Re: thoughts on Jesus

On 2008-05-29, alwaysaskingquestions <alwaysaskingquestions@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Mark VandeWettering" <wettering@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:slrng3scq6.urf.wettering@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 2008-05-28, alwaysaskingquestions <alwaysaskingquestions@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

[...]

So are you sticking by your claim that evidential based science is the
only
way we can understand things?

Sure. Why not?

This one needs to be put to bed as it underlies everything else we are
debating.

No, it really doesn't.

You asked me to give you an example of evidence outside of science. I gave
you circumstantial. Would you care to explain how circumstantial evidence is
scientific?

Circumstantial evidence _is_ a kind of scientific evidence. We use it
to draw conclusions because we think that taken on the whole, while
these individual events may not be sufficient to draw a particular
conclusion, the collection of independent events makes certain
conclusions more likely. While informally (and often improperly) done,
it is a kind of Bayesian inference. It may not be remarkable that a
particular individual passed the scene of a crime, but if we find that
he knew the victim, that he would benefit from the victims death, that
he purchased a handgun similar to the one that was used in the crime
the day before, and had been seen arguing with the victim, we might
reasonably conclude, based upon our _evidenced_ beliefs about human
behavior, that he would be a powerful suspect.

One caveat, anticipating your response, and then I'll do your own work for
you and tell you where I fail to believe my own premise:

I suspect that you will claim victory on the point based upon your own
narrow definition of science. I do not subscribe to your narrow
definition of this concept. Science has been called the methodology
of naturalism, and that is the definition that I feel is most useful
in this context. We draw conclusions based upon what we can observe.
In this context, it is easy to observe something such as (taking one
of your examples) love. We don't _actually_ know what love is, we can
only reasonably conclude that someone loves us by the actions, which are
observable. We have no evidence to suggest that love is a gift from
Yahweh or the FSM, so it is not a reasonable conclusion to suggest that
love comes from them. Even if we did conclude that, it would not enhance
our understanding (how could it, since it doesn't help us distinguish
between things with are true or false?)

Okay, so I'll skip to the part where I admit there is something that
I don't think is scientific knowlege: mathematical knowledge.

Mathematics deals with a rich abstract realm. On the basis of only
a few axioms, we derive a rich tapestry of knowledge. Perhaps most
surprising of all is that these abstract concepts are so useful in
describing and understanding the world. This knowledge is not derived
from observations of the world, but merely the interaction of these
abstract concepts.

Of course, mathematical knowledge does share one important feature
with scientific reasoning that is relevent to this context: one can
verify the claims that someone makes. This independent verification
demonstrates that mathematical conclusions are reasonably called
knowledge: its conclusion does not depend on features internal to
the reasoner.

Mark


.

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