Prominent Scientists and their religiosity

[Doulos]

What I'm saying is that you have a small amount of evidence for any claim within the bible. You have no valid evidence for any of the more extraordinary claims.

You're still playing with that word 'valid' here. If you mean from the sense of creating a valid argument in logic, I would actually agree with you, for the very reasons I enumerated earlier regarding the nature of the evidence and how these constitute a fallacy in logical terms.

Yet as you yourself wrote, "A claim isn't false because of a fallacy..."

One can still come to a point of personal decision regarding what the Bible asserts, just as a jury in court can come to a decision based upon the evidence provided. Would that be based upon valid evidence in logical terms? Possibly not.

But a claim can still be true even then.

[Doulos]

The clarification doesn't help. The subject is the "strong convictions". The subject is not "the content of the testimony". How strongly someone believes the truthfulness of events is not valid evidence. The reason they believe the truthfulness of events is valid evidence.

You're rather missing the forest for the trees.

The reason for the strong convictions is precisely because of surety about the truthfulness of events. That surety is often (we're talking about multiple claims, so obviously not all are the same) due to being an eye witness to the events in question.

[Doulos]

The claimed events need to be supported before they can support anything else. Why you skipping?

When reading any narrative, I think it's always important to remember the overall context, even while focussing upon the individual details.

[Doulos]

That's exactly the point, Doulos. If the evidence doesn't exist, why do you think your belief is justified? I'm sorry that the supposed events happened so long ago, I truly am. This is part of the reason the word "faith" is so popular, as I've said before. Many extremely intelligent men throughout history have gone down the same painstaking road in realizing the belief isn't justified. You have only faith. Their solution has been to tout faith as a prime virtue. In that way, perhaps they hoped their belief could be justified.

I never said evidence didn't exist. I merely said that the existant evidence largely does not constitute a basis for a valid argument in terms of formal logic.

We make many choices in life without the presence of formal logical forms. This doesn't mean a belief isn't justified, merely that it isn't justified by the rules of formal logic.

Going back to an earlier conversation, I feel you're overly bound to this ideal of formal logic. There are other valid (obviously not using this word in the context of formal logic) means of reaching a decision. Gladwell's "Blink" comes to mind in this context.

[Interbane]

Going back to an earlier conversation, I feel you're overly bound to this ideal of formal logic.

Overly bound? If so, then only by necessity. But I'm not too much of a logistician. More of a philosopher in general. I enjoy informal logic more, or at least what I understand of it. Here is a link to informal fallacies that are fun to play around with. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fa ... _fallacies

As for an alogical or illogical system of assessing veracity, I would need to be a student to you. Perhaps there are a large number of systems that don't include logic. I would wonder why, since it is so reliable in achieving truthful results.

When reading any narrative, I think it's always important to remember the overall context, even while focussing upon the individual details.

For understanding the story you're right. That's a necessary wisdom, I think, in studying the bible. What are you wanting us to focus on? I've been focusing on whether or not the story is true. I would like to know that at some point. I've studied the storyline when I was younger, and some recently.

But if we focus on the veracity of the story(don't you think that matters?), the details really do matter. If one thing is said on page 5, that is then later used as evidence for something during page 7, we're sort of in a pickle. You see, the thing on page 7 might not be true or have happened, if the thing on page 5 didn't happen. The only thing that "taking it all in context" would do here is give us a reason to ignore the issue. It won't become true or resolve itself if our focus is elsewhere.

You're still playing with that word 'valid' here. If you mean from the sense of creating a valid argument in logic, I would actually agree with you, for the very reasons I enumerated earlier regarding the nature of the evidence and how these constitute a fallacy in logical terms.

It doesn't need to be within formal logic. I'm merely using objective language. Most of the time I use the word "evidence", it's a placeholder for "valid evidence", but I'm being more precise because it matters. If it's bad evidence, I'd refer to it as such, or good evidence, or invalid evidence if there's some sort of subterfuge or motive involved. You were right when you said that darn near anything can be evidence. But that is a category, and the subcategory is what conveys the status.

One can still come to a point of personal decision regarding what the Bible asserts, just as a jury in court can come to a decision based upon the evidence provided. Would that be based upon valid evidence in logical terms? Possibly not.

I'd think a lot of juries decide on a whim, without any logic, or even relying upon contradictions! Do you think the victim in such a trial is fairly judged? Would you agree with the jury even if they based their decision on a contradiction? This is an honest question.

The reason for the strong convictions is precisely because of surety about the truthfulness of events. That surety is often (we're talking about multiple claims, so obviously not all are the same) due to being an eye witness to the events in question.

Are you sure? Could the reason for the strong convictions not be that they are fabricated to gain further believers? Are you sure you're even reading the testimony of the supposed witnesses? If so, are you sure they weren't tampered with to increase believability in the story? Can a person not fake strong conviction to start a movement? For each of your answers, is there sufficient reason to be sure, or is it based on weak reasoning? That's not an insult, we all use weak reasoning at times.

There are unknowns as to why the witnesses are sure the events are true. The unknowns cannot be eliminated, because to do so you'd need to be inside the heads of the witnesses when they were alive. If you were able to do so, and get inside the head of one of the witnesses(personal questioning), you might be able to tell if their certainty is honest.

But then there's another problem. Even a person who's honestly certain can be(and often is) wrong. The things that people believe can only truly be used in conjunction with something else, to determine that there's truth to what they say. Otherwise, how do you know they aren't mistaken? You could come up with a thousand reasons why they aren't mistaken, but how do you know.

Let's say we find something that shows the person to be telling the truth(some evidence, if you will). The problem is, part of the story was unusual, in that the witness supposedly saw butterflies turn in to bumblebees. Now, since we found something that shows the person to be telling the truth about one part of their testimony, should we assume the rest is true as well? Of course not... the 'assume' part. We need to check up on it. After talking to a host of experts who say that such an event is next to impossible, we suddenly have a whole bunch of "contrary evidence" that needs to be surmounted before we believe the witness.

I don't believe the bible is true witness testimony. I believe there is a great deal of truth in many of the events, people, and locations. But those truths are mixed with a storytelling narrative that evolved as it changed hands. Even in those instances where scholars have determined the writing style belongs most likely to the original writer, I believe it to be a story crafted with motive. The writer wanted something to change, or wanted reknown in some form. There are a thousand other motives, I couldn't guess at them. After a decade of making oral rounds, I'm sure others would join the cause. Like attracts like, given the right time and setting.

[Chris OConnor]

Interbane.

[Robert Tulip]

Doulos has certainly made this an entertaining and informative thread. While it has drifted from the topic of why some scientists believe things that are not true, the theme of evidence and belief is still very relevant. I would like to go back to an earlier comment from Doulos which helps to explain religiousity. I earlier wrote a long comment on this, but sadly lost it, and it went the way of Bach's music that was used to wrap fish. (a famous myth)

people (whether believers or agnostics/atheists) have difficulty accepting things outside their own thought paradigm. To villify the opposition is thus often a reflection of our own inability to understand opposing viewpoints, and not necessarily a product of the other person being 'wrong.'

A paradigm is a narrative framework of belief, a mindset that provides potential explanations for every reasonable question. Psychology leads us to value confidence, and look up to leaders who can provide sincere explanations within a seemingly coherent universal framework. So we have a natural tendency to form paradigms, glossing over the detail where evidence is weak.

The value of Christianity today is in its ability to strengthen community, providing ideology and ritual that confirm a sense of belonging together, with ethical teachings that people find very valuable. Charles Murray's recent book Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 observes that religiousity correlates to bourgeois values, with the community involvement and moral lessons producing people who are often more successful, while the lower class has seen decline in religious observance. Many scientists, seeing these social values of religion, are able to politely ignore the cognitive dissonance in the magical fantasy of the Bible.

The negative side of this religious emphasis on loyal acceptance of community values is that people who question the story are shunned. So the truth of stories such as the existence of Jesus becomes a matter of shared narrative, a paradigm that is seen as useful for supporting community values. The truth of this story is secondary to its utility.

As I have said before, a problem with atheism is its lack of a clear moral framework by comparison with Christianity. Failure to engage with the social value of religious virtues such as faith, hope and love leads atheism to a very thin ethical framework, especially with the assumption that evidence and reason are the highest values. This atheist attitude may be true in an intellectual sense, but man does not live by evidence and reason alone. This is why it is important to understand the emotional resonance of faith, and to develop theories of faith that are compatible with evidence and reason.

[Doulos]

Overly bound? If so, then only by necessity. But I'm not too much of a logistician. More of a philosopher in general. I enjoy informal logic more, or at least what I understand of it. Here is a link to informal fallacies that are fun to play around with. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fa ... _fallacies

As for an alogical or illogical system of assessing veracity, I would need to be a student to you. Perhaps there are a large number of systems that don't include logic. I would wonder why, since it is so reliable in achieving truthful results.

Thank you for the link to formal fallacies, and thank you as well for your demonstration of a mild Ad Hominem attack.

Why would other systems be necessary? Simply because there are some things for which formal logic cannot provide answers. For fields such as Mathematics and Science, it is an essential tool. For questions such as whether the claims of the Bible are true, I'm afraid it is simply the wrong tool.

As a test of this, what evidence would be POSSIBLE from a formal logic perspective that could prove the reliability of Biblical claims? If there are none, or if the possibilites themselves would entail logical fallacies, then by necessity another tool would be needed.

[Doulos]

For understanding the story you're right. That's a necessary wisdom, I think, in studying the bible. What are you wanting us to focus on? I've been focusing on whether or not the story is true. I would like to know that at some point. I've studied the storyline when I was younger, and some recently.

But if we focus on the veracity of the story(don't you think that matters?), the details really do matter. If one thing is said on page 5, that is then later used as evidence for something during page 7, we're sort of in a pickle. You see, the thing on page 7 might not be true or have happened, if the thing on page 5 didn't happen. The only thing that "taking it all in context" would do here is give us a reason to ignore the issue. It won't become true or resolve itself if our focus is elsewhere.

Of course the veracity of the story matters (where we're talking about religious belief especially), and nowhere have I said this is not true. As I said at the end of the post which you seem to take issue with:

We can certainly discuss the items presented as evidence in the gospels themselves, but we should also keep in mind the big picture. These items were not written to be the focus of interest, but to point towards somethings greater.

Ask the questions, but have context as well for what you're asking.

[Doulos]

I'd think a lot of juries decide on a whim, without any logic, or even relying upon contradictions! Do you think the victim in such a trial is fairly judged? Would you agree with the jury even if they based their decision on a contradiction? This is an honest question.

It is a very honest question, and so let's consider that very real possibility.

Why on earth would courts use such a method when it can lead to possible error in judgement? Why not rely upon formal logic? You said yourself that logic, "...is so reliable in achieving truthful results." Were the framers of our court systems complete and utter idiots?

...or did they merely realize that formal logic cannot always answer questions like those which appear in courts?