Does it all come down to pascal's wager for Christians?

[Dr. Keith]

Originally Posted by pgwenthold

This is Pablo's Wager:

If God exists and created me, then he created me as a rational thinking being, one that basis belief on evidence.

Yet, God does not provide me with the evidence that he knows I need in order to believe in him. Consequently, believing in him would require that I resort to faith, and not use the gift of rational thought I was created with.

Now, failing to use my God-given gifts to their fullest is an affront to God, and would be a sin. Therefore, I am forced to come to an immutable conclusion:

If God exists, it would be a sin for me to believe in him.

Rational thought applied to God? Seems dangerous.

/s

This can be filed as just one more way to use the logic of Pascal's Wager to support a non-religious life. I really do think Pascal was laying out the logical basis for a non-religious life, cloaked as an argument for faith.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

Right, so more empty handwaving, more irrelevant detours, but at the end of the day you're still proposing a literal conspiracy theory and still can't show any evidence.

You mean the conspiracy theory about "Chinese whispers"? That is your baby not mine.

Oh how about the "Chinese whispers" of the US election being stolen from Trump? Newsflash, "Chinese whispers" is just Newspeak for "conspiracy theory".

There was no conspiracy theory in the acceptance of Piltdown man by ignoring the file marks that a reasonable hand magnifier of the time could see. As you have noted there were a host of factors that causes that particular can't see the forest for the trees nonsense.

By your logic the idea that Jesus, stripped of all the mythological baggage, must have existed despite the lack of anything reasonable to that effect must be a conspiracy theory rather than the theory driving the data rather than the data driving the theory. As Area 51 shows large amounts of people can keep a secret (though logically the secrets are involving new military aircraft and not little green men or spaceships)

Pascal's wager is a non starter because it, like tragedy of the commons, goes from what is a flawed premise. The reality regarding the tragedy of the commons is there was (and is) self-regulation by the communities involved.

Easter Island was another example of how a flawed premise (the natives fell into a tragedy of the commons) shaped thinking. Then somebody actually said 'hey let's check this via archeology' and Rethinking Easter Island’s Historic ‘Collapse’ happened and it seems more likely European diseases were the cause of the collapse.

[JoeMorgue]

Originally Posted by Dr. Keith

Rational thought applied to God? Seems dangerous.

You laugh but that's the trap.

"Can you, using only (my strawman version of) rationality disprove my unsupported, faith based belief" is often where this discussion does finally land. It only does so after the apologists have taken the language into the corner and beaten it within an inch of its life so it can't defend itself anymore.

They want to take us to task for not having a perfectly rational counter to them invoking magic.

That's why I'm past Occam's Razor. I'm past "Things which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

I'm at Newton's Flaming Laser Sword. If it can't be settled with experimentation, it's not worth discussing.

[Thermal]

Originally Posted by pgwenthold

This is Pablo's Wager:

If God exists and created me, then he created me as a rational thinking being, one that basis belief on evidence.

Yet, God does not provide me with the evidence that he knows I need in order to believe in him. Consequently, believing in him would require that I resort to faith, and not use the gift of rational thought I was created with.

Now, failing to use my God-given gifts to their fullest is an affront to God, and would be a sin. Therefore, I am forced to come to an immutable conclusion:

If God exists, it would be a sin for me to believe in him.

Pablo is also given the gift of a right hand. I suppose that makes it a sin, by his reasoning, to use his left?

Also, Pablo commits the same monstrous hubris of thinking he would have gods thoughts and nature all worked out. Pablo totally gets it...with no evidence, mind you...because he assumes himself to be thinking on the equivalent level of the creator of time and space. .

My toddlers used to think they were outthinking their parents too. It's adorable.

[Chanakya]

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

You laugh but that's the trap.

"Can you, using only (my strawman version of) rationality disprove my unsupported, faith based belief" is often where this discussion does finally land. It only does so after the apologists have taken the language into the corner and beaten it within an inch of its life so it can't defend itself anymore.

They want to take us to task for not having a perfectly rational counter to them invoking magic.

That's why I'm past Occam's Razor. I'm past "Things which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

I'm at Newton's Flaming Laser Sword. If it can't be settled with experimentation, it's not worth discussing.

I've found your ...somewhat extremist, views kind of off, in the past, and expressed disagreement with them more than once, but you know, I do find myself nodding in agreement with that highlighted portion.

Albeit I realize that kind of approach does take a good many things outside the purview of our discussion. But still. I mean, life's short.

[Thermal]

Originally Posted by Chanakya

I've found your ...somewhat extremist, views kind of off, in the past, and expressed disagreement with them more than once, but you know, I do find myself nodding in agreement with that highlighted portion.

Albeit I realize that kind of approach does take a good many things outside the purview of our discussion. But still. I mean, life's short.

Art, literature, beauty, love, politics, interpersonal relationships..totally not worth discussing.

[HansMustermann]

I'd think even some of those can have SOME empirical proof. I mean, even politics, you can at the very least check that Trump exists, which is already more than religion can offer. And you can check what did he actually say in some speech. I'm sure you can find it on youtube or whatnot. Again, that's in rather stark contrast to religion.

Actually, come to think of it, especially in politics we'd probably all be better off if discussions were based (directly or indirectly) on empirical data. Like, did Biden actually say X, for a start, and if you think he's wrong, on what data is that based?

[Chanakya]

Originally Posted by Thermal

Art, literature, beauty, love, politics, interpersonal relationships..totally not worth discussing.

Nah, not what I meant. (Although obviously I can't speak for Joe, and can't say if he meant to convey by those words what I understood them as.)

You know how we sometimes discuss (if only with ourselves) the FACTUALITY of things we cannot -- or at least, don't -- experiment on? A blatant example would be God, obviously. I'm thinking that kind of thing is probably ...well, life's probably too short for that.





That is, thinking about this, three qualifications;

1. Only discussions on factuality. That leaves in ( much of) art, literature, et al.

2. Purely subjective preference. Others may choose otherwise, and that's fine.

3. That still leaves a great deal out. Which might be a minus. On the other hand, life's short, so that might be a plus actually.


eta:
4. What one thinks and feels, one's preference, can evolve, change. My point is, this is an eminently ...reasonable POV. Which is not to say, at all, there cannot be other reasonable POVs.

[Thermal]

Originally Posted by Chanakya

Nah, not what I meant. (Although obviously I can't speak for Joe, and can't say if he meant to convey by those words what I understood them as.)

You know how we sometimes discuss (if only with ourselves) the FACTUALITY of things we cannot -- or at least, don't -- experiment on? A blatant example would be God, obviously. I'm thinking that kind of thing is probably ...well, life's probably too short for that.





That is, thinking about this, three qualifications;

1. Only discussions on factuality. That leaves in ( much of) art, literature, et al.

2. Purely subjective preference. Others may choose otherwise, and that's fine.

3. That still leaves a great deal out. Which might be a minus. On the other hand, life's short, so that might be a plus actually.


eta:
4. What one thinks and feels, one's preference, can evolve, change. My point is, this is an eminently ...reasonable POV. Which is not to say, at all, there cannot be other reasonable POVs.

Well...yeah, it's a trivial truism to state that in strictly factual matters that they should be subject to conventional experementaion. Pretty pointless observation in the context of a Pascal/R&P thread, really. We can, for example, reasonably demonstrate that Blaise existed, the Pensees exist, etc. That is meaningless in terms of the meaning of the works.The bulk of the actual human experience I would say falls outside of weighing and measuring, and is fully worthy of discussion.

Are we sure that a thread restricted to *1.Only discussions on factuality* makes any sense at all in R&P?

[Chanakya]

Originally Posted by Thermal

Well...yeah, it's a trivial truism to state that in strictly factual matters that they should be subject to conventional experementaion.

Not quite.

Most here would agree that one wouldn't accept the factuality of something that isn't objectively evidenced. That's a truism, sure, in this company at least.

Discussing the factuality of things one cannot, or won't, experiment on, though? That's not the same thing.

Quote:

Pretty pointless observation in the context of a Pascal/R&P thread, really.

In the above sense, it seems kind of on point.

Quote:

We can, for example, reasonably demonstrate that Blaise existed, the Pensees exist, etc. That is meaningless in terms of the meaning of the works.The bulk of the actual human experience I would say falls outside of weighing and measuring, and is fully worthy of discussion.

Are we sure that a thread restricted to *1.Only discussions on factuality* makes any sense at all in R&P?

No, guess not.

But that's kind of a philosophy, right? Eschewing factuality discussions of things one cannot, or isn't willing to, put to the test? That might make it apt for R&P.

Although having stated that philosophy, that preference, there probably isn't much more to do or say about it!

[pgwenthold]

Originally Posted by Thermal

Pablo is also given the gift of a right hand. I suppose that makes it a sin, by his reasoning, to use his left?

Why, is his left hand not also a gift?

[maximara]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

I'd think even some of those can have SOME empirical proof. I mean, even politics, you can at the very least check that Trump exists, which is already more than religion can offer. And you can check what did he actually say in some speech. I'm sure you can find it on youtube or whatnot. Again, that's in rather stark contrast to religion.

Actually, come to think of it, especially in politics we'd probably all be better off if discussions were based (directly or indirectly) on empirical data. Like, did Biden actually say X, for a start, and if you think he's wrong, on what data is that based?

What empirical data?! One of my favorite examples of this is the Crime Clock - the one that says a certain time is committed every minute.

Say somebody says that 10 years ago a certain crime every 10 minutes but today it happens every 7 minutes. They then use that "empirical data" is say crime is increasing. But that ignores a host of other factors - increasing population, more people reporting the crime, better record keeping and communication, etc.

A similar thing happens with unemployment. There are actually six different ways to measure unemployment (bolded one is the choosen baseline):

U1: Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force

U2: Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force

U3: Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate) (actively looked for work within the past four weeks).

U4: Total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers

U5: Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other persons marginally attached to the labor force, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force

U6: Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force

A common tactic of US politicians is to cite U3 as evidence of the unemployment rate going down when in reality it is just people falling of the unemployment rolls because their time on them ran out or they just could not find a job and gave up.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by maximara

What empirical data?! One of my favorite examples of this is the Crime Clock - the one that says a certain time is committed every minute.

Say somebody says that 10 years ago a certain crime every 10 minutes but today it happens every 7 minutes. They then use that "empirical data" is say crime is increasing. But that ignores a host of other factors - increasing population, more people reporting the crime, better record keeping and communication, etc.

A lot of which is also based on empirical data. I'm pretty sure that the increasing population, i.e., the "capita" in "per capita" is also something that was actually counted. Not just some "it makes sense to me" kinda thing pulled out of some theologian's ass, as is the case for most theology. And I still maintain that I'm more confident in some political opinion when it's actually rooted in such data, rather than what someone imagines the case to be.

Not the least because when you do factor those in, you get something more like this:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...crime-rate-uk/
I.e., it turns out that yep, actually even per capita it's been actually on the rise since 2014 or so.

So yep, I'm still more enlightened by the actual data, as opposed to just trusting someone's ass-pull and handwaving to the contrary. Turns out that there's a difference between actually doing the maths, and just uninformed handwaving what you think the population increase means there

[Thermal]

Originally Posted by pgwenthold

Why, is his left hand not also a gift?

Yea, verily, the Left hand is also a gift. Yet that solves not the false dichotomy of choices.

If Pablo, being the handy sort, is given a hammer and a glass cutter, then asked to replace a broken window pane, would he say that it is a sin not to use the Great Gift of the Hammer to cut it? I can really get into this speaking in parables thing.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

A lot of which is also based on empirical data. I'm pretty sure that the increasing population, i.e., the "capita" in "per capita" is also something that was actually counted.

But that is not how the Crime Clock works: "The Crime Clock represents the annual ratio of crime to fixed time intervals." (FBI:URC). It says nothing about per capita and that is why politicians tend to use it rather than a per capita measurement. Which was my point - you can effectively precook the data to get the result you want.

It is thanks to Crime Clock and the media that the citizens of the US think the crime rate is going up when in reality per capita it is generally going down. It doesn't help as Sagan pointed out in Demon Haunted World that people don't understand statistics. "President Dwight Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence." (pg 202)

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

Not the least because when you do factor those in, you get something more like this:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...crime-rate-uk/
I.e., it turns out that yep, actually even per capita it's been actually on the rise since 2014 or so.

Not in Scotland. .

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by maximara

You mean the conspiracy theory about "Chinese whispers"? That is your baby not mine.

That's not a conspiracy theory, that's another name about the game of telephone. It's actually a literal analogy for your preferring to get your information third hand, while both discarding the PRIMARY sources AND showing no interest to even check what the SECONDARY sources actually had to say about it. That's a literal case of a glorified game of telephone.

The literal conspiracy theory is what you propose about the church: that the whole church leadership, as involved in the council of Trent, would be SECRETLY Copernicans, all the while not only systematically lying about it even in official documents, but even having the Papal Inquisition... discouraging its use. Presumably also in order to keep the secret.

But of course, it just shows that all you can do -- AGAIN -- is to take a phrase out of context, and basically write some nonsense that you don't even understand. In fact, without even reading and understanding what the message you answer to says. And in fact, all you do this time is a literal version of the "I know you are, but what am I?" kindergarten spiel.

But then, your whole contribution in this thread has been at the intellectual level of a zero without a border. It would be mean for me to demand that you actually have a sound argument for a change.

Originally Posted by maximara

Oh how about the "Chinese whispers" of the US election being stolen from Trump? Newsflash, "Chinese whispers" is just Newspeak for "conspiracy theory".

Irrelevant at best, as your nonsense dodges tend to be.

Originally Posted by maximara

There was no conspiracy theory in the acceptance of Piltdown man by ignoring the file marks that a reasonable hand magnifier of the time could see. As you have noted there were a host of factors that causes that particular can't see the forest for the trees nonsense.

Strawman, since I never claimed there was one.

Originally Posted by maximara

By your logic the idea that Jesus, stripped of all the mythological baggage, must have existed despite the lack of anything reasonable to that effect must be a conspiracy theory rather than the theory driving the data rather than the data driving the theory.

Strawman again, since that's not what I ever wrote in the relevant other threads. (Although I did call Mark's gospel a conspiracy theory, since that's literally what it proposes: that hundreds or even thousands of witnesses all over the place, all kept the secret about Jesus, because they were told to.) And those are the key words: other threads. It's quite irrelevant in this one.

Ran out of ideas of what other nonsense to post as a dodge, or what?

Originally Posted by maximara

As Area 51 shows large amounts of people can keep a secret (though logically the secrets are involving new military aircraft and not little green men or spaceships)

It still doesn't mean you can just postulate what someone else thought, or the POSSIBLE existence of documents you don't even know about, as the only support for your CT hypothesis. Either you actually show the evidence, or all you have is unsupported flights of imagination.

Even if I were to allow that a conspiracy COULD happen, there is a difference between COULD and DID. You still have to show the evidence if you want to propose that it DID happen.

Originally Posted by maximara

Pascal's wager is a non starter because it, like tragedy of the commons, goes from what is a flawed premise. The reality regarding the tragedy of the commons is there was (and is) self-regulation by the communities involved.

While true on both counts, the tragedy of the commons is fully irrelevant here. It doesn't even work as an argument from analogy, since they lack any common mechanism by which the failure of one would show the other to be a failure. Just "uh, some other unrelated hypothesis Y was wrong" doesn't constitute enough of an analogy.

And even Pascal's Wager doesn't actually show anything about your CT nonsense about the Pope applying Copernicus.

So, again, ran out of other irrelevant dodges to post?

Originally Posted by maximara

Easter Island was another example of how a flawed premise (the natives fell into a tragedy of the commons) shaped thinking. Then somebody actually said 'hey let's check this via archeology' and Rethinking Easter Island’s Historic ‘Collapse’ happened and it seems more likely European diseases were the cause of the collapse.

Still irrelevant to the topic at hand, since it doesn't even involve a conspiracy, nor share any common attributes to even work as an argument from analogy. Something that is just a case of "but science man was wrong before!!!111eleventeen" isn't analogy enough. It doesn't work for the apologists, and doesn't work for you.

So, again, ran out of other irrelevant dodges to post?

As I was saying, your whole contribution in this thread has been at the intellectual level of a zero without a border, and here you just do more of that.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by maximara

But that is not how the Crime Clock works: "The Crime Clock represents the annual ratio of crime to fixed time intervals." (FBI:URC). It says nothing about per capita and that is why politicians tend to use it rather than a per capita measurement. Which was my point - you can effectively precook the data to get the result you want.

Yes, but my point was that to oppose it, you better show your own actual data to disprove it. It doesn't have to be the SAME pre-cooked data, but you have to have SOME actual data if you want to disprove theirs or how they use it. If they have the data -- pre-cooked or not, and sometimes even false or mis-applied -- and all you have is feelings and handwaving, then actually they did a better job of supporting their case.

It doesn't even matter if it's about politics, 16'th century church history, or what. You have to be grounded in actual facts.

[HansMustermann]

That said, if you want to discuss Easter Island and that Tragedy Of The Commons theory about it, sure, let's talk about it. Because it's a case study in how you criticize stuff you don't even understand. Like, at all.

1. "Then somebody actually said 'hey let's check this via archeology'" So basically they adjusted the model when they actually had data. Which is how science, or for that matter history, WORK.

You still seem to propose the woowoo-peddler idea that it's a failure if you're not omniscient, as in, have a fully correct model before you have any data to base it on. Which is, to use a technical term, stonkin' stupid.


2. Even more importantly, the one who originated that model is Jared Diamond, a GEOGRAPHY professor, who is only formally educated in biochemistry and physiology. But who likes to talk out the ass on a variety of topics that he has NO training or real experience with, including anthropology, ecology, geography, and evolutionary biology.

Also a guy who epically fails even in his domain of geography. His other famous book proposes the theory that contiguous horizontal bands of agriculture were a driving factor, and that's why Europe surpassed Africa, but fails to notice that Europe only looks wider than Africa on his map as an artefact of the projection used. You'd think a geographer of all people would know better than to assume that widths on a quadratic map actually mean the same as real distances on Earth, but nope, he doesn't.

Also fails to notice that at the times involved, those bands weren't actually that contiguous due to technology limitations, so the effective total width was actually even smaller. But then he'd need to be qualified in history to actually know that.

The theory about Easter Island was challenged almost immediately by anyone who was even remotely qualified. (E.g., climate change was a bigger candidate right off the bat.) But somehow people were more willing to remember the sensationalist book from the unqualified guy, than what qualified people had to say. Which isn't a failure of the scientific method, but just the fact that idiots take as gospel whatever confirms their preconceptions. Which shouldn't surprise anyone who's been paying attention to politics lately.

So, anyway, the moral of that story isn't "science man was wrong", but really, "unqualified guy talking out the ass was wrong." Whop-de-do. Big surprise... for whom?


3. In fact, even the original tragedy of the commons idea was not a real scientific -- or for that matter economic -- theory, but an essay dealing with just a thought experiment. It used exactly no data which you'd describe as actual anthropological, historical or even economic. It was all just an ad-absurdum experiment, even if he may or may not have realized that that's what he's doing. If anything, it just showed that taking current economic theory to its logical conclusion isn't as self-regulating a utopia as others proposed, rather than show anything about those communities.

The only ones it found any traction with weren't even historians or anything, but basically lobbyists and politicians looking to justify confiscating those commons.

It wouldn't be used in any scientific way until 1968, at which point it was used about such stuff as pollution or other such factors, not as actual historical information about 19'th century English villages.

So basically what you're criticizing as some failure of science, is again just based on your not even having a clue what you're talking about.