Dexter, I said "if" and "someone" and "he," but I didn't say "you" or "bury your head deeply" or "clench you eyes tightly repeating your wishes" or "pet theory." So I ask you, whose argument is the most emotionally based, yours or mine?

Mujus, I was using rhetorical flourishes. Don't read too much emotion into it.

My point is, that it is you and any other Christian person creates/invents/subscribes to a philosophy that is: more reassuring and cozy but far far less supported than atheism, agnosticism, or even deism. You say essentially that those who are not Christians are avoiding some truth - but our "avoiding" requires no mental gymnastics, no denying of uniform physical laws and principles, no separate spirit realms, no additional characters or forces beyond what we directly observe and experience. Our avoiding only requires us to take in what is in front of us and judge it dispassionately and sensibly. Who is it that is going to the trouble to create a whole system of dogma to make-sense-of/feel-better-about their reality? Simply because you have accepted all these cultural memes about the son of god and blood sacrifices and hell and damnation etc. does not mean that you are more open to "truth".

Indeed, I've been asked many times by religious folks to actually deny the reality that is in front of me - to ignore evidence - and to take on faith the ideas of their religion (their wishful thinking)... they see such "blind faith" as a virtue and a necessity. I find it revealing that in order to experience this supposed truth one must avoid reality... one must close one's mind to what is real. That is not opening my mind...

@dexter,

I'm no such radical I'm afraid. I do believe in evidence, in science, and in the regularity of the universe, etc. My point was always that YOU, as an atheist (or agnostic) have no reason to, and are acting out of blind faith when you do, since your world view cannot support such a belief.

Every world view contains some assumptions, of course. My point is that the atheist's assumptions don't account for themselves. He assumes the regularity of the universe, but his own assumptions don't account for how he could know that, or how he could assume it with any probability of being right. He essentially attributes to his mind godlike powers to know the future while also believing that no such powers exist.

@santosh,

As I've already shown previously in some detail, the fact that the laws of physics have held previously for untold years does not actually count as evidence for the proposition that they'll continue to hold, unless you also assume additional hypotheses for which there's no evidence at all (the future will be like the past). Thus, your attempt to claim more evidence for physics in your worldview simply fails.

@abge,

As just pointed out -- if you were planning to adopt santosh's response, then, well, it's the same response you made last night which I refuted.

As for why you would choose Yahweh, I would suggest to you that any other god you chose would present you with similar epistemological problems. Yahweh is uniquely positioned, for many reasons, to be able to support a worldview of knowledge and regularity.

But let's not argue in the abstract. Once you decide that your current worldview is unable to support even the most basic knowledge or reasoning, well, then just choose another one, and if you don't choose mine, we'll have this argument again until you do. : )

Incidentally, I know I've been saying this a lot lately, but it's true -- I'm super busy, so I won't be responding in the next few hours. I might then have a brief window to respond to a post or two, then I'm gone all night. I just mention this so it doesn't look like I'm trying to dodge replies.

@semck Please re-read my response until you have understood it.

@santosh, I understood your response very well. It is logically deficient, however. I already pointed out how earlier on this thread. I'd be happy to spell it out again. Would you like me to?

@semck, while I buy the proposition that I can never be 100.00000000000000% sure of anything, I don't see how that undermines agnosticism, of all things... being that agnostics claim no such sure knowledge. I am technically an agnostic - but practically speaking, an atheist. i.e. I operate as if the world is rational because I see the chance of it being irrational to be vanishingly unlikely and thus not worth planning around. ...a teapot atheist, as they say. Not sure how you take Cartesian doubt to the conclusion that Christianity is the truth. Frankly I don't see how Decartes did it. He makes some pretty broad/crazy assumptions.

I have a proposition, that things will continue as they are, and physics will more or less hold, with or without your god, in high probability, statistically. You have a proposition, that things are as they are because of your God. Our outcomes are verifiably true over the time interval since my first response, but here's the thing - Your proposition adds information on top of my proposition, and there is no evidence to support your additional data, and this was my point.

@dexter, Sorry for the hurriedness, I can fill in more later. Briefly, I'm not just saying you can't be 100.00000000% sure of the regularity of the universe; I'm saying you can't be sure of it at all. You can't even assign it positive probability.

"I see the chance of it being irrational to be vanishingly unlikely and thus not worth planning around."

Right, but what you can't do is give any reason why what "you see" as the chance has any bearing at all on what will actually happen. Your brain was formed in the past by evolution, under conditions of regularity. Sure it was adaptive, as long as that lasted, for you to believe in regularity. The problem is, that has no bearing on whether regularity will actually continue, and neither does any other source of knowledge available to you. So there is no reason whatsoever for you to take that intuition seriously as likely reflecting the actual state of the world.

As for the argument for God: I have no direct-line argument from this to His existence. Rather, I'm inviting you to compare worldviews with me, and suggesting that yours is epistemologically bankrupt, while mine is not. You are claiming knowledge (even probabilistic knowledge) that you couldn't actually have access to on your terms, whiel I am not.

At the least, you are committing just as big a leap of blind faith as the thesit you criticize for just that. But in reality, you're doing much more so, for he can explain his beliefs on their own terms, and you cannot.

@santosh,

"I have a proposition, that things will continue as they are, and physics will more or less hold, with or without your god, in high probability, statistically."

Yes, and you have no evidence for this proposition. I've done this before, but I'll do it again. The evidence you adduce for the proposition is, "Things have been that way so far." OK, so here is your proof:

1) The future has always been like the past, in the past.
2) Therefore, it will continue to be.

2 does NOT follow from 1, without an additional hypothesis:

1') The future will be like the past.

But 1' is what you're trying to prove; therefore you cannot assume it, for none of your beliefs suggests that you can have unsupported knowledge about the future.

"Our outcomes are verifiably true over the time interval since my first response, but here's the thing - Your proposition adds information on top of my proposition, and there is no evidence to support your additional data, and this was my point. "

Yes, as regards the past, we're both right. The point is that you have no reason, in your worldview, to believe that physics will continue to be true for the NEXT hour WITH ANY PROBABILITY AT ALL. Any attempt to do so amounts to a blind acceptance of 1', which you cannot support.

@semck: Absolutely, I agree in entirety with your original logic, and your conclusion that within my worldview I cannot say anything about the future with any degree of certainty, and I am not trying to say I can. How then do I arrive at what I believe will be the future?

Science and logic work by looking at all your observed data and constructing a proposition for the future. It is the BEST guess you can make given all the data available to you, and is the most logical way of proceeding. It operates by taking an existing model, and modifying it in a minimal way to account for new data that your have encountered. If in the future, I run into more new data, I will then modify my model, again minimally, to account for this new data. As long there is no data that compels me to add your spiritual entity to my model, I reject it as overkill, and unnecessary

@santosh, I'm sorry, but it's not the best guess at all. You can't distinguish guesses. It's the best guess ONLY if we assume that there is regularity of some kind operating in nature, and thus, something to model. Everything you say is a very good description of a good philosophy of science IF you already have a reason to believe there is regularity there to be modeled.

But you don't.

So, in this case, it would be just as good a guess to guess that today, nature will be regular except when I command something and say "abra cadabra," but that when I do that, whatever I command will be granted; or to guess that my car will turn into a helicopter and I can land on the roof at school and proceed down the fire escape to class. Or.... well, anything I want!

Your whole idea of modeling DOES assume the regularity of nature. Without that assumption, there is nothing logical about it, just another blind leap. And of course, in your case, that assumption is itself a blind leap.

'Everything you say is a very good description of a good philosophy of science IF you already have a reason to believe there is regularity there to be modeled.'

Nope, don't need any regularity at all. If crazy stuff happens tomorrow, I'll modify my model. I'm not asserting anything about tomorrow, I'm operating as well as I can inside of what is given to me. I am finding the smallest set of things that explains everything I know, and I'm willing to change it if the fit hits the shan. I am assuming NOTHING, merely making predictions with zero confidence, with a framework in place to modify them if I'm wrong. You, on the other hand, are absolutely convinced of your proposition occurring, without any evidence to back up your assumptions.

it would be just as good a guess to guess that today, nature will be regular except when I command something and say "abra cadabra," No, this would be a poorer guess in my framework, because this event has not occurred in my past, therefore does not carry much weight in my model.

@semck, "As for the argument for God: I have no direct-line argument from this to His existence. Rather, I'm inviting you to compare worldviews with me, and suggesting that yours is epistemologically bankrupt, while mine is not. You are claiming knowledge (even probabilistic knowledge) that you couldn't actually have access to on your terms, whiel I am not."

Huh? So - yours is right because you feel it is. ...because a little bird in your head told you so. Is that about it? And, since your bar for knowledge is set so artificially low that it can be achieved by you by fiat, then yes, you win.

My worldview does not require 100% surety. Further... along the way, as I collect information, my models change (as they have over the months and years)... after all, as George E.P. Box said, "All models are false but some models are useful." Check and mate.

...also what santosh said. I have theories that I adjust constantly based on new evidence... at no point do I say, "This is a law". Theory of Evolution, theory of gravity, you name it... it's all potentially falsifiable... by the very nature of science. If they weren't theories that could be falsified upon the arrival of contradicting evidence then they would be scientific theories.

On a day to day basis I operate as if I "know" things, that is true enough... because science does not come naturally - one must question everything and take oneself as much as possible out of the experiment, out of the observation for fear of screwing things up with my assumptions and biases. Good science avoids faith as much as possible... but people are imperfect.

Your "theory" on the other hand, is not at all scientific - as it can never be falsified. You may see this as a strength, I see it as a severe weakness.

@dexter,

"Huh? So - yours is right because you feel it is. ...because a little bird in your head told you so. Is that about it?"

Umm... no? I would invite you to show me where I said anything about my feelings as to its truth, or about intuition (which I take to be roughly equivalent to "a little bird.")

"My worldview does not require 100% surety."

As I've already pointed out, what it has is 0% certainty. So this is definitely good.

"after all, as George E.P. Box said, "All models are false but some models are useful." Check and mate. "

Well, the problem is, models are only useful if they are approximately true, at least over a substantial time domain. It's true that any such model is useful. The problem is, at issue is the fact that you can't know with any certainty whatsoever (that is, no probability, not just 100% probability) that your model is actually likely to be vaguely true, thus vaguely useful, tomorrow. So, you still haven't given a reason why you should rely on this model, instead of, say, my abra-cadabra model, as useful. Check and mate.

(Oh, how fun. I like how you can just add that after things and it makes it seem like you've won the argument without having to bother about whether the other person has a response, or whether your response actually addresses what they've said at all. What a clever mode of debate).

@santosh,

"Nope, don't need any regularity at all. If crazy stuff happens tomorrow, I'll modify my model."

Oh I see. Well, then, if you're NOT assuming there's any amount of regularity, then you're back to NOT assuming that your model is more likely than any other model to correctly predict the future, and therefore, back to not having any reason other than maybe your own aesthetic attitudes to prefer it to, say, my abra-cadabra model.

"No, this [abra cadabra] would be a poorer guess in my framework, because this event has not occurred in my past, therefore does not carry much weight in my model. "

Well, I get that it wouldn't carry any weight in your model, but as you've just admitted, you don't actually have the least reason to suppose that your model, instead of this model, is actually useful or likely to be correct in predicting tomorrow. That was my point in suggesting they were equivalent for all purposes. You would not be on any shakier ground epistemically if you decided to adopt my alternative, abra cadabra model. You have no reason to believe that either one will actually hold.

@dexter,

All fine, except that if we have no reason to believe in the regularity of nature, then there's no point in looking for models of it in the first place, and thus no reason to do science. A completely chaotic universe couldn't be modeled at all.

@semck:
Let me go over this one more time.

1. I don't give two hoots about the future, I do not have any data about the future. My objective in my worldview is to understand the data I have.

2. I propose to understand the data I have by constructing what I will refer to as a minimal model - the smallest set of rules that explains all of it.

3. When the future occurs, I will ostensibly have more data, some of it probably in violation of my models, and I will retro-fit them as before to fit the new data.

4. I reject additional, unnecessary rules to my model, which is why I call this rule set minimal. If I can remove a rule from my model, and still lose nothing, then I will remove it.

5. Everything can be modeled. Utter chaos is a valid model in my framework.

@santosh,

"I don't give two hoots about the future, I do not have any data about the future."

Oh! OK. You're just modeling the past. Check.

Well, explain this. Why, when you get in your car, do you act as though you believe it will respond as usual to your commands? Why not try turning the wheel the opposite direction sometime to see if maybe it still goes the way you want to go?

"5. Everything can be modeled. Utter chaos is a valid model in my framework. "

Well, OK, but there's not much more you can say about it than "utter chaos." Point taken though, although it's true that science would just stop if we took utter chaos as a likely state of affairs (we would have nothing more to say).

"(Oh, how fun. I like how you can just add that after things and it makes it seem like you've won the argument without having to bother about whether the other person has a response, or whether your response actually addresses what they've said at all. What a clever mode of debate)."
Actually I was doing my Stephen Colbert impression for a few seconds there.

How can you claim 100% certainty? Intuition? I've got that too.

I think I see where you're headed with this... God is the only thing that can give you regularity in nature. Which is odd being that he's omnipotent and according to the bible already violated such regularity by performing miracles. So... if you believe the bible literally, then nature *is* not regular (thanks to god).

If you flip a coin and it comes up heads 99 times in a row what will be the likely outcome of the 100th flip?

'Why, when you get in your car, do you act as though you believe it will respond as usual to your commands?'

As we have agreed above, I have zero confidence that the car will obey me. However, when I get into my car tomorrow, I am merely collecting more data on my car model, and in particular looking for aberrations from my present car model. This is done by applying my present car model and noting down deviations from what I expect to observe. As soon as I have new contradictory data, I will update my model.

It is entirely possible that I will collect so much new data over time, that my data is completely random, even statistically, so much as to be utterly chaotic. At this point, I will have no choice but to propose that Chaos is the model, but proposing this prematurely then would violate the minimality principle.

"I think I see where you're headed with this... God is the only thing that can give you regularity in nature."

Well... close. Nature COULD of course just happen to be regular even if it were chaotic -- there's always that one in infinity chance. So I wouldn't want to make this particularly strong claim.

BUT: in the Christian world view, yes, there is near-regularity AND the ability to know it. As I said earlier, every worldview has assumptions. The assumptions in my world view, though, account for how I am able to know them, how I am able to know that the universe is regular, etc. Inside the worldview, there are no arbitrary beliefs.

"Which is odd being that he's omnipotent and according to the bible already violated such regularity by performing miracles."

Yep, nice point, which is why from the first, I've already been saying near-regularity. (See the 24th post on page 4, e.g. to d31). Yes, God performs miracles sometimes to further His redemptive plan in history. But these do not breach the fundamental order so profoundly as to make acting in the world impossible, particularly to those following Him. They are by no means chaos, and meanwhile, He makes it clear that the world as a whole is indeed ordered and knowable.

Oh, and sorry for the snap, I didn't recognize Colbert. :-P OK, I'm off for real now, talk to you guys later.

@fullhamish
That argument won't work against semck's proposition because he assets, and correctly so, that you can't say anything at all about the future. You have no reason to believe that the coin will continue to return a head or a tail, or that it will be a coin at all, and therefore assigning a probability or a likelihood doesn't make sense. The point is fairly intriguing, and probably not easily dismissable.

As to the point that the universe came from nothing, my view is that it all depends how you define nothing. My view is that nothing means the absence of anything, has anyone a better definition?

@ santosh, what would you say from your standpoint is the likely outcome of the 100th coin flip?

I would assume, first that it is a coin with some bias p for heads, and 1-p for tails, then I'd try to estimate the expected value of the next toss, by evaluating the probability that 99 consecutive heads are observed assuming p, and some toying around with Bayes theorem.

Statistically, heads, with some large probability. But as semck points out, we rely on the assumption that only the two outcomes we normally associate with a coin can happen.

You are obviously all wrong, and because of that, the great purple antelope will make sure you all suffer for eternity. And if you don't believe me, I will order for all of you to be killed.

@ santosh, absolutely right. Probability in its own means nothing without reference to the data in each individual case from within and, most importantly, without of the system under consideration. I had to snigger quitely to myself when someone, I can't remember who, said that the sun would rise to tomorrow because of the Earth's rotation and the conservation of momentum (presumably angular). Heck have we forgotten about the moon? What conservation of momentum when the thing acts as a gigantic brake on the Earth (22 hour days were the rule in the jurrasic). Likewise with asteroid hits which have probably have likely affected life on Earth at least as much as Natural Selection, in fact we had a near miss only yesterday I believe.
Expect the unexpected I say, heck I should have been an economist! :-)

"If you flip a coin and it comes up heads 99 times in a row what will be the likely outcome of the 100th flip? "

Have you been paying attention fullhamish? It is impossible to tell because nothing can be known except for the Christian god. Any other view is epistemologically bankrupt. Just Semck83.

(I'll admit that I might not have been paying full attention so my apologies to Semck83 if I have misrepresented his position, but that is what it sounds like he is saying to me).