The question of faith (and Bertrand Russell quote)

[Juma]

No.

So you don't understand the conversation. I'll explain it to you.

Someone made a claim about belief that God exists which they could not back up. I asked the following about their claim:
"What reason and evidence contradicts belief that God exists?"

Bilby said I can only say things like that because "you refuse to clearly define what you mean by God", so I provided a definition.

I asked you how you falsify your hypotesis. You answered that you cannot. That doesnt concern that definition. It concerns you.

 

[DBT]

Solipsists certainly try very, very hard.

I'm the only one I've ever meet.

Being the only One in Existence, a Solipsist is by necessity a very lonely person, however many friends there may be, they are of no consolation whatsoever, they are merely products of imagination.

 

[Wiploc]

Solipsists certainly try very, very hard.

No, they just imagine that you think that they do.

 

[Kharakov]

I'm the only one I've ever meet.

Being the only One in Existence, a Solipsist is by necessity a very lonely person, however many friends there may be, they are of no consolation whatsoever, they are merely products of imagination.

How dreary. I'd like to run tomorrow, but now I have a desire for a dark cloudy melancholy day. Sunny would be better for a run though.

 

[Togo]

That's easy- the idea is already false, because not all hypotheses are scientific hypotheses.

Wether its "scientific" or not doesnt matter.
If there is no way to notice that the hypotesis is wrong then it carries no information.

Ok, so far we're in textbook Logical Positivist territory. So how do you deal with the classic arguement against that position?

You've stated that a non-falsifiable hypothesis carries no information. How do you falsify the hypothesis that a non-falsifiable hypothesis carries no information? If you can't, then that means that the idea that a non-falsifiable hypothesis carries no information is itself non-falsifiable, and therefore carries no information.

Or to put it more simply, why are you using non-falsifiability as a test for other people's ideas, but not for the test itself?

 

[Juma]

Wether its "scientific" or not doesnt matter.
If there is no way to notice that the hypotesis is wrong then it carries no information.

Ok, so far we're in textbook Logical Positivist territory. So how do you deal with the classic arguement against that position?

You've stated that a non-falsifiable hypothesis carries no information. How do you falsify the hypothesis that a non-falsifiable hypothesis carries no information? If you can't, then that means that the idea that a non-falsifiable hypothesis carries no information is itself non-falsifiable, and therefore carries no information.

Or to put it more simply, why are you using non-falsifiability as a test for other people's ideas, but not for the test itself?

Were not talking about "peoples ideas" generally. Where are talking about hypoteses about the real world.

That non-falsifiable hypoteses has no information is not a hypotes about the real world. It is a syntactic fact.

 

[Togo]

Faith, and what all theists do, is the act of dishonestly and intentionally violating reason and ignoring or biasedly cherry-picking empirical experience in order to create non-random deviations from the conclusions best supported by reason and toward emotionally preferred ideas.

Eh? That sounds like a emotional rant. Let's take an example of faith. My Aunt believes in a variation of Calvinism. This comes with your standard christian all-powerful omiscient deity with the usual sacrificed Son for the sins of the world bonus package. Now I don't happen to share her belief, but I'm struggling to see where the violation of reason comes in, or the ignoring or biasedly cherry-picking emperical experience. I can't even see the emotionally preferred ideas, since most of the ideas in her religion seem to depress her really quite severely.

IOW, honest efforts to reason and dishonest efforts to subvert reason with emotion are the only systematic psychological bases for belief.

As an ex-psychologist, I feel bound to disagree, since that isn't the conclusion that the available science tends to come to. Can you explain where this belief comes from? Specifically, is it supported by emperical research or other 'reason', or is it a "dishonest attempt to subvert reason with emotion"?

That assumption of God's existence is a product of emotional desire. It is an assumption not only unsupported but contradicted by reason and evidence, including the reason and evidence available and known to theists themselves.

Can you give an example? Ideally something other than the problem of evil, which theists have been sucessfully dealing with for more than a century?

Even if one starts with the assumption of God, almost nothing that religionists believe follows from that assumption, including the independent assumptions of immaterial souls,

Souls follow quite easily from the problem of evil. If the transient world is a mess, then the transient world can't be the most imporatant consideration.

human-centrism of creation,

Follows logically from a human-centric deity.

or any of their moral claims.

Following quite logically from the idea of a human-centric deity caring for the immortal rather than the transient parts of humanity, is the idea that personal integrity is more important than actions in a transient world. It may not be reasoning to your taste, but I'd say it's more effort than most atheists put in to justifying their own moral compass. It's complicated, and I disagree with a great deal of it, but it's hardly incoherent.

The blind spot tends to be that such massive assumptions are not just annoying or unjustified, they make the entire rational system break down. If you can shoehorn anything you fancy in as an assumption, logic becomes useless, and thus the person doing so can't claim to be acting on a reasoned basis. That's the split. It's nothing to do with religious belief being somehow inherently emotional.

Yes, it is inherently emotional because the psychological basis for those starting assumptions is emotion combined with highly emotional active suppression of evidence and reason that is inconsistent with that God concept. Theists actively suppress the logical implications of their own knowledge in relation to their theistic beliefs, and their motive to do so is to satisfy emotional preferences.

I don't believe you have evidence for any of this.

 

[Kharakov]

I asked you how you falsify your hypotesis. You answered that you cannot.

I cannot falsify the hypothesis that I exist at this moment. Does this mean the hypothesis is incorrect or carries no information?

That doesnt concern that definition. It concerns you.

Yeah. It could totally be an illusion. The sun just came out!

 

[Togo]

Ok, so far we're in textbook Logical Positivist territory. So how do you deal with the classic arguement against that position?

You've stated that a non-falsifiable hypothesis carries no information. How do you falsify the hypothesis that a non-falsifiable hypothesis carries no information? If you can't, then that means that the idea that a non-falsifiable hypothesis carries no information is itself non-falsifiable, and therefore carries no information.

Or to put it more simply, why are you using non-falsifiability as a test for other people's ideas, but not for the test itself?

Were not talking about "peoples ideas" generally. Where are talking about hypoteses about the real world.

That non-falsifiable hypoteses has no information is not a hypotes about the real world. It is a syntactic fact.

Either it carries information or it doesn't. Does your syntactic fact carry information despite being non-falsifiable? If so, why can't other 'facts' also be non-falsifiable?

If you're going to carry this distinction off you need to explain how we have two kinds of statement, one of which are hypotheses that need to be falsifiable or else they can be dismissed out of hand, and another which are 'syntactic facts' that don't need to be falsifiable, but can be relied upon regardless.

 

[Juma]

Were not talking about "peoples ideas" generally. Where are talking about hypoteses about the real world.

That non-falsifiable hypoteses has no information is not a hypotes about the real world. It is a syntactic fact.

Either it carries information or it doesn't. Does your syntactic fact carry information despite being non-falsifiable? If so, why can't other 'facts' also be non-falsifiable?

If you're going to carry this distinction off you need to explain how we have two kinds of statement, one of which are hypotheses that need to be falsifiable or else they can be dismissed out of hand, and another which are 'syntactic facts' that don't need to be falsifiable, but can be relied upon regardless.

What? This is basic stuff:
Logic and maths popositions are syntactic facts.

The falsification criteria is a way to detect a flaw in the formulation of a hypotesis.

If you cannot falsify a hypotesis it can never be found to be wrong since if it was found wrong that would have been a way to falsify it. Doesnt this say you anything?

 

[Togo]

Either it carries information or it doesn't. Does your syntactic fact carry information despite being non-falsifiable? If so, why can't other 'facts' also be non-falsifiable?

If you're going to carry this distinction off you need to explain how we have two kinds of statement, one of which are hypotheses that need to be falsifiable or else they can be dismissed out of hand, and another which are 'syntactic facts' that don't need to be falsifiable, but can be relied upon regardless.

What? This is basic stuff:
Logic and maths popositions are syntactic facts.

The falsification criteria is a way to detect a flaw in the formulation of a hypotesis.

If you cannot falsify a hypotesis it can never be found to be wrong since if it was found wrong that would have been a way to falsify it. Doesnt this say you anything?

Yes, it says that it you have a criteria for determining whether a hypothesis can be usefully tested against reality. Not that your hypothesis is a syntactic fact, since that would mean it's true by definition of accepted rules, and certainly not that any hypothesis that isn't falsifiable somehow carries no useful information.

 

[fromderinside]

What? This is basic stuff:
Logic and maths popositions are syntactic facts.

The falsification criteria is a way to detect a flaw in the formulation of a hypotesis.

If you cannot falsify a hypotesis it can never be found to be wrong since if it was found wrong that would have been a way to falsify it. Doesnt this say you anything?

Yes, it says that it you have a criteria for determining whether a hypothesis can be usefully tested against reality. Not that your hypothesis is a syntactic fact, since that would mean it's true by definition of accepted rules, and certainly not that any hypothesis that isn't falsifiable somehow carries no useful information.

Tale of two falsifications?

 

[jab]

I'm with the Apostle Paul on this one, as far as seeing faith and hope as distinct.
Hope may have room for acute doubt or skepticism; faith does not. As an emotion, faith is closer to trust, commitment, or a feeling of security or sureness. Not quite desire, which is an yearning now for something not yet achieved. Faith, even when it involves the future, is a feeling of trust and security that that future will occur.
You can have faith also in negatives that you don't desire.
I note that the Russell quotation does not equate faith and hope or desire.

 

[DBT]

Yes, hoping that something comes about, or hoping that something is true is clearly not the same as being convinced that it is true regardless of evidential support.