word.
cl
says...Hmmm….. red flag.
Interesting. On what evidence are you sure I agree with your definition of existence? Your claim here is irrational, and quite liberty to take in speaking for another, no? I happen to define existence as the state of existing.
I have no problem with your belief, and that many gods have been mere personifications of natural phenomena does not preclude the existence of a polytheistic reality.
So what? There’s very human motives for conducting science. Just imagine all the politics tied to the scientific definition of when life begins.
No, that is not my question, that is what jim has paraded as my position to make a mockery of me. I stated DD would have to be omniscient to know that God has never shown up to some person before. That does not mean I think we can’t be certain about anything, such as whether or not I’ve really been stabbed.
So:-
a) Yet another stupid-ass charge of “disingenuous” ironically founded on ignorance of known accounts;
b) Shut your friggen’ mouth about my dad because his analytic logic would rip your Boolean blindness a new one;
c) Tell me Mr. Full-of-Wisdom Philo-sophia wise one: Can we know for sure that no aliens have ever visited Earth? Why or why not?
pboyfloyd
says...“I happen to define existence as the state of existing.”
Well that’s just PERFECT, isn’t it? How would you define the ‘state of existing’ then, “existence”?
Seems that I ‘touched a nerve’ mentioning your dad. Geez, cl, just change that to ‘some mysterious authority figure’ if that makes you less annoyed. Plus I did say ‘if your question leans towards the philosophical’.
This, ‘if your question leans towards the philosophical’, applies to the possibility of your being disingenuous too and since you deny that this is the case, you can see that that is not an issue.
So, since I’m sure that you understand the language very well, I’m not sure why you completely ignored that conditional ‘if’ to take the opportunity to get ‘annoyed’ yet again!
“Can we know for sure that no aliens have ever visited Earth? Why or why not?”
Okay, I’m going with yea, we can know that no aliens have visited Earth!(if by aliens you mean intelligent beings originating on another planet.)
They’d be too far away to get here and have no reason to come here.(unless they were after your semen, of course! But I know for sure that I don’t even have to bring THAT up!)
cl
says...Then we’ll have to agree to disagree I guess!
Brad
says...Example-based definitions only work tentatively and temporarily, whereas natural definitions are absolute, don’t need changing, and can be utilized in the field of logic and lucidity instead of hazily drifting in our intuitions and reporting back fuzzy conclusions.
To carry on cl’s analogy, presenting a set of cars to aliens will elicit some idea of what a car is, but will not work if they, say, saw a truck or whatnot, and didn’t have anything to tell them whether or not the truck is close enough to a car to be called a bona fide car or not. This reminds me of something I read of Steven Pinker:
Is a miracle merely a statistical improbability? How improbable? Must it be intentionally caused by some source? “Define” is like “refine” is like “reduce”: what are the fundamental qualities that all miracles, by definition, must share to be bona fide miracles? A set of criteria would be nice. Before any “undeniably” certain conclusions can be made on the topic, we need to know exactly what the topic is about, else we are merely bandying around intuitions.
Did I just witness a reverse-Anselm farce? Look, just like how the traditional Ontological Argument fails, this argument fails: you cannot define something into our out of existence. Deliberately trying to limit one’s mind to a narrow scope isn’t going to help one understand the nature of reality. If you take the word spelled “e-x-i-s-t”, put some notion behind it other than the universally accepted meaning, and then proclaim your syllogism about God’s existence as true, you are committing a bait-and-switch fallacy.
And right after that you commit the red herring fallacy to indulge in your own musing about framing God as a character in the Bible, which is acceptable, it’s just that it doesn’t contribute much to the discussion flow here. Nobody’s putting forth the argument that since he’s a character he’s “real,” so within your diversion is a straw man fallacy.
(Warning: Philosophical rant.) You do realize that trying to define every word in a language without some radius of circularity is impossible, right? As such, there will naturally be self-evident ideas that should not need be expounded upon, at least for outside inquiries. I really don’t think “existence” can be split down by much, if truly at all. The smallest atoms of reduction I can garner from the word is that there must be a relation between an idea-form and an external entity. But of course, this only applies to concepts in the mind, not entities themselves. I suppose entities just plain are, they can’t “be” “not being.” If we choose to describe existence as a state, it would be the default and unfailing state of every”thing.”
Existence and nonexistence are ultimately labels that came out of the need to check observations against ideas and vice-versa, as well as naturally select only coherent ideas out of any pool of them. Insofar as God can be conceptualized coherently and without being contrary to real-world observations, there is nothing logically sliding God into the Nonexistence pool of ideas. Hopefully this gets the ontological side-discussion off the tracks.
“… because I say so.” There, now we can see the pillar of your premises.
@cl: I do think you overreacted. I mean, when you read “Your dad” followed by “You simple man” (a marginally humorous irony in itself), do you really have to play the game too? Claim the 1-UP? (Although I guiltily admit I enjoyed reading your part B a lot.)
Brad
says...Example-based definitions only work tentatively and temporarily, whereas natural definitions are absolute, don’t need changing, and can be utilized in the field of logic and lucidity instead of hazily drifting in our intuitions and reporting back fuzzy conclusions.
To carry on cl’s analogy, presenting a set of cars to aliens will elicit some idea of what a car is, but will not work if they, say, saw a truck or whatnot, and didn’t have anything to tell them whether or not the truck is close enough to a car to be called a bona fide car or not. This reminds me of something I read of Steven Pinker:
Is a miracle merely a statistical improbability? How improbable? Must it be intentionally caused by some source? “Define” is like “refine” is like “reduce”: what are the fundamental qualities that all miracles, by definition, must share to be bona fide miracles? A set of criteria would be nice. Before any “undeniably” certain conclusions can be made on the topic, we need to know exactly what the topic is about, else we are merely bandying around intuitions.
Did I just witness a reverse-Anselm farce? Look, just like how the traditional Ontological Argument fails, this argument fails: you cannot define something into our out of existence. Deliberately trying to limit one’s mind to a narrow scope isn’t going to help one understand the nature of reality. If you take the word spelled “e-x-i-s-t”, put some notion behind it other than the universally accepted meaning, and then proclaim your syllogism about God’s existence as true, you are committing a bait-and-switch fallacy.
And right after that you commit the red herring fallacy to indulge in your own musing about framing God as a character in the Bible, which is acceptable, it’s just that it doesn’t contribute much to the discussion flow here. Nobody’s putting forth the argument that since he’s a character he’s “real,” so within your diversion is a straw man fallacy.
(Warning: Philosophical rant.) You do realize that trying to define every word in a language without some radius of circularity is impossible, right? As such, there will naturally be self-evident ideas that should not need be expounded upon, at least for outside inquiries. I really don’t think “existence” can be split down by much, if truly at all. The smallest atoms of reduction I can garner from the word is that there must be a relation between an idea-form and an external entity. But of course, this only applies to concepts in the mind, not entities themselves. I suppose entities just plain are, they can’t “be” “not being.” If we choose to describe existence as a state, it would be the default and unfailing state of every”thing.”
Existence and nonexistence are ultimately labels that came out of the need to check observations against ideas and vice-versa, as well as naturally select only coherent ideas out of any pool of them. Insofar as God can be conceptualized coherently and without being contrary to real-world observations, there is nothing logically sliding God into the Nonexistence pool of ideas. Hopefully this gets the ontological side-discussion off the tracks.
“… because I say so.” There, now we can see the pillar of your premises.
@cl: I do think you overreacted. I mean, when you read “Your dad” followed by “You simple man” (a marginally humorous irony in itself), do you really have to play the game too? Claim the 1-UP? (Although I guiltily admit I enjoyed reading your part B a lot.)
pboyfloyd
says...Brad, you say, “Example-based definitions only work tentatively and temporarily..”
Well, most alleged miracles, magical and supernatural explanations seem to only work tentatively and temporarily too.
“To carry on cl’s analogy, presenting a set of cars to aliens will elicit some idea of what a car is, but will not work if they, say, saw a truck or whatnot…”
Well, it’s a bad analogy because there certainly are things known as cars, while there are not necessarilly things called miracles, gods, supernatural realms and such, which Jim would need to employ as the definition that cl seems to be fishing for.
…………………………….
Well that’s just PERFECT, isn’t it? How would you define the ‘state of existing’ then, “existence”?
“(Warning: Philosophical rant.) You do realize that trying to define every word in a language without some radius of circularity is impossible, right?”
But we’re not trying to define EVERY word here, just the word existence.
I say that existence is a process through time.
“I suppose entities just plain are, they can’t “be” “not being.” If we choose to describe existence as a state, it would be the default and unfailing state of every”thing.”
Okay, you suppose that entities(things that exist) just “are”(exist), they can’t “be” (exist)
“not being.”(not existing).
But every”thing” already has the condition of existence implied. i.e. every”thing” that exists.
Seems to me you you guys are deliberately trying to leave the definition of ‘existence’ as vague as possible so as to include miracles, gods and spiritual realms.
Even something as ethereal as an idea exists through time. i.e. no time, no ideas happening.
Something as solidly existing as a rock, is not eternal. Nothing is. Things exist at this time, not forever.
Then there is space. It’s not a ‘thing’ but it does exist. Photons of energy take time to travel through it. Until we have a working GUT we won’t have a working model of how matter/energy are connected, but any working GUT will surely have such a connection.
Still, even right now there is a deep connection between things and space. Things ‘take up’ space.
If not, give me an example of a thing that doesn’t take up space?
“.. there is nothing logically sliding God into the Nonexistence pool of ideas.”
Sure there is.
You said this, “”I suppose entities just plain are, they can’t “be” “not being.””
Which is equivalent to this, ” Okay, you suppose that things that exist just “exist”, they can’t “exist” “not existing.”
To “Be” and to “Exist” are identical aren’t they?
Once again, proposing that there is a being who ‘lives’ outside of where we KNOW that beings all exist, is describing a being that doesn’t exist.
You say that, “They’d be too far away to get here and have no reason to come here..”, is equivalent to, “… because I say so.” ?
I’m giving you reasons for why I don’t think that aliens have visited way beyond, “because I say so”.
What you are suggesting is the same as a cop excluding a suspect of a crime as neither having the means nor a motive, and you saying, “Pshaw! Just because you SAY so!”
That’s ridiculous.
Brad
says...Yuppers. It’s been a serious problem for everybody who’s tried to integrate these alleged things into any proof or tight case for God or such. But this point entirely dodges the matter at hand (whether examples as definition for miracles are sufficient to logically progress in our discussion), so should I conclude the point above is merely one meant to rack up false points on the scoreboard, or get in some advertisement of your other arguments edgewise?
You’re looking at all the wrong parts of the analogy. I wasn’t saying, “Cars exist just like miracles exist, comprende? Existence is the shared trait between the two situations!” You’ve totally looked the other way in the face of my analogy. Let me illustrate more elaborately. In my analogy, the aliens do not have enough information to justify the label “car” or “not car” as in reference to a truck, because all they have are examples. Examples help us intuitively understand things and make simple-form judgments, but if we are on the playing field of rigorous logic, do we have enough to work with to reliably put any situation into “miracle” or “not miracle” categories? Is there some kind of abstract ‘test’ we could develop? That is, given any description of a situation, could one come to a conclusion on whether or not there was a miracle at hand in it? If not, then here’s an impasse. If so, then lets try it out.
I choose to leave it as vague as I can possibly make it without allowing contradictory forms to exist. Anything with traits X and not-X isn’t allowed. Otherwise, it’s fair game for modal possibility.
After that, you make the empirical observation that everything changes (i.g., existence is a process). But let me ask you, does a quark change other than relative to other quarks? Do individual particles change their intrinsic natures? If not (I don’t think so), then existence is more than just a process – ‘process’ is just what emerges out of the ‘things’ that happen to exist. We then arrive at a framework of existence where the fundamental idea is that of ‘things’; ‘things’ are what exist. Could not a god be one of these things?
Well, you’re half-right and I was half-wrong. Kinda. I’ve definitely seen most forms of gods turn out to be logically incompatible with the states of affairs I observe in the world. (Almost all mainstream conceptions of the Christian God.) But that doesn’t entail that there isn’t any god whatsoever.
Of course.
How do we know all beings exist as matter and particles? Have you found a proof of this, or is it just the best understanding of reality you’ve got? The two are not equivalent.
Well, I wasn’t aware that you know more about alien life forms than that first cop knew about the suspect. How did you acquire this knowledge about what the motivations and means of aliens would be if they existed? Can you relate some of this impressive knowledge here on the internet, or are you not allowed? I certainly agree we haven’t thought of any means by the standards of our current terrestrial technology and scientific understanding of spacetime, but it’s not set in stone quite yet.
Honestly, this is kind of sad. When the topic is about the idea of miracles, and the first order of business is simply defining the darn word, we inevitably scurry away to the most remote lands of discourse.
So long as we allow for the seemingly arbitrary categories of physical versus nonphysical, I’m going to have to say the definition of miracle that best aligns with our intuition is, “Interruption of physical reality and its otherwise lawful progression by nonphysical force(s) / being(s).”
I have a theory of where the idea of ‘supernatural’ might have first sprung out from. When faced with any so-called black swan, any phenomenon or occurrence which contradicts our understanding of reality, instead of throwing away that understanding of reality, wherefore we would be left with little of coherency to lean on for wisdom and prediction, we merely make a label for anything which contradicts our understanding of reality. When new findings emerge, and with it cognitive dissonance, instead of seeing the facade of the labeling system, we merely alter our understanding and keep the labels and forget about it.
Brad
says...Did I just type “i.g.”? Wow. That was supposed to be an “i.e.”, but I slipped a G in there.
pboyfloyd
says...“You’re looking at all the wrong parts of the analogy. I wasn’t saying, “Cars exist just like miracles exist, comprende? Existence is the shared trait between the two situations!””
Existence is only a shared trait of cars and miracles if you believe that miracles are not just figments of our imagination.
cl
says...pboyfloyd,
You’re still missing the point of the analogy and trying to flank Brad on the existence of miracles.
Brad,
Exactly my thoughts as well. That’s why sans rigorous criteria, “miracle discussions” entail little more than unsatisfying intellectual foreplay with both sides forever destined to talk past one another.
That’s exactly what I’ve been saying. In our similar discussion at EvangelicalRealism, I got accused of bad-faith arguing when I rejected “unambiguous”, “stringently verified”, and “violation of natural law” as workable definitions of a miracle. Commenter jim also expressed frustration when I would not accept his particular examples of a miracle, such as “empty out a cancer ward”, “levitate a bunch of Christians out of a church”, or my personal favorite, “grow a limb back on videotape.” Certainly, any one of those things would be impressive, and any one of them would constitute good evidence for “miracles.” But what I wanted to know was, why did jim find those particular examples persuasive? What I’m looking for is rigorous and pre-agreed criteria we can use to judge any alleged miracle, and it is from the answer to the latter question that we could begin to build our criteria.
I can dig that.
Incidentally, I’m working on a post about this. Keep posted!
Yep! Yep! Yep! Got my vote 110% on that one! There’s nothing I would love more than to secure our defs and start excluding some case studies and see if any stand the test. And I find it interesting that instead of rising to this challenge, most atheists prefer personal counter-attacks on this point.
And your last paragraph describes “spontaneous regression” and “the placebo effect” perfectly. Incidentally, one of my biggest concerns regarding faith healings is just that: Can we reasonably eliminate these as confounders?
pboyfloyd
says...Well, you’re the Christian here. Why don’t you give us all a definition of a miracle that you feel we can all accept?