Post 4427782 - Re: DUI Priors Only??? (Replying to a lack of reason with reason)

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Ancalagon
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Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:15 pm Post subject:

NarcissusSavage wrote:

Wow. You still didn't provide an alternate interpretation...after all that?

How about the "plain meaning" way of interpreting it?

Quote:

I am Yahweh, that is My name;

My name is Yahweh.

In some translations, Yahweh is transcribed 'Jehovah', 'GOD', or 'LORD'. The allcaps on the last 2 are not a typo.

Quote:

I will not give My glory to another,

I won't give away my glory, not to anyone/anything.

Quote:

or My praise to idols

or let carved stone things (or whatever) get praised for what I did.

Since you demanded an interpretation without having provided one yourself, and I did provide one, I think you owe me one now.

Quote:

"It" and "thing" are both suitable words! I don't understand how using them precludes receiving an explanation.

"It" and "the thing" are not polite ways of referring to people. Would you like it if I called you "it"? "The thing"?

I realize that you think God doesn't exist, but theists do, and generally think he deserves a great deal of respect. If you seriously wanted to ask a question, avoiding outright disrespect for the beliefs of those you're addressing your question to would have been more effective.

Quote:

Why would someone voluntarily interpret something in a non literal manner that is written literally?

I don't think I can provide a list off the top of my head, but certainly anytime the literal sense doesn't make literal sense (so to speak), and a non-literal interpretation is obvious and makes sense. Also, poetry and metaphor. And, if there is a note in the text that someone meant something they said in a non-literal or metaphorical way.

Quote:

Calm yourself,

An odd thing to say. I've been calm the entire time.

Quote:

or I'm going to ignore your responses,

This is an option that is always available to you.
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Declension
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Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:27 pm Post subject: Re: DUI Priors Only???

Tadzio wrote:

From a sample of 200 reptiles consisting of a box of 100 lizards and two additional boxes totalling 100 snakes, with one box of 50 snakes being Rattlesnakes and the second box of 50 of snakes being Garter-snakes, if P is a "picked" rattlesnake (the "former"), which implies being Q (a snake (the "latter"), how does "randomly" picking one of the 200 animals, which necessarily is a reptile for this group of 200, gives the "picked" animal (being 100% certain of being a reptile (the "later latter") the higher probability of being a rattlesnake than 100% certainty (when the "frequency" results of "picking" is only 25%)???

I don't understand how this example is supposed to show that my principle

Quote:

if P implies Q, then you shouldn't assign P a higher probability than Q

is silly. It seems like a perfect example of this principle.

If you randomly pick one of the 200 animals, then you should assign probabilities as follows: it has a 1 chance of being a reptile, a 1/2 chance of being a lizard, a 1/2 chance of being a snake, a 1/4 chance of being a rattlesnake, and a 1/4 chance of being a garter-snake.

If it is a rattlesnake, then it is a snake. So we should expect that P(rattlesnake) is not higher than P(snake). And indeed, 1/4 is not higher than 1/2.

If it is a rattlesnake, then it is a reptile. So we should expect that P(rattlesnake) is not higher than P(reptile). And indeed, 1/4 is not higher than 1.

Ancalagon
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Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:32 pm Post subject:

Vigilans wrote:

Should everybody *have* to say "Him" and "His"?

No. I don't normally capitalize pronouns myself, and I realize that atheists aren't generally going to do that, or capitalize "God" either. Referring to "god(s)" or "the gods" is also fine, as far as I'm concerned.

Referring to Mohammed as "a big fat ugly jerk who wasn't really a prophet" or "the thing" would probably not win you Muslim friends, or get them to take a question about their religion seriously.
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Declension
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Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:55 pm Post subject: Re: DUI Priors Only???

Tadzio wrote:

If, while I know what's in which box, and you don't, but I allow you to pick a box, with you wanting rattlesnakes, then I reveal that one of the boxes that you didn't pick, had lizards in it, should you take up my offer to allow you pick the other of the two remaing boxes?

Yes, I should take up the offer, because of Bayesian updating. Bayesian updating is precisely the tool that allows me to make the correct choice in this situation. Details are here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem#Bayes.27_theorem

Tadzio wrote:

If I heard a different prior logical argument about the speed of light not being constant in all frames of reference, does my hearing the earlier logical argument change the speed of light? Does the speed of light change based on how I think, but not on what I think? Would I experience the detecting of any of these proposed differences by measurements??

No. Bayesian updating is not at all about how things really are. It is a method by which limited agents such as people can update their beliefs and eventually, over a long period of updating, approximate how things really are. There are several theorems which say that a perfect Bayesian will eventually approximate the truth under certain nice conditions. See for example:

http://fitelson.org/few/few_04/hawthorne.pdf

Ancalagon
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Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:22 pm Post subject:

TM wrote:

Rational is defined as “3. Consistent with or based on reason;

Given the bolded bit, I think that undermines it as an argument against faith in a generic sense (if this is what was intended).

Quote:

Given that interpretations and credence given to different parts of scripture have changed throughout history, it creates a possibility that at some time that can happen again and this time not towards the good. Assuming the worst possible interpretation is plausible considering that history has proven again and again that such interpretations are lent credence among enough of believers to have an effect on society is thus valid.

Should I assume the worst possible interpretation of atheism on your part? I've seen atheists say nasty things and be illogical before, should I assume you are nasty and illogical because of it? I don't see the sense in that.

Quote:

it serves to create “outs” for the believer in that by saying “I don’t believe that”

I'm not sure how this is a problem. If they don't believe something that you argue against, then you aren't arguing against their position. I don't see how pointing this out is bad.

If I were to start a debate with you by saying how strongly I was opposed to punching helpless babies, and you replied that you didn't actually believe punching babies was good, would I be justified in complaining that you had taken an "out"?

Quote:

However, my argument asserts that an omnipotent, benevolent and omniscient god could not be the indirect cause of suffering.

If your argument did explain that, I didn't see it. Saying God couldn't be an indirect cause of suffering is a much harder argument to make than the one I thought you were making.

I'm not sure how you could make the argument work without a definition of good that doesn't allow for indirect cause of evil and/or suffering. You would then have to support that conception of good.

Quote:

In any case, the burden of proof is not on the skeptic,

Why not?

Quote:

If Dr Francis Collins, a brilliant Christian scientist was to require the same standards in his faith as in his work on the human genome, it would not be possible for him to conclude that there is a theistic god.

Why not? In what way could the standards applied be the same?
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Tadzio
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Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 1:46 am Post subject: Re: DUI Priors Only???

Declension wrote:

Tadzio wrote:

I don't understand how this example is supposed to show that my principle

Quote:

if P implies Q, then you shouldn't assign P a higher probability than Q

Hi Declension,

You don't understand yourself cutting-off the first of your own sentence???

WLC often takes moderate, to great, care to seperate his non sequitors, by up to 100's of pages in his books, but you included yours instead at the begining versus the ending of your sentence: "But the former always trumps the latter, in the sense that if P implies Q, then you can never assign a higher probability to P than to Q." The word "imply" is also loaded:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=%22Edward+O.+Thorp%22+%22printed+rules%22 (page 81, for "what fools would ever double down on soft 21" (Edward Thorp, 1962, "Beat The Dealer")).

In the X, Y, Z of the alphabet, P comes before Q too!!! But, once P occurs in any alphabetized sequence of events to be considered by frequency counts, P HAS occurred, and the frequency count (and frequency ratio) for Q is then the frequency count of next interest. Saying "the former has happened", and that this happening "trumps" what happens next, abuses the notion of "trump", especially in the sense of a "trump card" trick of counting cards at Blackjack, Ibid. (Google search your abridged statement for the hint "It's difficult to assign probability to incoherent statements" (with the "technicality" that 0 and 1 Are Not Probabilities), though WLC does it as a fine deceptive Artform).

Tadzio wrote:

Being a former MMPI prospective bean counter for the IRS, I suspect errors whenever the numbers from various sources "just don't add up in a usual way".

The possibly most simple, or easiest to comprehend, source of error from these types of paradoxes, is now most often called "The Monty Hall Paradox", from the game show "Let's Make A Deal". As "The Monty Hall Problem", Marilyn vos Savant brought the core of the paradox to the public's more general knowledge, with many famous experts erroneously attempting to "correct" her with their flawed logic of "commonsense". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

Many of the softer sciences are rampant with more complex versions of incorrectly applied "causal" conditional probabilities, with the most notable recent fuss over theories of "Cognitive Dissonance": http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/science/08tier.html

Re-word a problem where it sounds a little different from the Hall Paradox, and most everybody falls for it again.

Tadzio

Your "limited agents of updated beliefs" aspect sounds like you are about to promote Monty Hall to being your next God. Frequency counts are just frequency counts. No need for philosophical "how things really are" balderdash. WLC likes contorting Pascal's Wager too, but the old concern of making "chance" into a newer God doesn't remove the problem that the notion of "random" is self-contradictory, and, despite what Hawthorne may contend, Quantum Mechanics does not entertain "truth under certain nice conditions" over a long period of updating (Quantum Mechanics is not "nice" to everyday common logic, but as I already cited Feynman 2 U....). WLC also plays every side of the quantum dodecahedron per suitable situation, since infinite quantum normalization is to WLC soooo BAD when it doesn't fit into his shell game.

A particular choice that has a higher frequency of "winning", still isn't necessarily a "correct" choice. Also, work backwards from Expected Values paradoxes, like Saint Petersburg Paradox, for incorrect "winning" choices.

Tadzio

P.S.:

Vigilans wrote:

Pretty sure this quote comes from Scott D. Weitzenhoffer

heavenlyabyss
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Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 6:08 am Post subject:

A die-hard religious person is not concerned with logic. Your logic will not penetrate their defenses. If the person is a die-hard irrational religious fanatic you need to mirror their irrationality but in a way that defends atheism. IE resort to all the same base tactics that you use to call you immoral, just use it against them. I don't recommend this approach though unless you have a very strong read on the person. Actually, come to think of it, it is a waste of your time. It can be fun to do so, but don't expect any real results. You will most likely just piss the other person off, and you may actually harm yourself in the process. The best thing to do is to just express your opinion calmly and rationally. This way the rational religious people may actually take your viewpoints to heart. Easier said than done.

NarcissusSavage
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Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 6:40 am Post subject:

Ancalagon wrote:

How about the "plain meaning" way of interpreting it?

I'm not sure I know what you mean by this. The literal interpretation is the "plain meaning". Right?

Ancalagon wrote:

Quote:

I will not give My glory to another,

I won't give away my glory, not to anyone/anything.

Quote:

or My praise to idols

or let carved stone things (or whatever) get praised for what I did.

The first part says he won't give his glory to another (think Jesus) He says it is his, and he won’t share....but then Christians claim he did, with his son/mortal-self amalgam.

The second part he won’t share his praise with idols. An idol is an object of worship and love/affection, not just a "carved stone thing" They can be of any material, even flesh, ie. Jesus. Catholics seem to do this with Mary too. I see all kinds of idols in Christianity though, crosses, crucifixes, statues of saints and angels etc. It's idol bonanza, am I the only one who sees this?

Ancalagon wrote:

Quote:

"It" and "thing" are both suitable words! I don't understand how using them precludes receiving an explanation.

You realize incorrectly, I've made no claim about thinking either way about whether a god exists...you're being rather presumptuous. Lots of theists have been making that assumption lately, and it's getting old. See the addition to my signature for clarification.

Secondly, how am I supposed to automatically know that your god concept is a "He"????? I'm not psychic, and there are god concepts that are male, female, or neither! "It" and "thing" are gender neutral, and don't assume a person-hood. This is not disrespect, this is respect for all. Get over yourself. I don't need to expand my generalized pronouns and nouns. They are all encompassing, you just need to be less arrogant and think that only your pronoun is good enough or the only right pronoun.

That last paragraph parallels something else, entirely, eerily well...
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fraac
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Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 8:52 am Post subject:

It's possible to be a perfectly rational religious person. I suspect most people who argue with atheists aren't properly religious, they're just follower monkeys. Anyone who gets stuck on the details has already lost.

ProfumoAffair
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Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 9:30 am Post subject:

NarcissusSavage wrote:

Secondly, how am I supposed to automatically know that your god concept is a "He"????? I'm not psychic, and there are god concepts that are male, female, or neither! "It" and "thing" are gender neutral, and don't assume a person-hood. This is not disrespect, this is respect for all. Get over yourself. I don't need to expand my generalized pronouns and nouns. They are all encompassing, you just need to be less arrogant and think that only your pronoun is good enough or the only right pronoun.

That last paragraph parallels something else, entirely, eerily well...

Most of what you put here is fine except the last sentence. Dangling insinuations are not a good way to conduct a reasoned argument. I know the temptation is great but you would have done much better without that last sentence or by explaining what you mean.

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Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 9:38 am Post subject:

ProfumoAffair wrote:

NarcissusSavage wrote:

I didn't quite mean it to represent another conversation. It sounds like a different conversation. I was trying to communicate that, as it dawned on me just as I was about to hit submit, so scribbled that line in to explain, and did poorly at it. I just worried someone would read into what I said, when I meant it only on a literal level.
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Thom_Fuleri
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Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 9:54 am Post subject:

fraac wrote:

It's possible to be a perfectly rational religious person.

Not really. The whole point of religious faith is that you're believing in something without evidence.
Being right is entirely irrelevant here - if you simply "believe" something, religion or otherwise, that's irrational. You can be irrational and correct about something, and likewise you can think things through logically and get it completely wrong.

It IS possible to be religious for rational reasons if you come to your faith through reasoned thought. But then you're not really doing it properly - it's a utilitarian belief, not the burning passion of true faith. It's Pascal's Wager (a hedged bet that no God would ever let you get away with).

TM
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Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 12:25 pm Post subject:

The «consistent with» bit does not undermine my argument at all. Something being “consistent with” reason means that it cannot go against reason, most of religion does. Deism doesn’t in some formulations, but theism is based on claims which are not consistent with reason. If you can come up with an argument for theism that is consistent with reason (understood as forming conclusions based on independently verifiable data) I’m happy to hear it. This entire reply is typical of the “atheist vs theist” argument, in essence it boils down to a row of different definitions and interpretations of words. Reason is the act of judging evidence, creating arguments and coming to conclusions based on evidence, whereas belief is the act of believing in something that there is a lack of evidence of. So the sentence “I believe in Christianity because of reason” becomes an oxymoron, since one can by definition not believe in something due to reason. The difference between scripture and an Atheistic mindset I find that most believers try to find the worst possible interpretation of Atheism, except that they completely fail to do so, because there isn’t one. Being an Atheist in no way affects my morality or my behavior, being a believer does affect that believer’s morality and behavior. There is no causal link or correlative link between Atheism and anti-social behavior. There are countless examples of casual or correlative links between religion and anti-social behavior. Furthermore, there is no “Atheistic scripture” that dictates what is moral, immoral and so on for an Atheist, there is for religious people. Good, the definition God exists. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good. A perfectly good being would want to prevent all evils. An omniscient being knows every way in which evils can come into existence. An omnipotent being, who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence. A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, who is able to prevent that evil from coming into existence, and who wants to do so, would prevent the existence of that evil. If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being, then no evil exists. Evil exists (logical contradiction). Philosophical burden of proof states that anyone who makes an assertion has the burden of proof, a religious person is making the assertion that a theistic god exists, therefore carries the burden of proof. As Russell’s teapot implies, if I assert that there is a china teapot in elliptical orbit around the sun that cannot be observed with our most advanced technology, should I have to prove that or should everyone assume that the teapot exists until proven nonexistent? In a court of law “innocent until proven guilty” is a good example, because you can word that as: Person A: I say that you did something. Person B: I did not do what you say I did. It links directly with my assertion about Francis Collins, because if he utilized the scientific method and required the same level of evidence for the “truth” in his belief as he does for his scientific work he would be unable to do so. This is because a belief is something held in independent of evidence, not because of evidence. I’m using evidence in a scientific way.

Ancalagon
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Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 4:11 pm Post subject:

NarcissusSavage wrote:

The first part says he won't give his glory to another (think Jesus)

Jesus is not 'another' according to Christians. If you want to dispute that, you're quoting from the wrong half of the Bible.

Quote:

An idol is an object of worship and love/affection, not just a "carved stone thing"

Dictionary definition:

Quote:

idol [ˈaɪdəl]
n
1. (Christianity / Ecclesiastical Terms) a material object, esp a carved image, that is worshipped as a god
2. (Christianity / Ecclesiastical Terms) Christianity Judaism any being (other than the one God) to which divine honour is paid

The essential objection is to worship of non-God things. It isn't an objection to love or affection.

Quote:

You realize incorrectly, I've made no claim about thinking either way about whether a god exists...you're being rather presumptuous.

Given the sort of things you've said and left unsaid, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to have made the assumption that you were an atheist.

But given that you don't want to be called that, I won't call you that anymore.

Quote:

"It" and "thing" are gender neutral, and don't assume a person-hood.

Feminists like the idea of gender neutral pronouns, but I have never heard any of them ask people to call them "it" or "the thing".

More importantly, you insist that your original statement was a question due to curiosity. The assumption of non-personhood that you made was not an effective attempt at not annoying the Christians to whom your question was addressed.

Quote:

This is not disrespect, this is respect for all.

So you think it would be respectful of me to, for example, start calling you "the thing"?

Quote:

Get over yourself. I don't need to expand my generalized pronouns and nouns. They are all encompassing, you just need to be less arrogant and think that only your pronoun is good enough or the only right pronoun.

You should read my response to Vigilans' question.
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Ancalagon
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Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 4:38 pm Post subject:

TM wrote:

Something being “consistent with” reason means that it cannot go against reason, most of religion does.

You keep saying this and things like it, but have not presented evidence in support of it.

Quote:

This entire reply is typical of the “atheist vs theist” argument, in essence it boils down to a row of different definitions and interpretations of words.

Quote:

So the sentence “I believe in Christianity because of reason” becomes an oxymoron, since one can by definition not believe in something due to reason.

If the first quote was meant to disapprove of manipulation of word definitions instead of argument, the second quote violates that.

Quote:

I find that most believers try to find the worst possible interpretation of Atheism, except that they completely fail to do so, because there isn’t one.

Isn't this an instance of atheists having "an out"? How is this different from theists having "an out"?

Quote:

There is no causal link or correlative link between Atheism and anti-social behavior. There are countless examples of casual or correlative links between religion and anti-social behavior.

Bald assertion. Also, it fails to distinguish between causation and correlation.

Quote:

A perfectly good being would want to prevent all evils.

I'm pretty sure I objected to this (or something like it) last time.

How do you know this? How do you know that there is not some better ultimate good which could result from allowance of a lesser, temporary evil?

Quote:

Philosophical burden of proof states that anyone who makes an assertion has the burden of proof, a religious person is making the assertion that a theistic god exists, therefore carries the burden of proof.

I haven't made assertions of the existence of a theistic God in this thread. If you make an assertion of the non-existence of such a God, you then have the burden of proof of such non-existence.

Quote:

if I assert that there is a china teapot in elliptical orbit around the sun that cannot be observed with our most advanced technology, should I have to prove that or should everyone assume that the teapot exists until proven nonexistent?

Such a thing would be at least theoretically detectable. Stating that something doesn't have proof is not a disproof.

Quote:

It links directly with my assertion about Francis Collins, because if he utilized the scientific method and required the same level of evidence for the “truth” in his belief as he does for his scientific work he would be unable to do so. This is because a belief is something held in independent of evidence, not because of evidence. I’m using evidence in a scientific way.

And if God is not something on which the scientific method works?

After all, if God exists, he made the universe and everything in it. Why should God be detectable by scientific methods? (Especially if he does not wish to be detected.)

The assumption that something doesn't exist unless science can detect it is a philosophical assumption.
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