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Re: Proof Doesn't Matter https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=33372.msg422457#msg422457
« Reply #84 on: November 08, 2011, 04:37:47 pm »
You can have proof of something, and believe it exists, without having faith in it.
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Re: Proof Doesn't Matter https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=33372.msg422464#msg422464
« Reply #85 on: November 08, 2011, 04:50:24 pm »
whether that makes someone a fool or not is completely up to your own standards. most people believe things without proof all the time. Im not arguing the merits of it. Im simply saying why proof doesnt matter when trying to argue with religious or non-religious people.
While this is true, I find there is a substantial difference between believing something without proving it and, as you pointed out, religious belief (or faith, as you may call it). That is, faith is not based on proof and indeed cannot exist with proof. If you have proof that something exists, you can't have faith in it. You might use the word faith to indicate the respect and trust you put on something or someone but that is another meaning entirely and does not matter in this discussion (it's a semantic problem).

Also, there is a problem with faith as I have just defined it (accepting something without proof and dismissing the need to prove it): it creates a mindset where you have irremovable truths and absolutes. Also, it conflicts with logical thought.

The fact that you have irremovable truths and absolutes is self-evident. If you hold onto an absolute, though, you are bound to make decisions based on that absolute sooner or later, and those decisions impact those around you - people who may or may not have faith in the same absolute. This creates tensions and ultimately damages society, unless everybody agreed to the above absolute. Therefore, religious people tend to force their absolute on society, by means of conversion or other influences, to avoid the damage they are doing to the society while still conserving their belief.

The fact that faith conflicts with logical thought is simply shown too: all things that are accepted as true without proof can be used as hypothesis for logical thought, and that reaches conclusions which are different based on which absolute you believe in. This is in contrast with logical thought which aims at reaching the same conclusions for every thinker. This conflict can only be solved by limiting, hindering, or negating altogether logic (logic cannot prove god because he is above logic). This creates a situation where the believers refuse to use logic in a debate, and that is #1 on the list of "things that end a discussion", right above stating to be fascist.
Acceptable definition of faith. I find that in most cases proof of X simple shifts faith of X to faith of the source of the proof of X. However this does not hamper your definition.

Faith as you have defined it does not create that mindset unless that faith is valued above truth. Once again this merely qualifies it does not hamper your argument.

I agree with the third paragraph until the point where you exclude the damage of non religious people that value faith above truth and include religious people that value truth above faith. Politics is a great place to observe the legislating of morality from both secular and religious sources. The two greatest moral convictions that have influences in the legislating of morality in US politics I have seen are Equality and Rights.

It is more important for one to want to believe what is right than for one to want what one believes to be right. This difference in values is absence/cause of the problem you described not the particular beliefs.
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Re: Proof Doesn't Matter https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=33372.msg422468#msg422468
« Reply #86 on: November 08, 2011, 05:03:21 pm »
You can have proof of something, and believe it exists, without having faith in it.
This might be a semantics problem. the faith im refering to is belief without proof. you can of course believe with proof. obviously if there is proof, chances are you should probably believe. in this discussion however, the idea that proof is something that leads to belief in god is, I believe, not the case. You believe in god first, and then look for proofs to support your belief in your particular version of whatever god is.

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Re: Proof Doesn't Matter https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=33372.msg422579#msg422579
« Reply #87 on: November 08, 2011, 11:49:04 pm »
What I'm trying to say is that if you have faith in something, with absolutely no proof, then that's not really an intelligent thing to do. Regardless of whether or not that thing you have faith in is true or not, if you have absolutely no proof, then that's a foolish thing to do. Even in the Christian Bible, God(unless I am mistaken), never asked something of anyone without some sort of proof. He always gave some sort of sign that would prove to them of his soveriegnty, divinity, etc.(Whatever that word is).

Sorry, off topic, back to the topic, proof can matter, but it may not to some people in some cases.
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Re: Proof Doesn't Matter https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=33372.msg422655#msg422655
« Reply #88 on: November 09, 2011, 03:34:00 am »
Quote
Do you have a set of sufficient conditions for divinity that I could use?
I am trying to determine if any sufficient condition for divinity could be observable from an action of said being.
Sufficient conditions for divinity. That's tough, because I'm loathe to restrict myself to monotheistic religons' ideas of the divine, which really opens up the bag to a lot of stuff.  But I'll put my own prejudices away, let's try to put together some conditions for something to be divine.

First, all things that can be rationally discussed must be subject to logic. Saying that a divinity can create a four-pointed circle immediately voids all further discussion on the topic.

Second, it must have intelligence. A non-intelligent divinity can easily exist, but it's not interesting.

Third, it must have will. An intelligent deity that doesn't particularly want anything can easily exist, but is equally uninteresting.

Fourth, it must have power. A divinity that can't exert it's will is just lame.  Omnipotence isn't necessary, but the power should be something beyond the scope of what humanity can accomplish, or you run into the boring problem again.  In fact, I'm going to go so far as to say that the power needs to violate the accepted laws of cause and effect. If a divinity can't make something happen "because it wills it to be so", it's not really divine, it's just a very powerful being.

Finally, it must be known to humanity. The one thing that unites every form of divinity across human history is that the divine creatures interact with humanity in some fashion, whether it's to turn into white bulls and rape them or it's to create the entire world and then retire to Kolob and let his son run things for a while.


I think that's about all I got. 



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Re: Proof Doesn't Matter https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=33372.msg422669#msg422669
« Reply #89 on: November 09, 2011, 04:13:08 am »
Quote
Do you have a set of sufficient conditions for divinity that I could use?
I am trying to determine if any sufficient condition for divinity could be observable from an action of said being.
Sufficient conditions for divinity. That's tough, because I'm loathe to restrict myself to monotheistic religons' ideas of the divine, which really opens up the bag to a lot of stuff.  But I'll put my own prejudices away, let's try to put together some conditions for something to be divine.

First, all things that can be rationally discussed must be subject to logic. Saying that a divinity can create a four-pointed circle immediately voids all further discussion on the topic.

Second, it must have intelligence. A non-intelligent divinity can easily exist, but it's not interesting.

Third, it must have will. An intelligent deity that doesn't particularly want anything can easily exist, but is equally uninteresting.

Fourth, it must have power. A divinity that can't exert it's will is just lame.  Omnipotence isn't necessary, but the power should be something beyond the scope of what humanity can accomplish, or you run into the boring problem again.  In fact, I'm going to go so far as to say that the power needs to violate the accepted laws of cause and effect. If a divinity can't make something happen "because it wills it to be so", it's not really divine, it's just a very powerful being.

Finally, it must be known to humanity. The one thing that unites every form of divinity across human history is that the divine creatures interact with humanity in some fashion, whether it's to turn into white bulls and rape them or it's to create the entire world and then retire to Kolob and let his son run things for a while.


I think that's about all I got.
Necessary conditions (like you listed) are useful for disproofs. Sufficient conditions are useful for proofs.
Intelligence is necessary for divinity. However you also possess intelligence. Therefore signs of intelligence behind an action might just mean you did it. Do you know any sufficient conditions?
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Re: Proof Doesn't Matter https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=33372.msg422814#msg422814
« Reply #90 on: November 09, 2011, 02:50:06 pm »
The fact that you have irremovable truths and absolutes is self-evident. If you hold onto an absolute, though, you are bound to make decisions based on that absolute sooner or later, and those decisions impact those around you - people who may or may not have faith in the same absolute. This creates tensions and ultimately damages society, unless everybody agreed to the above absolute. Therefore, religious people tend to force their absolute on society, by means of conversion or other influences, to avoid the damage they are doing to the society while still conserving their belief.

The fact that faith conflicts with logical thought is simply shown too: all things that are accepted as true without proof can be used as hypothesis for logical thought, and that reaches conclusions which are different based on which absolute you believe in. This is in contrast with logical thought which aims at reaching the same conclusions for every thinker. This conflict can only be solved by limiting, hindering, or negating altogether logic (logic cannot prove god because he is above logic). This creates a situation where the believers refuse to use logic in a debate, and that is #1 on the list of "things that end a discussion", right above stating to be fascist.
I agree with the third paragraph until the point where you exclude the damage of non religious people that value faith above truth and include religious people that value truth above faith. Politics is a great place to observe the legislating of morality from both secular and religious sources. The two greatest moral convictions that have influences in the legislating of morality in US politics I have seen are Equality and Rights.

It is more important for one to want to believe what is right than for one to want what one believes to be right. This difference in values is absence/cause of the problem you described not the particular beliefs.
This is mostly a semantic problem (my fault) as I tend to consider "people who have faith" and "religious people" as the same thing (which is correct to a certain degree, but I know some people who have strong faiths without being religious and vice versa). Therefore, I correct my statement:
"The fact that you have irremovable truths and absolutes is self-evident. If you hold onto an absolute, though, you are bound to make decisions based on that absolute sooner or later, and those decisions impact those around you - people who may or may not have faith in the same absolute. This creates tensions and ultimately damages society, unless everybody agreed to the above absolute. Therefore, people with faith tend to force their absolute on society, by means of conversion or other influences, to avoid the damage they are doing to the society while still conserving their belief."

Regarding your last statement, consider the following: by having faith in something, you accept it and negate the need to prove it. That means to you, what you believe in is right. Since the "mystery of the faith" is something all religions, more or less, have (particularly so church-based ones, as that strengthens the need for an interpreter and thus the social leverage of priests) religions (or most religions at least) all share this premise. You accept your god's existance as being right. That means you cannot "want" what you believe to be right, as that would mean your faith falters and you are disputing the basic premise of your religion (accepting the existance of your god). However, if you have faithin a god, you can't want to believe what is right either, since you have accepted, as basic premise, that what you believe is right.
Your argument then refers just to the portion of people who accept the possibility to be wrong on matters of faith, but that means they no longer have faith to start with. This might seem limiting as it refers to a shriking percentage of people but first, it is not that uncommmon to find people like that in my country, and that means a good deal of people in the world are in the same situation too, as we are not the only underdeveloped country there is. In fact, many more people live in underdeveloped countries than in the so-called "developed" ones. Second, the main problem I can see with this attitude is the fact that, being as we are introduced to religion at a very young age, and introduced to proper scientific methods at a very late age if ever (I refer to "proper" scientific method here as in the modern, post-1931 discussions of scienfitic method, rather than just the Galilean Method - which is rather disputable) people oftentimes have the tendency to refuse rationality when confronted upon delicate matters. For instance, many people refuse to use mathematical tools in situations where doing so destroys their points entirely and claim that "maths can't be applied to everything", even when they agree on all the premises maths need to be applied.

Do you know any sufficient conditions?
And regarding this. I present you to the multidimensional alien deity argument.
Say there is a deity A that is, of course, a deity. Say the Christian god exists (if you don't think being the Christian god is a "sufficient condition" I think we may have a problem applying this, but whatever). Now imagine that this dimension is (as some physics incidentally suggested) like a paper sheet that hovers into a hyperspacial dimension where infinite other such "paper sheets" exist. Now imagine that there is an alien deity B, distinct from A, that created A, A', A''... all deities in their respective "paper-dimension". These deities, all being Christian gods, created the world, the universe, laws of nature, everything et cetera et cetera but, in our hypothesis, only in their respective "paper-dimension". This of course qualifies as being a god for all our purposes, as there is no possible way for us humans to find out anything about alien deity B if deity A doesn't want so. In fact, deity A is all-powerful and perfect, and doesn't want anyone knowing about itself, let alone about deity B. Now, even if your set of "sufficient" conditions for being a deity were to exist, those conditions could easily just refer to deity A, while deity B remains hidden and unproved.

Before anybody tries to say "but you can't have a Christian god if you don't encompass all possible dimensions", this argument doesn't work: Godel's Theorem. Of course you could try to avoid that, but if you manage to I suggest you call the Nobel Organization immediately.
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Re: Proof Doesn't Matter https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=33372.msg422834#msg422834
« Reply #91 on: November 09, 2011, 04:30:19 pm »
Regarding your last statement, consider the following: by having faith in something, you accept it and negate the need to prove it.
Again I agreed with almost everything. I find attitudes towards ones own beliefs can fall into a few categories
1) Require proof (Have the belief in the absence of disproof, Disrespect that belief in the absence of proof)
2) Desire proof (Attempt to prove but no proof found, Accept in the absence of proof)
3) Require testing but not require proof (Attempt to disprove but no disproof found, Accept in the absence of proof)
4) Blind acceptance (Accept even in the face of disproof)

I think your critique is only applicable to attitude 4.


Indeed a sufficient condition of divinity would only indicate a god exists it would not by itself generically describe the god that exists nor exclude the possibility of other gods including higher gods.
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Re: Proof Doesn't Matter https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=33372.msg422970#msg422970
« Reply #92 on: November 09, 2011, 10:30:41 pm »
Necessary conditions (like you listed) are useful for disproofs. Sufficient conditions are useful for proofs.
Intelligence is necessary for divinity. However you also possess intelligence. Therefore signs of intelligence behind an action might just mean you did it. Do you know any sufficient conditions?

Dammit, I always get mixed up on those two. My wife and I actually joke about how bad I am at necessary and sufficient conditions.

Let's see -- sufficient conditions for divinity would mean that simply observing the condition would allow you infer that the being was divine? Erk. 
...
Nope. Clarke's Third Law basically prevents you from inferring divinity from any observable phenomenon, because that phenomenon could always have been caused by sufficiently advanced technology.  So I'm afraid as far as I can tell, your (admirable) attempt comes pre-doomed. :(
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Re: Proof Doesn't Matter https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=33372.msg422973#msg422973
« Reply #93 on: November 09, 2011, 10:40:40 pm »
Necessary conditions (like you listed) are useful for disproofs. Sufficient conditions are useful for proofs.
Intelligence is necessary for divinity. However you also possess intelligence. Therefore signs of intelligence behind an action might just mean you did it. Do you know any sufficient conditions?

Dammit, I always get mixed up on those two. My wife and I actually joke about how bad I am at necessary and sufficient conditions.

Let's see -- sufficient conditions for divinity would mean that simply observing the condition would allow you infer that the being was divine? Erk. 
...
Nope. Clarke's Third Law basically prevents you from inferring divinity from any observable phenomenon, because that phenomenon could always have been caused by sufficiently advanced technology.  So I'm afraid as far as I can tell, your (admirable) attempt comes pre-doomed. :(
Clarke's Third Law is why what appears to be miraculous is not evidence. However events can have other characteristics beyond being miraculous. Free Will might be observable if the actions have inconsistent results despite consistent conditions. Intelligence combined with Partial knowledge might be observable if changes in information presented change the results. However neither of those happen to be sufficient conditions of divinity.

I have discovered that most methods that refuse to permit error come pre-doomed. I have not stopped trying though. :)
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Re: Proof Doesn't Matter https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=33372.msg423153#msg423153
« Reply #94 on: November 10, 2011, 07:55:17 am »
Free Will might be observable if the actions have inconsistent results despite consistent conditions. Intelligence combined with Partial knowledge might be observable if changes in information presented change the results. However neither of those happen to be sufficient conditions of divinity.
And Free Will is a hot mess in the first place because "consistent conditions" are virtually impossible as long as we're stuck in bodies that have internal hormonal tides so sensitive that the difference between eating a Tootsie Roll before breakfast and eating it after breakfast can literally result in an entirely different base mood for your entire afternoon. :D
If something happens and you think it deserves my attention, feel free to PM me. Other than that, I'm probably here if you want to shoot the breeze.

legomyhobo

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Re: Proof Doesn't Matter https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=33372.msg447141#msg447141
« Reply #95 on: January 09, 2012, 01:20:53 am »

"And Free Will is a hot mess in the first place because "consistent conditions" are virtually impossible as long as we're stuck in bodies that have internal hormonal tides so sensitive that the difference between eating a Tootsie Roll before breakfast and eating it after breakfast can literally result in an entirely different base mood for your entire afternoon."
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If god is omniscient, then free will is IMPOSSIBLE.  Free will can't be observed, that is also impossible because we will never know whether we have choice in our actions. Eating breakfast and candy really has nothing to do with affecting our free will...

 

blarg: