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Tuesday, July 17, 2018

The Irrationality of Miracles


Jason Engwer pointed out the following.
Gary out of one side of his mouth:

"Some of the miracle claims are just downright stupid. Any educated Christian with a college degree should be embarrassed that Keener included these claims in his book. One such claim is that a woman who had previously undergone a complete hysterectomy prayed to Jesus for a child and nine months later she delivered a healthy child. If that story is true, that is more miraculous than the virginal conception of Jesus!"

Out of the other:

"When Jesus puts back together the thousands of pieces of tissue of a victim of a bombing, or reattaches the head of someone who has been decapitated, or reattaches a severed leg from an amputee, you will have my full attention. Until then, since prior investigations of 'miracle' healings have demonstrated that there is always a possible (and more probable) naturalistic explanation (such as the previous chemo and radiation treatment finally kicked in), I'm not buying your magic tales."

So, Gary apparently wants Jesus to produce miracles that he's already dismissed as "downright stupid" in principle.
It’s a common atheist tactic to claim that to believe in miracles is irrational.  This is why Gary feels comfortable saying it’s “downright stupid” when he disparages certain miracles.  But, I argue that it’s not irrational to believe in miracles, even on purely materialistic grounds.

To be clear, when I talk about “irrational” I’m referring to something that would be logically impossible, or something that it absolutely impossible to occur.  Furthermore, when I say it’s not irrational for miracles to happen even on materialistic grounds, I’m not referring to atheist claims of “spontaneous recovery” or “we’ll eventually figure out how to pretend God didn’t do this”-of-the-gaps arguments.  I mean legitimate miracles are perfectly consistent in a materialistic universe.

First, as I pointed out in one of my previous exchanges with Atheist Lehman, atheists assume that the supernatural is an impersonal force.  But God is a person.  It’s why He has the pronoun “He” (not because He’s gendered, so feminists can chill, but because He is not an It).  When we are looking at miracles, we are not looking at something that will happen due to machine-like causality, but instead we are looking at the choices of a personal agent.

One of the arguments that Gary brought out was that there are billions of people who pray to be healed, but not all are healed.  But this would only be a problem if God was obligated to answer all prayers.  We can easily imagine a hospital ward full of patients who have a bacterial infection.  A doctor may choose to give certain patients an antibiotic that he doesn’t give to other patients.  Those who receive the cure are cured, but those who do not aren’t.  Regardless of whether one wants to debate the ethics of a doctor making such a selection, it is clearly not irrational to stipulate that a personal agent could make such a decision for his own reasons.  In other words, it’s not like gravity (which functions no matter what someone wishes or desires) and so the fact that some, but not all, people who pray to be healed actually are healed is not grounds to rule that praying for a miracle is irrational.

But let me delve into this further with my second point.  The impetus for how miraculous healing works doesn’t have to be “magical” in any sense of the word.  All it requires is the existence of a higher dimension, something which string theory already teaches.  In fact, nearly all (if not all) of the miracles that Jesus performed could be adequately explained as the actions of someone who has the ability to use the fourth Euclidean dimension (I use the term “Euclidean” here to differentiate between it and Einstein’s use of the fourth dimension as time).

The easiest way to demonstrate this is to use the example of Flatlanders.  This work examined a theoretical two-dimensional space where creatures lived on a plane.  We can imagine a square drawn on a piece of paper with a heart-shaped icon inside the square.  To a creature that exists two-dimensionally, they would see only a line in front of them (they have only the x and y coordinates, no depth).  They would therefore see just the surface of the square and they would have to dig through the surface of the square in order to get to that heart icon.

You, existing in the third dimension, can see all sides of the square simultaneously, inside and outside.  You can even put your hand over the square and touch all points within the square simultaneously.  Neither of these concepts makes sense to a two-dimensional being, however, because they can only touch the outside of the square—never the inside, unless they burrow in.

Now consider some of the miracles of Jesus.  He walked through a locked door.  Irrational?  Well, a three dimensional being can use the third dimension to bypass a two-dimensional door.  To the perspective of a two-dimensional creature, we can walk through doors.  If Jesus could access the fourth dimension, bypassing a three-dimensional door is trivial.

Jesus turned water into wine.  Well, we can imagine a locked room in two-dimensional space that’s full of a substance—say, red chalk.  We can easily imagine erasing the substance out of that space and replacing it with something else, like black ink.  To the observer in two-dimensional space, a miracle has happened whereas for us, it’s just a natural aspect to the third dimension.

Jesus healed people.  Imagine what a doctor could do if he could see all points of a human body, inside and out, without having to cut into the body.  Just as we can reach in and touch the heart-icon inside a square without digging in, a fourth-dimensional being could see our entire heart and reach in to remove plaque or to repair arterial damage, all without cutting into our body or needing to use surgery.  Gary, being in the medical field, ought to appreciate how much one could do with this ability.

Again, extra dimensions are believed by many in modern physics.  It’s certainly not prima facie irrational to hold to their existence.  And it wouldn’t take a “magical” being to do anything.  If we had some way to access the fourth dimension ourselves, we could already do all of these things and we certainly aren’t magical beings.

Now atheists still might not like God.  They might even say that just because it’s possible that there could be a being in fourth-dimensional space doesn’t mean there actually is one.  But that “rebuttal” misses the point.  Atheists are claiming that Christians are irrational for holding to beliefs that are perfectly rational even on purely materialistic grounds.

What does that say about how rational atheism is?

30 comments:

  1. Clever point, Peter! Good stuff.

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    1. Thanks. And this doesn't even get into the point of how you can have a simulation on your computer that you can use cheat codes with, and despite violating the "rules" within the simulation it's not irrational.

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  2. Marvellous. Either I'm experiencing a severe case of deja vu, Peter, or you have argued very similar if not near identical to this elsewhere. Was it on your other blog? Anyway, I appreciated it then and I appreciate it now.

    I'm going to comment on one of Gary's latest dismal attempts at rational discourse here, for comments are just getting lost over there.

    Credit to Epistle of Dude for seemingly taking *every* one of Gary's laboured posts and responding point by point.

    'human virgins are never impregnated by ghosts'

    How tiresome is this sort of drivel? The worrying thing is that the Garys of this world still believe this constitutes a rational objection. It is utterly woeful. And this exposes Gary's claim to being 'open.' He does not even try to pretend to stick to his own deceptions. This is indicative of the current state of atheist apologetics. It's embarrassing beyond belief.

    To point out the painfully obvious, leaving aside the fact that we are talking about the omnipotent God of creation and not a 'ghost,' if a woman can achieve pregnancy through artificial insemination in a hospital, then how much more a virgin with God? Not too long ago artificial insemination would have seemed impossible to mankind, 'extraordinary' even, and yet extraordinary events happen frequently with time. But Gary thinks he has it all worked out with his outdated and stupid objections

    So this deliberate, obtuse approach to God's abilities to bring about miraculous or unusual events is transparent in its desperation, and embarrassing in its lack of coherent thought.

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    1. "Credit to Epistle of Dude for seemingly taking *every* one of Gary's laboured posts and responding point by point."

      Thanks, Danny! :)

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    2. Danny wrote:
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      Either I'm experiencing a severe case of deja vu, Peter, or you have argued very similar if not near identical to this elsewhere.
      ---

      Survey says: both!

      Actually, since I've had the thought before I wouldn't be surprised if I wrote it down before. Possibly even on Triablogue. I'm too lazy to search. But if it was just on my old blog, I don't mind being repetitive since I've mothballed that for the time being.

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  3. So, Gary apparently wants Jesus to produce miracles that he's already dismissed as "downright stupid" in principle.

    Not at all. What I do see is Gary saying that most of the reported miracles that we have are often poor in quality, and don't have the kind of controls that we should require to ensure we aren't being duped. A lady claims she prayed after her hysterectomy and was able to delivery a baby. Here's a story about a woman who was able to become pregnant after a hysterectomy, but probably didn't pray to Jesus. Woman gives birth to healthy baby that grew in her ABDOMEN - not her womb

    Is this what happened to the woman who claims she prayed and then got pregnant? Maybe, I don't know if we have any way of knowing. It's certainly seems much more likely than the idea of Jesus making another woman pregnant.

    It’s a common atheist tactic to claim that to believe in miracles is irrational.

    The problem is that there simply have never been any well established "miracles." There are plenty of things without a natural explanation, but lacking a natural explanation is not a reason to justify a supernatural one.

    To be clear, when I talk about “irrational” I’m referring to something that would be logically impossible, or something that it absolutely impossible to occur.

    I would argue that you have a strange defintion of what it means to call a belief "irrational" since there are very few things that we can establish as absolutely impossible, so you're left with only the incoherent. If I believe that the President of the United States would be kidnapped by aliens next year, and ransomed for 100,000 tonnes of organic honey, you wouldn't say that such a belief is irrational? On what basis is such a belief rational?

    First, as I pointed out in one of my previous exchanges with Atheist Lehman, atheists assume that the supernatural is an impersonal force. But God is a person. It’s why He has the pronoun “He” (not because He’s gendered, so feminists can chill, but because He is not an It). When we are looking at miracles, we are not looking at something that will happen due to machine-like causality, but instead we are looking at the choices of a personal agent.

    I think your response here is a bit of special pleading. We wouldn't say the same thing about other types of persons, like a doctor who fixes a broken leg, or a technician who fixes a broken machine. We can investigate those types of events.

    If the supernatural operates on reality then it is, at least in principle, something that we can investigate and potentially establish the mechanism for.

    Now consider some of the miracles of Jesus. He walked through a locked door. Irrational?

    Under my (and most other sensible people's) definition of irrational, yes it would be. For your definition, not so much, but your definition is pretty much useless in the real world.

    Again, extra dimensions are believed by many in modern physics. It’s certainly not prima facie irrational to hold to their existence.

    It's not irrational to believe they are possible. It is, however, irrational to believe that such beings do actually exist until we have established the truth of the claim.

    Atheists are claiming that Christians are irrational for holding to beliefs that are perfectly rational even on purely materialistic grounds.

    You're equivocating. Your whole point is a massive equivocation fallacy. Simple as that.

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    1. Atheist Lehman wrote:
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      There are plenty of things without a natural explanation, but lacking a natural explanation is not a reason to justify a supernatural one.
      ---

      I'm glad you don't work as a detective. "Just because we cannot demonstrate natural causes resulted in this corpse shooting himself ten times in the back of the head doesn't mean we have to insist another person did it." No, Lehman, certain things cannot be done by naturalistic means. You've already been given examples of this elsewhere that you've ignored (for instance, Steve pointed out if you saw writing on a wall you wouldn't assume natural forces did it).

      Again, one huge problem you have is your naive belief that the supernatural will do what the natural does, when it would be far better for you to recognize that the supernatural does what *personal agents* do. You know, like I've pointed out to you now for the third time.

      You wrote:
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      I would argue that you have a strange defintion of what it means to call a belief "irrational"...
      ---

      I don't care if you think that; I defined the terms I'm using, like people are SUPPOSED to do. Deal with the argument presented, not with what you wish I was saying instead.

      You wrote:
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      I think your response here is a bit of special pleading. We wouldn't say the same thing about other types of persons, like a doctor who fixes a broken leg, or a technician who fixes a broken machine.
      ---

      I fail to see how "we wouldn't say the same thing". I would. In fact, I pretty much did in giving the example of the doctor who gave antibiotics to some and not others. It's not irrational to expect personal agents to not do the same behavior to everyone. What's your counter to that point?

      You said:
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      It's not irrational to believe they are possible. It is, however, irrational to believe that such beings do actually exist until we have established the truth of the claim.
      ---

      In that case, I'm afraid that your definition of rationality is worth even less than what you claim of my definition. Based on what you said, you have to establish truth apart from rationality in order to justify rationality. That is, something is only rational if it is true. This means that all counterfactual claims are irrational. For instance, "If John F. Kennedy had not been assassinated, then no one would know who Lee Harvey Oswald is" is an irrational statement, on your view.

      Not only that, but only propositions can even have truth value, so any statement that is not a proposition is, by your standard, irrational. This includes opinion statements ("I like chocolate"--IRRATIONAL!) or questions ("When did World War I begin?"--IRRATIONAL!). Not only that, it would mean that an irrational statement could become rational by learning it, so Fermats Last Theorem was irrational until Wiles proved it, at which point it magically became rational. But why should the rationality of a statement hinge on whether or not a human can prove it?

      You said:
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      You're equivocating. Your whole point is a massive equivocation fallacy. Simple as that.
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      Ipse dixit.

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    2. Correction: "I like chocolate" should be "Chocolate is good."

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    3. Atheist Lehman wrote:

      "What I do see is Gary saying that most of the reported miracles that we have are often poor in quality, and don't have the kind of controls that we should require to ensure we aren't being duped."

      That's not what Gary said in his comments I quoted. You're making your own point in your own words rather than actually addressing what I quoted from Gary.

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    4. Atheist Lehman

      "Not at all. What I do see is Gary saying that most of the reported miracles that we have are often poor in quality, and don't have the kind of controls that we should require to ensure we aren't being duped."

      You're spinning it better than how Gary actually put it.

      "A lady claims she prayed after her hysterectomy and was able to delivery a baby. Here's a story about a woman who was able to become pregnant after a hysterectomy, but probably didn't pray to Jesus. Woman gives birth to healthy baby that grew in her ABDOMEN - not her womb."

      A false claim of the miraculous doesn't undercut a true claim of the miraculous.

      "The problem is that there simply have never been any well established "miracles." There are plenty of things without a natural explanation, but lacking a natural explanation is not a reason to justify a supernatural one."

      That depends on the particular piece of evidence in question. Take the NDE of Pam Reynolds. That's not easy to dismiss, though many have attempted to find a purely natural explanation. If true, it certainly would be evidence in support of something beyond the purely physical or material.

      Also, that's just one example. There are plenty of other examples. Just search the archives on this very weblog.

      Not to mention books such as The Legitimacy of Miracle by Robert Larmer.

      "If the supernatural operates on reality then it is, at least in principle, something that we can investigate and potentially establish the mechanism for."

      What if the "mechanism" is personal agency?

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    5. I'm glad you don't work as a detective. "Just because we cannot demonstrate natural causes resulted in this corpse shooting himself ten times in the back of the head doesn't mean we have to insist another person did it." No, Lehman, certain things cannot be done by naturalistic means. You've already been given examples of this elsewhere that you've ignored (for instance, Steve pointed out if you saw writing on a wall you wouldn't assume natural forces did it).

      There's are a lot of really huge problems with your analogy. I'll outline a few of the most serious:

      1. A human shooting somebody else in the head is natural!

      2. We know that humans can be shot in the back of the head by other humans. We've already established the truth of this, and I can demonstrate this if you want me to re-confirm the truth of this claim. We've don't know if nature can, or cannot, do this, making it far more likely that if we find a body with bullets in the back of head that another human was most likely responsible. We may not be able to find the human that did it, but we can be well justified in believing that another human was responsible.

      3. Your "certain thing cannot be done by nautralistic means" statement is far too confident for my tastes. This is why people jump to supernatural conclusions that aren't warranted. They assume they understand so much about nature, and that they know the limits of nature. Intelligent Design proponents rely on this, and it's the reason it's popular with people who aren't skeptical. It's actually very difficult to say what kinds of things nature cannot do, but we can say there appear to be nature doesn't do.

      4. Let's take the writing on the wall analogy. Let's imagine that you've never encountered writing before, and you find this wall. Until you have reason to suppose that an intelligent agent produced it, you actually have no way to know that the writing was not created by natural means. The only rational conclusion you can make about it is that you don't know how it was made. Fortunately, we know that humans create writing, and thus it is far more likely that humans wrote whatever you find. Without that experience of what humans are capable of we don't have the experience to come to that conclusion.

      5. These analogies don't work well with the supernatural because we simply have no idea what kinds of capabilities the supernatural has (or if it even exists), or what capabilities nature does not have. Any statement about the supernatural is pure speculation, and any statement about what the supernatural can do (or must have done) is all based on ignorance.

      Again, one huge problem you have is your naive belief that the supernatural will do what the natural does, when it would be far better for you to recognize that the supernatural does what *personal agents* do. You know, like I've pointed out to you now for the third time.

      And you still haven't explained to me why we cannot investigate a supernatural personal agent, nor have you given me a specific reliable method of investigation we can use to establish that something was caused by a supernatural agent!

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    6. You're spinning it better than how Gary actually put it.

      I'm expanding on Gary's answer. An "spin" isn't the word I'd use.

      A false claim of the miraculous doesn't undercut a true claim of the miraculous.

      Actually, it does. It lowers the posterior probability of a true miracle, at least according to Bayes theorem. See this video for an explanation as to why.

      Take the NDE of Pam Reynolds...If true, it certainly would be evidence in support of something beyond the purely physical or material.


      Why?

      What if the "mechanism" is personal agency?

      What exactly is "personal agency" as a mechanism?

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    7. Atheist Lehman,
      First of all, thank you for doing what Gary hasn't in that you've FINALLY addressed some of the issues! In your first response you almost got to one of the points I was trying to tease out when you said: "A human shooting somebody else in the head is natural!"

      This equivocates on what the word "natural" means. For a quick example, we say that a city is not natural, yet if you include the works of humans in it it must be natural because cities are just one of the things that people do.

      But what about when we look at this from a scientific perspective? I, as a human, can engineer "scientific experiments" that will ALWAYS give me the result I choose in advance. Because I am part of nature, you therefore agree that my experimental results are natural! So I can now prove whatever I want via science and it has your seal of approval, right?

      Of course not. Clearly, when we are dealing with science, we need to avoid the interactions of people as much as possible for us to see what is truly natural. But if intentional human interference in experiments is rightly called fraud and cannot be said to be demonstrating the "natural", then you are using the term "natural" in a way that would not permit you to consistently say that a human shooting another human is natural.

      Nor does your second point help much. You seem to give repeatability as one of your criteria for determining what is natural when you say: "I can demonstrate this if you want me to re-confirm the truth of this claim." By this standard, anything that only happens once is not natural (of course, that rules out all of history since nothing ever happens exactly the same way twice--which leads to the next point that you would have to establish just how much must be repeated before it "counts" as the same thing). Regardless, if you assert repeatability as a function of what is natural, then you ought to exclude humans from what is natural because humans don't have to repeat the same thing twice. They can refuse to participate. Natural processes cannot.

      If you don't think that's a problem, consider as a thought experiment that we have a man named Adam who can levitate tables for three minutes, just for Gary. Suppose that Adam demonstrates this one time. Suppose for the sake of argument that you know for a fact there's no trick or sleight of hand, he legitimately has done this. Now suppose you ask him to do it again and he refuses. More than that, suppose he says he no longer is able to do so.

      What does that do to the status of the original task? Would you say it's natural because he's a human being and he did it, even though he cannot repeat it? Or would you say it's supernatural because he cannot repeat it? And let me be clear: I'm not asking you whether or not you have warrant to believe Adam. We've stipulated for the sake of argument that you know for a fact he did this task one time without any tricks, but he refuses to repeat it. Does your knowledge of the fact of his having done it overrule your requirement that it be repeatable? If so, then repeatability is not definitive of what is natural. If not, then knowledge of how something happened is not definitive of what is natural. Which is it?

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    8. Atheist Lehman wrote:
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      And you still haven't explained to me why we cannot investigate a supernatural personal agent...
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      Why would I argue for something I don't believe? I think we can investigate a supernatural personal agent.

      Lehman said:
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      ...nor have you given me a specific reliable method of investigation we can use to establish that something was caused by a supernatural agent!
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      Except I did, clear back in the original thread:
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      If you want to get a more accurate understanding, ask yourself how you would prove the existence of another *person*. Not even a divine person, just another person in general. How would you prove that anyone else exists?

      You look for signs of intention, will, desire, motivations, etc. You look for signs of order, design, and thinking.
      ---

      You prove the existence of supernatural agents the same way you prove the existence of other minds. You don't have access to the brains of other people. They could be hallucinations of your own mind. How do you prove they exist distinctly from you? Those are the same techniques you use when examining supernatural claims.

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    9. Atheist Lehman

      "I'm expanding on Gary's answer. An "spin" isn't the word I'd use."

      If you have to "expand" on Gary's answer, then it's not exactly Gary's answer, right? I don't think you merely "expanded" on Gary's answer though. I think your answer was quite different from Gary's answer. I think your answer is an improvement on Gary's answer.

      "Actually, it does. It lowers the posterior probability of a true miracle, at least according to Bayes theorem. See this video for an explanation as to why."

      1. I watched the video, but I don't see how it does. After all I'm not arguing in a more global sense. What's more, I don't even see how it's relevant to what I said. Perhaps you could enlighten me and explain which part of the video you think is relevant and why.

      2. My point is a basic one. Suppose it's true Abe was healed of cancer after prayer. Suppose it's false the virgin Mary appeared at Fatima. Just because Fatima is false doesn't undercut that Abe being healed of cancer is true. I wasn't going any further than that.

      "Take the NDE of Pam Reynolds...If true, it certainly would be evidence in support of something beyond the purely physical or material." "Why?"

      If Pam Reynold's NDE is real, true, verdical, if everything happened as Reynolds reports, if Reynolds actually saw her deceased relatives and other deceased peoples and interacted with them, and so on, then that is prima facie evidence in support of the immaterial.

      "What if the "mechanism" is personal agency?" "What exactly is "personal agency" as a mechanism?"

      You said if the supernatural "operates on reality" then it's in principle something we can investigate and establish a mechanism for. However, if the "mechanism" for a "supernatural" phenomenon is personal agency, then I don't see how that'd make sense. For example, you can't "investigate" personal agency via repeated experiments. Personal agency may or may not cooperate with you.

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    10. http://www.lydiamcgrew.com/PhiloTestability.pdf

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    11. I deleted a comment because I saw your working axiom below. I have left some clarification questions there.

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    12. Some thoughts:

      >>>The problem is that there simply have never been any well established "miracles." There are plenty of things without a natural explanation, but lacking a natural explanation is not a reason to justify a supernatural one.

      So what would be a sufficient cause to declare a supernatural one? And if your chosen method of deciphering that cannot establish that, how is anything you say valuable to this conversation?

      >>>I would argue that you have a strange defintion of what it means to call a belief "irrational" since there are very few things that we can establish as absolutely impossible, so you're left with only the incoherent.

      Do you have a definition of the impossible that can be used? Or, is nothing in your world-view impossible simply incoherent?


      >>>Under my (and most other sensible people's) definition of irrational, yes it would be. For your definition, not so much, but your definition is pretty much useless in the real world.

      Let's take your word for it, and call Jesus walking throw a physical door incoherent. But so far you have only pledged ignorance of what is impossible - so in essence, is your judgment of what is coherent or not worth anything? How? You clearly dont know the bounds of your own belief systems. You dont know where, what is possible and what is not. So essentially you are arguing from ignorance.

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    13. >>>It's not irrational to believe they are possible. It is, however, irrational to believe that such beings do actually exist until we have established the truth of the claim.

      That is your thesis and you are welcome to it. It is irrational though that you expect us to buy in your thesis without you first establishing it! I also mentioned below the limits of scientific argumentation, so I have no idea what is your chief point of contention from an intellectual perspective.

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    14. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    15. Additionally: since when does arguments from ignorance become positive arguments?

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  4. I don't care if you think that; I defined the terms I'm using, like people are SUPPOSED to do. Deal with the argument presented, not with what you wish I was saying instead.

    You're the one claiming to be dealing with atheist arguments, so if you want to call yourself intellectually honest then you need to deal with their definition, not your own. Your argument is either a straw-man, or an equivocation. I'm not sure which is more accurate. Atheists are talking about epistemic rationality, you don't seem to be.

    I fail to see how "we wouldn't say the same thing". I would. In fact, I pretty much did in giving the example of the doctor who gave antibiotics to some and not others. It's not irrational to expect personal agents to not do the same behavior to everyone.

    Can we investigate the people who were actually healed, and how they were healed, or not? If so, how do we do it, and how do we determine that something was supernaturally caused? This has been my point all along, and you keep ignoring it. How do we establish supernatural causation?

    In that case, I'm afraid that your definition of rationality is worth even less than what you claim of my definition. Based on what you said, you have to establish truth apart from rationality in order to justify rationality. That is, something is only rational if it is true. This means that all counterfactual claims are irrational. For instance, "If John F. Kennedy had not been assassinated, then no one would know who Lee Harvey Oswald is" is an irrational statement, on your view.

    Not only that, but only propositions can even have truth value, so any statement that is not a proposition is, by your standard, irrational. This includes opinion statements ("I like chocolate"--IRRATIONAL!) or questions ("When did World War I begin?"--IRRATIONAL!). Not only that, it would mean that an irrational statement could become rational by learning it, so Fermats Last Theorem was irrational until Wiles proved it, at which point it magically became rational. But why should the rationality of a statement hinge on whether or not a human can prove it?


    We're talking about beliefs, and what makes them rational [to accept]. So why are you now talking about what makes opinions, questions, and other stuff, rational? You're changing the topic of discussion. I'm not sure if you're doing this because you're trying to confuse the topic, or you just don't understand the difference. Regardless, please stop changing the topic of discussion and lets focus on rational beliefs, okay?

    There are significant differences between what makes a proposition rational, and what makes accepting a proposition rational! Propositions are rational, or irrational, on the basis of the meaning of proposition itself. "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" isn't a rational proposition because the proposition is incoherent, and thus has no meaning.

    Axiom: It is irrational to accept as true a proposition which is either irrational, or does not have sufficient evidence supporting the truth of the proposition.

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    1. Atheist Lehman

      "You're the one claiming to be dealing with atheist arguments, so if you want to call yourself intellectually honest then you need to deal with their definition, not your own."

      Sure, as long as you keep that in mind when debating Christians: you should let Christians define their own terms.

      "Can we investigate the people who were actually healed, and how they were healed, or not? If so, how do we do it, and how do we determine that something was supernaturally caused? This has been my point all along, and you keep ignoring it. How do we establish supernatural causation?"

      There's no one-size fits all methodology to investigate a particular phenomenon. It depends on the phenomenon in question. For example, good scientists design methodology best suited for what they want to investigate. That's why some scientists are known as, say, theorists, while others are known as experimenters.

      Why shouldn't it be the same for "supernatural" phenomena that it depends on the phenomenon we want to investigate? Moreover, as far as healings go, being healed of cancer isn't the same as being healed from a broken arm, we don't investigate neurological or neurodegenerative "healings" in the same way we investigate cardiovascular "healings", etc.

      "We're talking about beliefs, and what makes them rational [to accept]. So why are you now talking about what makes opinions, questions, and other stuff, rational? You're changing the topic of discussion. I'm not sure if you're doing this because you're trying to confuse the topic, or you just don't understand the difference. Regardless, please stop changing the topic of discussion and lets focus on rational beliefs, okay?"

      Calm down, bro. Online debates often meander.

      "Axiom: It is irrational to accept as true a proposition which is either irrational, or does not have sufficient evidence supporting the truth of the proposition."

      Suppose there's insufficient evidence to support the Copenhagen interpretation of QM. How does it follow that it's therefore "irrational" to subscribe to the Copenhagen interpretation as true?

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    2. I missed this portion earlier. Atheist Lehman wrote:
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      You're the one claiming to be dealing with atheist arguments, so if you want to call yourself intellectually honest then you need to deal with their definition, not your own.
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      Given that the atheists who have said this haven't exactly defined their terms, I did them a favor by doing so. Now it doesn't match your definition. That's fine. Clearly this argument would apply 100% to you, and I'll take up your view later.

      You wrote:
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      Can we investigate the people who were actually healed, and how they were healed, or not?
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      In some cases, yes. Some of it will take work, too. But in principle it's no different than being able to investigate the claims made about superconductivity despite the fact that you have no access to a laboratory that can generate the sufficiently cold temperatures.

      I mentioned Rupert Sheldrake in a different place as one of the people who's views have influenced mine (particular in regards to evolution). He's done several experiments on various supernatural phenomena, along with ways you can test his theories, etc. I don't agree with everything he says, but on the particular aspects that would affect our conversation he provides access to his data and the various people involved in his experiments to skeptics all the time.

      You said:
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      We're talking about beliefs, and what makes them rational [to accept]. So why are you now talking about what makes opinions, questions, and other stuff, rational?
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      To point out the errors in your counter-proposed definition, to show it was too broad. You want to limit it to just beliefs? Okay, demonstrate how your definition applies to beliefs in a way that's not an ad hoc "because I want it to" and I'll go from there.

      You wrote:
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      There are significant differences between what makes a proposition rational, and what makes accepting a proposition rational!
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      Finally, a sentence we can both 100% agree with! But I'm not sure how I can take it in light of the fact that this sentence, which is about something I was addressing, comes on the heels of you saying I was changing the subject. Oh well.

      You said:
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      Propositions are rational, or irrational, on the basis of the meaning of proposition itself.
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      That's a necessary part of it, but not sufficient part. I also maintain that a proposition is rational if it's true, even if we don't know it's true, and even if we believe it's false. This goes well beyond just establishing what the proposition means.

      You wrote:
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      Axiom: It is irrational to accept as true a proposition which is either irrational, or does not have sufficient evidence supporting the truth of the proposition.
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      But is that axiom itself rational? See, axioms (by definition) beg the question and assert, rather than prove, claims. So your axiom does not have "sufficient evidence supporting the truth of the proposition" because it is taken as a given instead of argued for (unless you're redefining the term "axiom").

      If your axiom is not rational, then the next question arises: can you base a rational belief upon something that is irrational? Because if you can derive rational propositions from an irrational axiom, then why, exactly, would you even care if another person's view is irrational? It seems to me, therefore, that you would be in a bind and must instead assert that only rational axioms can be the foundation of other axioms.

      But is that idea (only rational axioms can be the foundation of other axioms) itself rational? And obviously we could go on from that to get back to this same spot once again. So I'm interested in your thoughts on that point.

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    3. "Clearly this argument would apply 100% to you" should say "Clearly this argument WOULDN'T apply 100% to you."

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    4. >>> It is irrational to accept as true a proposition which is either irrational, or does not have sufficient evidence supporting the truth of the proposition.

      Some questions:

      1. What evidence counts as evidence? Purely scientific one? But what if the scientific method is incapable of investigating that proposition?

      2. What amount of evidence, and what quality of evidence would be sufficient? Say a man on the last stage of cancer is healed - what evidence would be sufficient to conclude the cause of the healing was no natural law?

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    5. >>>That's why some scientists are known as, say, theorists, while others are known as experimenters.

      A funny anecdote - years ago, when I first approached my professor and told him I was very serious with understanding physics over and beyond the requirement of the course, and I wanted his guidance to help me achieve that. He asked me: you want to be a theoretical physicist or an experimentalist?

      I just looked at his face blankly.

      He clarified: do you like to think or do you like to tinker with things. ROFL

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    6. You said: "We're talking about beliefs, and what makes them rational [to accept]."

      Then you gave your working axiom: "It is irrational to accept as true a proposition which is either irrational, or does not have sufficient evidence supporting the truth of the proposition."

      Is the validity of the theory or belief of justice (in any form) explored through the scientific methodology? What evidence is produced to validate the notion/belief/theory that discriminatory laws are unethical or unacceptable in a society? (many societies practice, and get away with discriminatory laws) Further, the problem is complicated by the fact that justice is defined or interpreted to mean different thing among different groups.

      I know you were originally discussing miracles, but your axiom encompasses these notions too.

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    7. Suppose there's insufficient evidence to support the Copenhagen interpretation of QM. How does it follow that it's therefore "irrational" to subscribe to the Copenhagen interpretation as true?

      I would further want to know the justification of the answer to that question in the light of the following: the scientific method is silent on issues that it cannot disprove or falsify. This is one of the philosophical dilemmas in science: does one pursue a theory/hypothesis that probably is unfalsifiable? (But what if we only (currently) think it is unfalsifiable because we dont know the right questions to ask of it). What are the demarcations of science: at what point is a scientific theory scientific (the ones without experimental/observational validations), and at what point it is not? Both these issues are not settled in science.

      Further, in the real world I scarcely have known or read about scientists who dont believe certain hypothesis more plausible than others, even without evidence. By plausible I mean, more likely or more truer - or a better explanation of that which is studied. There is no absolute truth in science as far as I know - there is only a spectrum of likelihoods.

      For example, the Big Bang theory has a lot of explanatory scope to it, but it is essentially derived from a faulty model and does not explain many things too - so at what point is this theory is to be accepted as "true"? And what would this "true" qualify as? Partly true? Almost true? And what would be the basis of such an assessment?

      (Besides. It would be interesting to know how is "truth" defined in that axiom. If it is defined as that which corresponds with the natural world - how can one decide on that when one is ignorant on the boundary of, the possibilities in the natural world? Current understanding of the natural world? But then one's understanding of truth is contingent on one's ignorance. If truth is defined as experimental validation of a set of propositions, what level of evidence will count as evidence? Would repeatability be a factor? But what if it is a rare event? How will the evidence be interpreted? And what if your method of investigation is incapable or inadequate to investigate the proposition (either because of the limits of the method or the limits of the knowledge gathered with the method regarding rare or unpredictable event)?

      Finally, as Peter Pike mentioned, it would be interesting to know how Atheist Lehman understands his self-refuting axiom as rational. Perhaps it is not a standalone axiom or perhaps there is a another valid argument/premise behind it.

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  5. Is it just me, or is it a common observation that atheists make comment here, and when cornered, ignore the questions asked of them?

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