Re: "Anglican leader urges ban on gay bishops" - Associated Press

Gareth McCaughan wrote:
The borderline between knowledge and not-knowledge isn't perfectly
sharp. It therefore doesn't correspond to any precise level of
probability.
Exactly. Does it then correspond to some imprecise level of
probability, and how do we determine when it does? In the area of
religion it cannot be a mathematical calculation; we can each assess
the situation and use our own ideas about the weighing of
evidence. And we will inevitably disagree. I cannot see how any
objective test is possible.

The fuzziness of that borderline clearly means that there can't
be any objective test that crisply determines, for every belief
anyone holds, whether or not it deserves the name "knowledge".
Which is fine; I haven't said that there is, nor (so far as I
can tell) have I said anything that requires there to be.

Neither have I suggested -- in fact, I have repeatedly denied --
that anyone is, or should be, carrying out mathematical calculations
when deciding whether to call something "knowledge".

It might be a more productive use of your time to engage with
what I'm actually saying rather than inventing all these straw
men about absolute certainty and mathematical calculation and
so forth.

I *am* trying to engage with what you are saying. You said that the borderline does not correspond to any precise level of probability. I asked whether, then, there were some imprecise level of probability and how such should be determined. You did not answer that question. If, as I agree that yo keep saying, it cannot be measured mathematically, how then do we measure probability with regard to religion? Or, do we not measure it, in which case what other criterion would you suggest?

My whole point is that there *is* no objective measure. I keep saying this, yet you seem to keep asking me to provide one.


How does the living out of faith work as evidence? It works because in
the living you are constantly "testing" the propositions of your faith
and they work, maybe not for you, but they do for me.

But what do you mean by "testing", and what constitutes
working or not-working? I mean: normally, when you[1] say
that you've "tested" some claim, you mean something like
this: "I've done something that would very likely have
one outcome if the claim is true, and another if it's
false". (And if you say you've tested it and it's worked,
you mean that furthermore the outcome was the one you
expected if the thing was true.) Does the "testing" you're
speaking of here fall into that category? Could you give
me some examples of what opportunity your belief that
your Redeemer liveth has had to be tested, and what
would have constituted failing the test?

[1] Maybe not *you* specifically.

What concerns me is that everything you've said seems
consistent with the following: what you mean by saying
that you've tested your Christian beliefs is that you've
gone through life holding them, and you find that you
still believe them now. And the problem with *that* is
that if that suffices to call something "knowledge"
then just about *every* belief that anyone holds, no
matter how poorly supported, is "knowledge", and that
seems to me to make the word useless. We already have
"belief" and "opinion" when all we want to say is that
someone believes something; surely "knowledge" is meant
to go substantially further.

Of course, the Christian tradition is replete with statements
less vague than "God is love". For instance, the Christian
scriptures report that Jesus worked miracles, that he
predicted in no uncertain terms that those who followed
him would work greater miracles than his, and that he
was the Son of God. It would seem to follow that Christians
should be working miracles today. Despite frequent claims,
this doesn't in fact appear to be true.
It all depends on a) what you think the miracles of Jesus really were,
and b) what you judge to be a miracle in modern terms.
If - like a lot of Christians, I agree - you are hooked on a miracle
as being something accomplished by the manipulation, waiving,
suspension, breaking (or whatever word one wishes to use) of the laws
by which the world normally operates, then you might have a case.

I'm not all that bothered by whether a manipulation/waiving/...
of the laws of nature is involved, as such. Anything that
would reasonably justify onlookers in saying things like
"who is this, that even the wind and waves obey him?", in
saying that whatever-it-is could only be done by God (or,
in some cases, only by the prince of devils) and that
"never since the world began has it been heard that any one
[did whatever-it-is]" would do (unless, of course, it
turned out to have been done by trickery, as things that
initially look that way often do turn out to have been).

Jesus is reported to have raised someone from death after
three days in the grave; to have walked unsupported on the
surface of a lake; to have made a storm cease simply by
telling it to; to have healed any number of people of
serious physical ailments with a few words; to have turned
a large quantity of water into fine wine. His present-day
followers do not appear to have those abilities, nor are
they often found doing anything else that makes everyone
who sees it marvel and declare that God must be at work
(which would seem to be the fundamental point of a miracle,
whence the name).

Yes, faith has varied
enormously. Yes, one man's faith has often been anathema to another's.
But these can be dealt with as signs of our human individuality,
cultural separation and, sometimes, plain bloody minded arrogance. Faith
remains. And all the inroads of scientific method have not destroyed
faith, as they have done with some other widely held beliefs.
All the inroads of scientific method haven't destroyed *astrology*,
never mind religion. So if you're really trying to make any argument
like "If some belief remains widespread today, then it's likely to
be right" then I think you'd better explain why it doesn't justify
thinking that there might be something to astrology.
I'm not trying to make that argument as a general principle. (Maybe
there *is* something in astrology for it to have survived this long! I
don't mean the tabloid horoscope casting but the idea that in some
sense we are indeed affected by celestial movements: maybe the effect
is infinitesimal, but on the Dirk Gently principle there must be
*some* influence! <Please note the bulge in my cheek, btw.>)

Bulge noted. (Or are you just pleased to see me?) Anyway: I'm
glad that you don't think that "X has survived" is good evidence
for "X is likely to be right". So what's not clear to me is what
you *are* saying about Christianity, because so far it looks
a lot like that.

Anyway. I don't understand what your actual argument is here;
it seems like you leap straight from "lots of people are religious"
to "theism is probably right".
No, I don't I mean that the fact of such a mass of religious
experience is evidence that such experience has a basis in reality, a
basis which at least appears to have a strong foundation.

"Has a basis in reality" is -- deliberately, I expect -- not
very specific. So, it seems to me that there are two importantly
different sorts of "basis in reality" that a phenomenon like
religion, or astrology, or whatever, can have: it can have
an *explanation* ("people believe X because they're gullible
twits" would be a "basis in reality" in this sense, as would
"people believe X because it's obviously true and easily checked"),
or it can have a *justification* (the first of those would not
be a justification, but the second would be, at least once the
details were filled in).

From the fact that lots of people do something, or believe something,
or experience something, it certainly follows that there's likely an
explanation for it. It doesn't at all follow that there's a justification.
(Consider astrology again; or, since you've shifted from talk of
*beliefs* to talk of *experiences*, consider optical illusions.
Lots of people have the experience of thinking that (say) one line
is longer than another, in cases where the explanation is just
that our visual systems use a bunch of approximations that are
easily messed about with so that we see things wrongly.

That doesn't
take us directly to any specific belief system, of course; and I don't
in ny case claim that any specific system is the truth, the whole
truth and nothing but the truth. But it is evidence that there is
something significant that bears investigation.

I don't in the least deny that the phenomenon of religion is
something significant that bears investigation; whatever gives
you the impression that I do?

However investigation
which remains external remains nothing but anthropology. It is of the
essence of religious belief that you cannot assess it solely from the
outside.

The trouble is that *any* belief can be accompanied by a claim
that "you cannot assess this solely from the outside" and thereby
made immune to criticism. On the face of it, lots of religious
beliefs are testable from the outside; it seems to me that the
only reason why some people now say that external untestability
is "of the essence" of religious belief is that those external
tests have so often produced disagreeable results, so that people
and communities open-minded enough to acknowledge that rather
than abandoning reality altogether have had to adapt their
religions over time to make them less and less testable.

(I don't mean that individual people or communities
have thought "hmm, how can we protect our beliefs from
falsification?" and tweaked them accordingly, though
maybe that happens occasionally; rather, I think that
those whose beliefs have been more open to falsification
have more often had them falsified and left Christianity;
it's a sort of evolutionary process. And of course this
is mere conjecture; but it seems to fit the facts well.)

According to the Bible, religious belief was often supported
by external evidence. Consider the contest of Elijah versus
the prophets of Baal; consider Peter's sermon in Acts 2,
saying that Jesus was "attested to you by God with mighty
works and wonders and signs which God did through him in your
midst"; consider how (according to John 13) Jesus said to his
own disciples concerning his betrayal "I tell you this now,
before it takes place, that when it does take place you may
believe that I am he"; consider God's declaration to Moses
that "the Egyptians shall know that I am YHWH, when I
stretch forth my hand upon Egypt and bring out the people
of Israel from among them"; and so on, and so forth.

Yes, sure, *now* it's commonplace for liberal Christians to
say that Christianity is fundamentally and essentially not
about anything that can undergo any sort of objective test.
But there's a long, long tradition before you saying the
opposite.

Er, excuse me, but you are misrepresenting me. If someone's faith
motivates them to act in particular ways (good or bad) then *of
course* that's evidence that faith has "force and strength" and
"reality in the person's life". Do you think I'm a complete idiot,
as I'd have to be to deny *that*? What it's no evidence for is
the *truth* of the claims they have faith in.
But if that faith leads them to act in ways drawn from that faith and
that are of benefit to human society, then there is evidence of the
faith's value, which is at least a step towards its truth. (I am fully
aware that the opposite can also be true, about negative effects of
faith. This is where one has to try to assess how far the action
really is reflective of the faith it claims to come from.)

We should try to assess that whether what someone does is good
or bad. (If for whatever reason we are wanting to use their
actions to help us decide whether their beliefs are right or
not.)

But, anyway, I don't agree that a faith's "value", meaning (as
here) its tendency to encourage its adherents to act virtuously,
is "a step towards its truth". I don't see any reason why
true beliefs should tend to produce more virtuous behaviour
than false beliefs.

(Of course, someone who already believed that the world
is the creation of a vastly powerful and supremely good
being might conclude from that that true beliefs should
generally lead to better behaviour than false beliefs.
But I think they'd have equal justification in concluding
all sorts of things that aren't true; this is just the
problem of evil again.)

I don't have a problem with different definitions; except when one is
trying to count Christians for the purpose of determining traditional
belief. If our counts are different, the whole process is flawed since
we will never agree on the numbers.
I don't see why a lack of agreement indicates a flaw in the
process (erm, actually, what "process"?), but never mind.
The process of counting those "Christians" who have held belief x. If
we cannot agree on what constitutes a Christian, or on the definitions
of the bodies whose doctrinal standards are being used as a measure,
then the "process" cannot yield any agreed result. Equally if we are
not agreed on what constitutes a belief.

But I never proposed any *process*, and I don't claim that we have
any perfectly reliable way of assessing how many Christians have
believed any particular thing. But we can often get at least some
idea; for instance, I'm sure we can agree that very few Christians
have believed that Zeus is the supreme god, or that eating children
is a good thing, and that many many Christians (though not all)
have believed that a few days after his crucifixion Jesus walked
the earth bodily for a while.

Of course it may happen in any particular case that the information
we'd need to determine whether something has or hasn't been a
common belief among Christians, or a common official belief of
Christian groups, just isn't there. So what? (Similarly, lots
of other historical questions just aren't answerable in practice;
that doesn't mean that they're meaningless or anything of the
sort.)

I think that some of your beliefs are untraditional
in two separate ways: (1) they are ones that have never been held
by a large fraction of Christians, and (2) they conflict with ones
that have. The combination of these is what I think makes it
reasonable to say that those beliefs are at variance with the
mainstream of the Christian tradition, or whatever exactly it was
that I said and you took such exception to.
I was trying to get away from allegations about my personal orthodoxy
and find some objective measure of orthodoxy in general.

OK, but you were also commenting on what I said "about your
personal orthodoxy" (though I wouldn't put it that way), and
I don't see how I can comment on what you said about what I
said without commenting on what I said. If you see what I mean :-).

My point is,
very simply, that your suggested definition of standard or traditional
Christian belief, while it may sound good on paper, does not in fact
yield such an objective standard.

It doesn't yield a universally applicable decision procedure;
so far as I can see, that's all you've shown, and you didn't
need to since I'd gladly have said as much from the outset.

In our earlier discussion, I pointed out what seemed (and
still seems) to me to be something very close to an outright
incompatibility between something you said and the Nicene Creed.

(I forget the details. Something along the following lines:
the NC clearly implies that God *does* things, and your
rejection of the idea of "intervention" by God involved
saying that he doesn't. This is surely an oversimplification;
I'm sure you can find the relevant posts if you care.)
Unless we are looking at two different Nicene Creeds, I do not see
where it says that God does things which I say he doesn't. Maybe you
can enlighten me? The only actions referred to are those of the
incarnate Jesus; which I heartily accept.

I've forgotten the details now, and I have no more wish than you
to turn this thread into another discussion of exactly how
orthodox or heterodox you personally are. (Especially as I know
I did explain the issues when I originally brought the matter up.)

But I will remark that it simply isn't true that the Nicene Creed
says nothing about God doing things other than what it says about
the incarnate Jesus doing things:
- "maker of heaven and earth" implies an act of making;
- "he became incarnate" is not (yet) an action of the
incarnate Jesus; it's an action of the 2ndPotT that
(so to speak) *produced* the incarnate Jesus;
- it says that the Holy Spirit "spoke by the prophets".



--

Revd. Eric Potts

"I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able
to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: What did our founding father say about religion and America?
    ... Our Founding Fathers were deeply religious Christians who wanted to ... tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; ... "Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for ... religion and morality are the indispensable supporters. ...
    (alt.politics)
  • Re: Religion divides us politically - text vers.
    ... serve God. ... and the government buildings to teach your religious beliefs even though you may not have had that original intention. ... The place for religion and the teaching of religion is in the home and in the Church, Synagogue, Mosque or Temple; ...
    (alt.politics)
  • Re: A beautiful quote to share with you ......
    ... It's really religion Will. ... guess they were Christians. ... Has God on its side. ... And the Civil War too ...
    (alt.support.diabetes)
  • Re: What did our founding father say about religion and America?
    ... Our Founding Fathers were deeply religious Christians who wanted to ... "God who gave us life gave us liberty. ... "Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for ... religion and morality are the indispensable supporters. ...
    (alt.politics)
  • Re: Aikido and Ueshiba, genius or barking mad?
    ... other people's views on religion as You accuse Christians or being. ... You would understand the the concept of Hell is central to the beliefs ... I am not opposed to people choosing to believe in a religion. ... What I have said about religion being a block to free thinking is true. ...
    (rec.martial-arts)
Loading