Yeah... sorry. I didn't see the second statement right away. But my reply applies to both.

To me the term "God" is not synonymous with "any creator" For example, if aliens experiments in another dimension had spun off tiny black holes with self contained universes inside, they wouldn't be God. Similarly, if we're an advanced race who are basically brain-in-a-jar living out in this sim, we're not God either.

Anyway, the point of the question was to see where you stood on the epistemology of things for which there is no evidence but a plausible case. For example, there is a plausible case to be made we're in a simulation, but there is zero evidence and can be none. Do we abandon the theory? Is it "rational" to believe we are in a simulation, with zero evidence, only logical arguments about the frequency of simulations vs genuine worlds?

And if so, or not, why doesn't that same kind of logic apply to God?

Nope, "science" does not apply methodological naturalism. It might apply it, but it's not even very popular, and views like these were largely abandoned at the same time that materialism, positivism and physicalism went out of favor. I suspect these days you'll see it more mentioned in talking points, blogs and debates that have little to do with science and more to do with discussions like these.

The most common scientific paradigm today is empiricism, which has the advantage of not having to make arbitrary distinctions that serves absolutely no purpose as a scientific tool.

Empirical method might often be practically identical to positivist / naturalist approaches, but again - that only shows why it is so vastly superior. Same strength, none of the baggage.

I don't, but there are theist arguments for this. Plus, it's a common objection for theists to make to non-religious attempts to explain why we're here at all, they say things like "something can't come from nothing, therefore there was something".



There is plenty of evidence, I'm assuming though that you don't find it convincing. But, the OP assumes the existence of this evidence and asks the question about whether or not it's going further than is supported by the available evidence to say that it supports the existence of gods.

You'll excuse me not being influenced much by the Dawkins reference as I don't regard him as a great thinker outside of his area of expertise. The God Delusion is terrible. He is massively over reliant on mockery and often guilty of Ad Homs IMO.

Your post confuses me though. If they don't claim that the existence of God is logically inconsistent with the available evidence then why are they not convinced by it? And if they're not convinced by it, then am I right to ask if the claim that god exists is going 'beyond' the available evidence and is therefore irrational by the definition I gave?


I was only thinking about evidence that supports that god exists, but if you want to include evidence, or arguments that support that he doesn't then the same question applies, is it irrational to believe that god doesn't exist? Does it go beyond available evidence?

I guess I'm using the context of the existence of god more to explore the idea of 'rational belief' than actually trying to answer the question of whether or not god exists (since I obviously can't do that...). I'm currently studying Epistemology, so there may be more threads like this coming up as I muddle my way through this

I'm specifically looking at whether or not a belief in either direction is 'rational' or not, by the definition that I gave for rational which isn't mine, I got it out of a book on Epistemology.

These sort of arguments are pretty dull imo. I wouldn't say it's plausible, I would say it's not impossible, and of course you can come up with tons of things that aren't impossible, as you can bend the scenario to make it so. Is it the most sensible conclusion to draw? Clearly not, so I wouldn't describe it as rational to believe that.

I don't agree. Empiricism holds that beliefs are justified when they are connected by reasoning to evidence obtained through perception. And since our perception can be easily demonstrated to be unreliable, and since one of the major problems with Empiricism is that in order to form beliefs about the evidence that we're obtaining using perception, we must rely on beliefs that we already hold, and on beliefs that in turn support those beliefs, you won't find anyone capable of living up to the truly Empirical Ideal.

So, whilst science employs empiricism in that it only deals with the Physical (that which can be detected using the senses) it is far more than simply an empirical approach to gathering and understanding evidence. It employs a very specific set of criteria to make the evidence is gathers useful in a very specific way.

Science rejects the Supernatural because it's not Useful and the criteria that make something 'scientific' can't be applied to the supernatural. There are no mainstream scientific Theories that include a supernatural element and that is because the supernatural can't be; Corrective, Falsifiable, Predictive, Useful, Internally or Externally Consistent, Parsimonious, or Testable. I.e. there's literally nothing scientific about the supernatural, so science procedes on the assumption that the Natural is all that there is, and it's only because of that that it works and has been so successful in explaining what we observe.

In general, you should avoid claiming that "science" says this or that with regards to epistemology, as if it's a strictly defined field of only extremely specific types of inquiry. That would be a fundamental misunderstanding of "science."

I would be interested in whether this definition was cited as "the" definition of irrational that the book was using, or whether it was brought up as an example of how one *might* try to define irrational, but then picks it apart.

The definition seems particularly strict and difficult to use. Or maybe that was the point of that particular exercise. It's also structured very tightly around "evidence" that it seems to have some particular perspective in mind. (For example, I would say that it's irrational to believe that 1+1=3, but I'm not sure what "evidence" I could put forth for such an abstract claim.)

Don't make me regret taking you off my ignore list Aaron, look at it as testimony to how much I want to understand what I'm learning....

I haven't said that science 'says' anything about Epistemology. I think it's commonly held that science is 'empirical', and to a point it is in that it deals only with can be perceived with the senses, but as I said, it is much more than that Epistemological Ideal (which is not achievable anyway), and then I listed the criteria that make it different.

Specifically it was the definition/requirement for a 'Rational belief', not a definition of the word 'rational' alone. I quoted it word for word and it was only whilst thinking about belief in this context that I began to wonder if a belief in god was an irrational belief because of the 'goes beyond the available evidence' part. AND, I'm not trying to prove anything really, just to make sure I understand what constitutes a rational belief, or not, and this particular context and the people I know who post here can be of great help to me.


The chapter is about different views on what it is to 'believe', and what informs and supports our beliefs (and that being 'rational' is a quality of the thinking behind a belief, where 'justified' is a quality of the belief itself), and 'rational beliefs' was one of the views mentioned and defined.

It's actually must *less* than an epistemological ideal. The way you've attempted to describe "science" doesn't correspond that well to what science actually is or how it's done. It's not nearly as rigid as your assertions make it look like you believe it is.

I assume you mean "irrational belief" here and not "rational belief."

And it's important here to keep that distinction in mind because it's not that different from "belief" vs "non-belief." It is possible to have things set up where we can say that a statement is "not irrational" without necessarily wanting to say that it's "rational." For example, the definition you gave would make some conspiracy theories "not irrational" without wanting to call them "rational".

Have you resolved in your head the difference between the different ways that non-belief can play out? That is, the difference between affirming the claim "God does not exist" and not affirming the claim "God exists"?

Understanding that would be helpful for clarifying the distinction of an "irrational belief" as you've presented here with a "rational belief" (which is the thing you really want to understand).

Err, the rules of mathematics? You're accepting enough maths to define 1, +, = and 3, but not enough to define how they relate to each other?

But that's purely abstract, and won't necessarily fall into the category of "evidence" for certain definitions. It's also not a necessary conclusion that math is even "true".

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/f...m-mathematics/

In other words, saying "1+1=2 is true" (and also "1+1=3 is false") is going beyond the evidence and is excluding things that are not excluded by the evidence.

That depends on whether you think Maths is man made or discovered.

Either way, this is just another Aaron W distraction technique.

Indeed. What does the evidence tell you about this question?

Or it's so exactly on point that if you accepted this as being a valid understanding, you would have to abandon some of your beliefs, and you emotionally don't want to do that so you'll dismiss it out of hand.

Ok, we can say it's 'less' than the Empirical Ideal since it's impossible to achieve in practice. That's a better way to look at it. What's important is that we agree that Science only deals with what can be perceived with the senses, the 'Physical', the 'Material', and that god, as we understand him through standard doctrine is 'immaterial' and 'non-physical' and therefore something that Science does not agree can exist. 'Scientific evidence' for god then is a logically impossibility.

I listed the criteria which, as far as I'm aware, are met by the majority of scientists. I'm not aware of any mainstream accepted Scientific Theories (I'm using the word 'Theories' as Scientists do) that include a supernatural element, are you? It's on the basis of those criteria, none of which can be applied to the supernatural, that the claim that ID is 'Scientific' is rejected.


I meant 'rational belief' but either way is fine. We're still examining what constitutes a quality of the thinking behind a belief that we would call rational or irrational (since 'rational' is a quality of the thinking and not of the belief itself), and the end result is the same.


Ok, I think I understand that what you're saying here is that by denying some proposition or other, we're not necessarily giving assent to another position (usually the opposite of what has been asserted) right? That's fine, like I said, I'm not trying to prove that god doesn't exist or anything else really, only to examine what constitutes a rational belief.

But, the criteria to 'not go beyond the available evidence' seems clear, and I'm wondering if holding a belief in the existence of god is going beyond the available evidence (and also rules out possibilities not closed out by the evidence, i.e.e that there could be another cause of the universe) and fort those reasons, whether true or not, the belief in god's existence is irrational.

If you prefer, we can examine instead a belief that I have and hold it to the same standard since it's the epistemology that I'm interested in here, not the belief itself. I was simply using a context that meant I could post in this forum, but I might start a similar thread in the Philosophy sub-forum.

I'm not sure where else I could resolve something other than in 'my head' Anyway, I think this question goes beyond the scope of the OP since I'm not trying to prove that god doesn't exist.

Yes, it is obviously irrational. Christianity itself, on all levels, has created a euphemism for this irrationality. It's called "faith", which just means "irrational belief" with emotional baggage added to make it feel like it's not an irrational belief. Why do you think priests mention "faith" so often when someone has questions that the priests can't answer?
Science doesn't reject anything. It merely measures what is found in the observable world. If it was to measure anomalies in the natural world that point to some kind of God (or Gremlins, or Thetans), then science would accept that. The world just happens to be somewhere where there is zero evidence of anything non-physical happening or having ever happened.
Sure, I'll grant you that's a useful simplification. But they key of religions, and the creepy emotional needs of the religious, seems to be whether you can a) have a personal relationship with said God (i.e. he gives a **** about you, personally, in some way) and b) survive that scary prospect called death.

I contend that most religious people would be destroyed if a and b are untrue, but there was some impersonal creator who they can never know and connect with, and who won't stop them and their loved ones ending in eternal oblivion.

So I think the irrationality of most conceptions of God is a much lower bar than a generic creator entity who could take most forms

The essence of God in the way that matters for 95% of people is a conscious entity with (in some way) a father-like connection to us/interest in us. It's a sky daddy. I think that closes out most alternatives. A very very small minority believes in a non sky-daddy creator "of some sort" on what they believe are reasonable arguments. Is that belief irrational? I'm not sure.
Irrationality imo is a belief strongly unsupported by the evidence. God certainly falls into that category.

“I Am the Eternal Now.”

“I am patient and fore-bearing. I do not speak to just some – but to all. I desire man’s welfare and do not cherish the thought of My Justice visiting earth. I desire the heart of man returns to Me – to be united with My Divine Will. This, however, is impossible outside of Holy Love. While you quarrel and debate approvals of man – listen to My Words, My Dictates, and return to My Divine Will. The hour of My Justice moves forward.”

https://maryrefugeofholylove.com/201...y-divine-will/

Thus says The Lord:
The world today may have made great advances in medicine, in technology and in knowledge, but they have traded in the wisdom of what is necessary to enter My Kingdom in exchange for money, wealth and power. All things of this world – money, power, possessions, positions of power in government – are nothing in My Eyes. I can wipe them away with just one swipe of My Hand. Respect for human knowledge and advances in science are worthless, for they do not come from you – they are talents given to man from God because of His Love for His children. Were He to take them away, along with all the material comforts you have, what then would you be left with? Nothing.


https://fatherofloveandmercy.wordpre...ke-to-my-call/

You can, but that's insufficient. I don't think it's better to look at it that way. The underlying issue is that science isn't an abstract object with abstract rules that must be followed at all times. Science is a definitively human pursuit of human interests. There are definitely boundaries, but those boundaries shift over time with different human perspectives.

I think the fundamental error you're making is that you're over-asserting what science is, which is leading you to all sorts of other difficulties.

Not really. At least, not entirely. There's a ton of stuff out there that we can only detect with machines and not through our own senses. We're at a point where scientific discovery can be done by machines and artificial intelligence. (Basically, we program a machine to repeat a procedure and gather data, and then use learning algorithms to seek patterns in the data.) Human senses not required (at least, at that level).

I need to stop you here because you need to notice how you switched between scientists and scientific theories.

The challenge of whether or not it can be applied to the supernatural greatly depends on the definition of supernatural that you're using. There are some ways that are methodologically denied, such as "a supernatural event is one that defies that laws of nature." This is certainly beyond the reach of science.

However, if it happened to be true that ghosts exist and can interact with the physical world, it is at least theoretically possible to detect the action of ghosts because they intervene in the physical world. How much one can detect that is dependent upon the consistency/reliability of ghostly behavior.

A way to think about it is to imagine that humans were all ghosts with no physical form, yet could interact with the physical world. Humans are not predictable in the sense that if you set up an experiment, they will behave in exactly the same way every time. There's "randomness" (or "free-will-ness") that would make it very difficult to predict outcomes the way that we predict outcomes in physics experiments.

(Also, saying that you use "theories" the way scientists do suggests that you don't actually understand scientific theories the way scientists do because no scientists go around insisting that such-and-such is a theory because it meets criteria X, Y, and Z.)

The end result is not the same. This is why I brought up the different understandings of atheism.

Right. But then, as above, you're not taking this into account.

You started off on the wrong foot, then. You're saying here you want to understand what "rational belief" is, but you've defined yourself by "irrational belief."

A belief can be "not irrational" and also be "not rational" depending on the criteria being used.

This has been answered several times by several people. The ones who gave one or two word answers probably have not thought it through, but those who bothered to write at least a couple sentences of explanation have provided sufficient information for you to understand this.

I acknowledge that this is what you're pursuing. But I'm not sure you're going about it in a meaningful way because your definitions aren't really helping you. If you want to talk about "rational beliefs" then you should present a definition for "rational beliefs" and not one for "irrational beliefs."

Edit: It's worth noting that "going beyond the evidence" is not a clear objective standard. So two people can agree to use your definition of "irrational beliefs" and disagree about whether a particular belief meets the standard of irrationality.

This is going to end well

Whatever Science has been or will be, I'm describing what it is right now. I understand what concepts Science is based on, what the Scientific paradigm is and why that makes Science mutually exclusive with views that include the possibility of the supernatural. Naturalism is a simple concept and not easy to misunderstand.


And whatever we discover using science it will have a 'Natural' explanation. So god, who is not 'natural' can never be proven or disproven by Science. Or... god will turn out to have a Natural explanation, but then he won't be the divine god of the bible.

I didn't switch between, them I mentioned them both because science is both a concept that determines what is 'scientific', and it's the practical application of that concept, by scientists.


An acceptable definition of 'supernatural', for this discussion is 'not natural'. If it's not natural, Science doesn't think it exists. If ghosts turn out to have a Natural explanation, then they will no longer be considered supernatural.


I'm not talking about a lack of belief here, or a failure to give assent to a viewpoint, I'm only speaking to beliefs that have been formed and to whether or not the thinking behind them was rational. So for my purposes, the end result is the same which ever direction we approach it from.


I don't think I need to take it into account because I'm not trying to prove that it's rational to believe that god doesn't exist, that's not within the scope of the OP.

How does 'not irrational' differ from 'rational'?


I'm failing to understand why a definition of a rational belief isn't simply the opposite of the definition for irrational belief. I think 'going beyond the evidence' is perfectly clear. If I get dumped by a blonde woman and decide that all blondes are horrible people, I'm clearly going beyond the evidence available to me and I'm not leaving open possibilities that haven't been closed out by the evidence, such as that some blondes are great people. My belief is not supported by rational thinking, so it's irrational.

I don't think your description is accurate.

I think you don't. The reason I think you don't is because you keep asserting things. The capitalization of "Science" also suggests that you're not really using it in the way that most people use it. As far as I know, nobody bothers capitalizing it. So the implication of this is that you're using "Science" to be different from "science" and you're therefore adding some aspects that probably aren't really there.

You say that, but...

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/

I think you've overstated your understanding. It's not as clean as you seem to think it is.

At least you're acknowledging that scientists as a community are the ones who determine what is scientific. But the narrowing of "science" to only that which is done by "scientists" does some significant harm to the concept of "science." (But this is tangential -- Basically, if you've got a kid exploring stuff in the back yard, if there's a systematic approach being applied, it's better to call it scientific than to say it's not on the basis that the kid is not a scientist.)

You need to stop anthropomorphizing science. Science doesn't think anything at all.

Except it's not. This is the same fundamental error that you've struggled with for quite some time.

You need to take the framework of the conversation into account because...

This question shows that you've not conceptually understood the underlying concepts in play.

"Not irrational" is different from "rational" in the same way as "not disbelieve" is different from "believe."

See above.

Not in all circumstances.

Let's change this scenario slightly. Let's say that you conclude that "lots of" blondes are horrible people. This isn't closing out the possibility that "some" blondes are great people. But is that rational? Is that irrational?

What if we increased the number of blondes to 10? To 100? Is it rational yet? Is it still irrational?

Nope. That's exactly the problem that you had with atheism. You're just repeating the error in a different context.

Thinking of it in terms of rational/irrational is not the best way to approach it. Well, I guess that depends on your motivations. Most of us can and do rationalize just about anything that's part of our current belief structure. In my view, the most beneficial framework is to think in terms of preservation vs truth.

When the negative aspects of reality disrupt us, thrusting us into chaos and doubt, do we react in a way that prioritizes preservation and sacrifice truth or do we react in a way that sacrifices preservation in favor of truth. It's a major error to believe that we can gain ground related to truth (the truth that matters most) without FIRST sacrificing the internal structures that maintain our emotional stability.

The dichotomy that the believer is irrational and the atheist is rational is a self preservation technique, which allows for the atheist a justification for continuing to avoid the level of doubt (and realization) that only exists in chaos.