I honestly don't understand why I have to go through 3 pages of word games to get to your argument Aaron? I think it's a bit absurd tbh.

Part of it is that I was originally conversing with rize, and it's not clear to me whether there is any value in taking the time to put forth a thorough position when conversing with him. Most of the time, his own reasoning is flawed (as it was here, where he's invoking himself as being in a special class which is exempt from his broad statement), and so there's not much I have to say to demonstrate the weakness of his position. You'll see that my first two posts were pointed directly at his special exemption claims. The whole matter of the analogy was highly tangential to these points, so I didn't want to spend much time on it.

wants (and Butcho), on the other hand, put forth an honest inquiry on the tangential topic (that of the nature of the "threat" in science and religion), and so I obliged with a more thorough response.

You should always take into consideration the actual persons involved in the conversation. That will always impact how the conversation proceeds.

These are all good questions but where are you getting your answers from? I’m still not sure where religion fits in here, in what way does it provide answers that are known to be true?

In your opinion, why is it logical/reasonable to believe Jesus was the son of God – and how is it congruent with basic human experience?

I hear you, I dunno, I just figured it was obvious to any adult what he was truly "meaning" to say even though he of course wasn't technically correct in everything he said. Anyways, just something I'm pointing out because I enjoy reading your arguments and it's annoying to have to sift through mountains of technicalities when I'd rather just read the argument. Also, a lot of times it makes the thread degenerate into a gotcha game, which is dumb. JMO.

There is a very real sense of "exploring" religions in an attempt to find "satisfying" answers to these questions. You have a different life experience, so I don't know what it takes to bring that sort of congruence between your answers to those questions and what you have experienced in your life.

The path from one to the next is not a short one. I'll give a couple highlights of how it worked out for me.

(1) God exists (there seems to be a transcendent moral law, therefore there is a transcendent moral lawgiver)
(2) I have broken the moral laws (I know that I have done "evil" things in my life.)
(3) I am therefore at the mercy of the transcendent moral lawgiver with respect to consequences of breaking the moral laws.
(4) What (if anything) does the moral lawgiver have to say about my condition?

If you look at the history of religions, most historical religions are focused on the manipulation of supernatural. People give offerings to their rain gods so that they can get rain, or to fertility gods so that they can have children. There are actually very few historical religions that are focused on morality. The ones that are turn out to be the monotheistic religions. (Partly because if there are many competing gods, there cannot be just one to whom you are ultimately accountable, so you're not really accountable to any of them.)

This narrows it down essentially to the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam).

Judaism is very hard to parse because it's so deeply cultural in a lot of contemporary expressions of it. As a result, I sort of see much of Judaism as a bunch of people who have lost their way somewhere. Indeed, the question of Jewish identity is one that continues to haunt them. This makes me distrustful of modern Judaism as having the "right" relationship with God.

Historical (ancient) Judaism was at least God-centric, and the expressions of their beliefs do address the moral law aspect through sacrifice. That is, there is some way to "right the wrong." Although this idea is reflected in other religious perspectives (Buddhistic karma, for example), except that many of those expressions lack the transcendent law giver.

The story of Jesus in the gospels addresses the moral law issue directly, as well as provides an explanation for how one can "right the wrong." Furthermore, this explanation is different from the Jewish explanation in that it asserts that only the transcendent can right the transcendent wrong. This seems to me to be more comprehensible than finite beings righting transcendent wrongs.

It is helpful that history attests to the life of Jesus in a very real way. Viewed as historical documents, the gospels stand in a way that is utterly distinct from all other documents of antiquity. In fact, the Bible itself refers to the necessity of historicity as part of its claim of legitimacy:

To me, this has never read as a call to trick people into believing something that's false. And at the time it was written, this was all contemporary history. The Jews knew who Jesus was and they knew what happened in a very public way. And they knew the reports of what happened afterward. This is not some abstract argumentation, but a comment about their real history.

That's at least a very rough picture. The combination of a narrative that is coherent with my experiences, plus being an historically grounded position was sufficient for me to accept the validity of the testimony about Jesus and assent to the message that accompanied it.

Sometimes, those mountains are necessary. Sometimes not. If you're ever confused, just ask.

I agree, but that's kind of the nature of arguing on the internet. It's not as often about finding out something new as it is someone trying to "win" an argument. Some people will go through great lengths to justify a wrong position rather than concede the point as valid (I'm included in that list).

I do admit that I get a certain amount of egotistical pleasure toying around with people like rize who are just spouting off nonsense positions. And this does contribute to the (inevitable) decay of a conversation. But if I perceive someone is trying to have a real conversation, I'm usually able to turn that part off and respond in kind.

I found this question to be intriguing, so I will give my take on it, even if it was not directed at me. Those who have some experience with me on these boards know that my beef is with "revealed religion". This in essence is religion which claims to be true.

To put it simply; I don't believe in truth. I don't believe truth is (as of yet at least) attainable. We have knowledge and we have models, and they have changed and will continue to change. Some will make the claim that this implies that all knowledge is of equal worth, because ultimately it all starts with an assumption which can not be verified.

This is ofcourse wrong, the only thing which is of equal value is the initial assumption. This is because truth is impossible. Knowledge (the consequences you draw from your initial assumption and the layers of knowledge you base on it) are not of equal value.

A simple practical example is that running across a heavily motorized highway is not an equal proposition to not doing so. That the initial assumption of the logical chain (for example "life matters" vs "life does not matter") might be of equal value does not change this.

I don't know if you consider it worthwhile or not, but do you have a meaning for knowledge?

I don't understand how we can know something without a concept of truth - do you think knowledge and strongly justified belief mean the same thing? (And do you think our knowledge changes in the sense that there are things we used to know where we now know their negation?)

Oh, we have a concept of "truth"...it's a symbolic tool we apply in logic and thinking, like a plus sign or the number "2".

Yeah I understand.

But what do you mean by knowledge?
What's the difference between something we know and something we believe with very good reason?

Thanks Aaron,

It’s my opinion that questions that cannot on principle be answered by science, are questions that cannot in principle be known as true or false. Perhaps my personal bias is that I don’t consider it truth unless there’s evidence. Until I discover another method for evaluating the truth of something its all I’ve got – and I’m not gonna find another method while I still require proof of its validity. It seems I’m unable to break this cycle – and until I’m somehow shown something to be true without evidence, I’m not exactly sure what I can do about it...

This doesn’t mean that I’m completely dead to any questions that I don’t consider have a knowable answer. I ask myself those questions too, although I don’t feel I can ever get ‘true’ answers, the answers I do get certainly aren’t meaningless – at least not to me. It can help me understand myself, why I think certain things, how I perceive the world around me etc... While my answers may lack the satisfaction of a known truth at the end, when I know (or believe – whats the difference in my own head?) that it’s not possible to get a correct or incorrect answer, I can freely explore the questions without feeling disappointment at the lack of a universally correct answer at the end.

But these answers are only useful to me. While I guess I could label them as knowledge or wisdom or something, its not knowledge in the scientific sense of the word. My subjective perceptions aren’t, by themselves, going to uncover known truths about the world. Outside the scientific realm there’s no truth to be had. Its ideas, thoughts and ideologies floating in a soup of subjectivity. Truth surely can’t be relative?

Even questions that science cannot in principle answer, in my opinion can provide us with the best possible foundation on which to try. It allows you to get to the facts and eventually when you’ve answered all the hows and whys through science – you’re better equipped to answer the ‘so, do I want that to happen?’s. I’m so far unable to think of a better method for decision-making.

I should point out that I’m not well read at all in philosophy so if I’ve said something ludicrous I apologise

Without having more detailed descriptions, the first things that pops to mind is "not much". Belief and knowledge do not need to be separated. It is only wise to do so when your beliefs aren't held to the same standard as knowledge.

For example...I believe many things that I have to disregard if I write an academic essay.

Maybe the hardest thing is when you know something you do not believe, not that is usually a prolonged issue - but it happens.

You said:

"To put it simply; I don't believe in truth. I don't believe truth is (as of yet at least) attainable. We have knowledge and we have models, and they have changed and will continue to change. "

Would it have changed the meaning at all if you'd said "very well justified beliefs" instead of "knowledge"?

I'd love an example of something you have known but didn't believe.

Certainly, I don't equate beliefs and knowledge. Beliefs is what I use in my everyday life - knowledge is a sum of method, research and learning.

That doesn't mean a belief can't be identical to a piece of knowledge. For example, I believe my car is red and my car being red also fulfills the stricter criteria I pose for knowledge - so I also know my car is red.

However, I believe democracy to be good - but I don't know it.

Do you think it's possible to know something and later come to know it's negation?

Yes.

These things are hard to describe as memory sort of joins it together.

Back when I got my driver's license I believed I was a very good driver, but if I reflected on it I knew this was likely untrue and I kept forcing myself to take it into consideration, both to become better and to drive accordingly.

Ha.

I'm struggling to decode your words into concepts I understand. I'm pretty sure I've got something close to what you mean though, thanks for the effort.

Imagine knowledge as stumbling around in a dark room trying to figure it out, and you'll understand what I think it is.

Truth is not a concept that is going to help you in that situation, except as a method tool. Beliefs are fine, but should always be ready to be challenged lest you make very serious (and painful) errors.

No problem.

This is known as a self-refuting position. Go back to the fundamental assumption: "Questions that cannot in principle be answered by science are question that cannot in principle be known as true or false." Is this statement true or false? If it's true, explain how you can use science to prove it. If it's not true, then it's false, so that there do exist questions that cannot in principle be answered by science that CAN in principle be known as true or false (such as this one -- which is established by pure reason).

I disagree that they are only useful to you. I believe very deeply in the role of a community of people as part of the overall health of a person. And in a community of people, the questions that you ask yourself and the answers that you start to uncover for yourself can be useful to others in your community. The process of maturing as a person happens in the context of community (the community is what establishes the concept of "mature") and there are a lot of things in this searching process that lead people to become more mature.

I'll go back to the self-refuting thing. Is this true? Show me by science!

I don't think truth is relative. But that does not imply in any way that the subjective senses have no opportunity to sense truth. You can know about the role of gravity before going through some formal scientific methodology to demonstrate the properties of gravity. It's not as if people several thousand years ago didn't know that objects fall down. Maybe they didn't have the formal language of science to describe it, but they still knew it and understood it.

I agree that more knowledge is useful when making decisions. But if you insist that all of your knowledge is scientifically based, you run into the problem that you're intentionally turning away from other knowledge. Logic is not scientifically based, but you use that in your decisions (or at least I hope you do). Why do you trust this non-empirical, non-provable logic stuff, anyway?

I began that statement with ‘in my opinion...’. I can’t conclude that its 100% objectively true. My evidence for believing that the statement is true is that no truth has been discovered without evidence. I’m fully aware that I can go around in circles, but the only way to break this cycle is to show me something that’s true without evidence. How can you convince me that what you know is truth... without evidence?

Obviously that’s not possible, so I must discover this truth on my own. But then how do we know we have the same truth? The only way we can communicate our thoughts of truth is through language. If this is an insufficient tool to articulate our positions then how are we to decide that we both know the same truth?

In the end it seems I just have to accept that truths can be known without evidence. But this acceptance that truths can be known without evidence seems no more justified than my acceptance that they can’t!


I agree that your own answers to these questions can shape your character and that can have an effect on other people. My problem is that I don’t think this can lead directly to discovering truth.

Again, this is an opinion. I agree I can’t say objectively that it’s true. My reasons are the same as above:

I can’t articulate my thoughts about certain questions in a way that shows them to be unequivocally true to anyone else.

They cant do the same for me.


How did they know about gravity? It wasn’t a feeling they had, it’s the observation that everything fell towards the Earth unless stopped by something. If someone didn’t believe in gravity they could throw em off a ledge and prove to him that it exists. Their knowing about gravity clearly stemmed from empirical evidence.

Believing something is true and it being actually true is obviously not the same thing. I don’t mean to say everything must be scientifically proven before I give it any credence. I’m saying I cannot know something to be 100% objectively true without proof.

I trust logic and reasoning because if the assumptions are true, then conclusions can be shown to be true. But in order to know the assumptions are true requires evidence. If evidence cant be acquired then the assumptions cant be 100% known and the conclusions aren’t 100% objective truth.

I don't have much to add because we'll just keep winding around in circles. However, this last part is interesting. In the sentence above, you essentially said "I trust logic and reasoning because of logic and reasoning." You might want to think about that one for a while.

However, I hope that by re-reading what you've written, you can start to pick up on a trend. At first, you were very adamant about "science." And now you've backed off of science and are talking about "empirical evidence" (which is not the same as science).

If you pursue this line of reasoning further, you should start to find that "empirical evidence" will need to be replaced. It is the nature of "logic and reasoning" to be non-physical and non-empirical. Logic can be applied to empirical problems, but not every logical problem is empirical. For example, the contemplation of the nonsense statement "This sentence is true" is not representable as an empirical problem, yet there is a very real sense that you can approach the sentence to understand how and why it's nonsense.

I think there's something to your notion of "opinion" that's worth considering. Is "logic" an opinion or a fact? How can you tell?

I agree I was too broad in my use of ‘science’, my mistake.

Any answer about why I trust logic and reasoning is going to be logical and/or reasonable. If its not its not a very good answer is it? Im not really sure how to employ illogical and unreasonable reasons why I trust logic and reason...

While you may be able to prove hypothetical truths using logic and reason alone. I fail to see how, in the absence of evidence obtained by science, these can be converted to truths about reality. I think it’s unfair for you to assume I’m closing my mind to possibilities which you cant demonstrate are real.

I would say whether logic is opinion or fact depends on the ambiguity of the premises and conclusions. But perhaps if they're too ambiguous you wouldn’t consider the conclusion following the premise as logical.. so I dunno

You have an unusual take on "logic."

Can science (or empirical evidence) prove logic? If it cannot, why do you trust it? If it can, please demonstrate how you would prove it.