I'm not saying that nor is it the purpose of the OP. I'm not examining 'belief in god' generally, I'm specifically examining whether or not belief in god is a rational, or irrational belief based on the definition I gave in the OP.


Hopefully you see that I'm not trying 'to approach it' (the subject of god's existence'), I'm questioning whether the belief in god is rational, so the interesting part of what you've said is this idea of 'rationalizing'. Presumably that means to have a belief that is rational, and so is directly relevant to the OP. Do you think that a belief in the existence of god "'goes beyond the available evidence and doesn't leave open possibilities not closed out by that evidence"?

(I seperated out the part of your reply that dealt with the epistemological question of 'rational belief' and not the question of what science is, for convenience)

Then I'll stop capitalising it since it changes nothing in the meaning of what I'm saying.

I'll agree that looked at broadly, it's accurate to state that science isn't 'rigid' and that it has boundaries that have changed with time, but I think that this assertion doesn't have the implications that you think it does. Yes, the boundaries have changed, but they've changed in that now science is mostly carried out using the assumption that the supernatural doesn't exist, because when we proceed on that assumption (and implementing the other concepts that I listed) we are able to find Useful explanations, explanations that could not be considered to be reliable if we still included the possibility of the supernatural.

And if science isn't 'rigid' in how it's practiced, that's only because there are those who are unable to work with the version of Methodological Naturalism that rules out the possibility of the supernatural and seek to still include their beliefs in supernatural deities (or other supernatural phenomenom). Some other theists are somehow able to put aside the inherent conflict between theism and non-supernatural Methodological Naturalism, and I don't understand how they are able to do that, but they are thus able to carry out 'mainstream' science.

As an example, scientific theories must be Falsifiable, to solve the Problem of Induction, and the supernatural cannot be Falsifiable, so a conclusion based on a non-falsifiable hypothesis could never be considered reliable. It must also be Predictive and Testable, and again, neither of those can apply to the supernatural, so the idea of the supernatural is simply not Useful to us as a means of explaining things. Similarly, the other concepts bring something to the scientific paradigm that means that science and the supernatural are incompatible. They both cannot be true simultaneously. I asked if you were aware of any mainstream examples of scientific theories that include a supernatural element, you didn't respond with any. I'd be surprised if you doubt, for example, the Theory of Gravity, even though the methodology behind it adheres rigidly to a non-supernatural world view?

It's really not surprising that philosophers would have different views on this, nor would they want to be inhibited by a 'rigid' understanding, but that doesn't change my claim that the version of Methodological Naturalism that considers religious views to be irrelevant, and has proceeded on the assumption that the supernatural does not exist, is the version that has had the most success in explaining things.


Given that scientific hypotheses often start with an Inductive assumption, and that the concept of Falsifiability had to be developed to prevent the Problem of Induction, something that I'm sure that you understand well, but that a child couldn't be expected to even know about, I don't agree that they are carrying out 'science', no matter how 'systematic' they are being. Science is much more than simply being systematic.

Ok, so MB says science* rejects the supernatural, and I think it'd be more accurate to say that science* ignores the supernatural.

How would you describe science* wrt the supernatural?

tame_deuces, I'd also be interested to hear you answer this too, I was a bit surprised at your response earlier ITT (unless it was more of a semantic problem, like my reject vs. ignore issue).


* presumably what ppl are referring to when they use the term 'science' this way is (or should be) 'applying the scientific method'.

I don't agree, because this would imply that there could actually be other explanations for things and science has just chosen not to consider them. It would be biased and incomplete. In that case, how could we ever have any confidence in scientific explanations? Gravity has been explained using entirely natural concepts (i.e. Physical, non-supernatural) but how do you agree with, or accept that explanation if you also believe in the supernatural and think that science simply didn't consider a supernatural explanation for Gravity?

Science works precisely because it assumes that the Natural world is all that there is.

Would you agree with the following: (Purely in the context of this particular definition)

An Irrational belief is one that 'goes beyond the available evidence and doesn't leave open possibilities not closed out by that evidence'

Therefore a rational belief is one that: " 'doesn't go beyond the available evidence and leaves open possibilities not closed out by that evidence'

Bearing in mind that 'rational' is a property of the thinking behind the belief, not the belief itself.


I think the meaning of 'going beyond the available evidence' is very clear, even if it's not easy to actually establish when that has occurred.

I would say that the belief has been acquired irrationally. It goes beyond the available evidence (of experiencing one blonde) to make a claim about 'lot's of blondes'. Therefore, even if ultimately true, the belief is not justified, it's not based on information that makes believing it a better strategy for getting to the truth, than not believing it. (It's also Inductive logic which can never be valid...)

What is considered available evidence is subjective and even a belief without evidence can be rationalized - happens all the time. As for the second part, belief systems filter out, that's what they do. Their resistance is proportional to the emotional cost experienced if violated. Is pain avoidance at the expense of truth rational or irrational?

I would say the preservation of a belief in a god is both rational and irrational. The actual belief? I would classify a belief about the nature of reality/existence to be 'biased' for the under-developed mind and classify it as 'unbiased' for the mind that has undergone all the necessary work. I think that's the better way to measure a belief: biased vs unbiased, rather than rational vs irrational.

That would be philosophical naturalism, not methodological naturalism.

Whether the supernatural exists or not doesn't matter to the scientific method. It is biased, to explain the natural by the natural. The only difference between what we've said is that it sounds as if you think there has been an evaluation of the supernatural and 'science' has rejected it. I'd say 'science' has nothing at all to say about the supernatural, hence it ignores it.

There's no practical difference, but there is a philosophical one. Which again is the difference between philosophical naturalism and methodological naturalism.


eta: imo

While you're at it, you should stop randomly capitalizing words that don't ned to be capitalized, as it continues to suggest that you've got underlying differences in meaning. Grammar matters.

This is false. Science is performed in a manner that is agnostic to the idea of the supernatural. It just doesn't seek answers in that direction. Your statement would be like saying, "Physics operates under the assumption that psychology doesn't exist." It's just a false characterization, even if it's the case that physicists will NEVER use a psychological explanation for any of its observations.

Ummmm... not really. This is actually quite ignorant-sounding. A reductionist understanding of humans isn't going to go anywhere useful.

Here's a conclusion that's based on a non-falsifiable hypothesis: The universe can be rationally understood. If we ever run into something that we cannot rationally understand in science, we continue forward to continue pursuing a rational explanation anyway under the assumption that we will eventually understand it (perhaps with more information). But it's a non-falsifiable hypothesis that is used all the time.

Not useful for science, sure. But that's a totally different standard than making any affirmative claim about the non-existence of such things.

I don't want to get you hung up here, but there's an underlying challenge of "What is 'true' in science?"

This is a red herring, but you don't even realize that it is. The issue at hand, which is common to your posting, is just that you have a hard time not overstating things. I would agree that there are no scientific theories based on the assumption that the supernatural exists. But this does not imply what you're claiming it implies.

There's no underlying incompatibility with science and the existence of the supernatural. Basically, we would just have that science works unless the supernatural intervenes. It's not really that complicated. It would be no different from saying that an experiment will work as expected unless the experimenter intervenes. All it would amount to is that we simply do not control all the variables all the time. C'est la vie.

I would like to invite you to define methodological naturalism. The reason is that you're (hopefully) going to discover how what you're saying is either not true on the basis of your definition, or that your definition defines something other than methodological naturalism.

You're welcome to disagree. But I think most scientists would affirm that, while it may be some sort of "baby science," it's still science. That's why events where kids present their projects called "Science fairs" instead of "Not-Science fairs."

I fall in the "ignore" category. I don't think it needs to be described/defined any more than physics needs to describe/define psychology.

I can accept those definitions for the purpose of the conversation. But then I think that your definition of "rational belief" is going to be weak enough to allow all sorts of things that you probably wouldn't want there. This again comes down to the fact that determining whether something is or is not beyond the evidence is not an objective standard.

By this definition, I would say that a lot of conspiracy theories are rational.

You're welcome to think whatever you want. I would suggest that since you think this, you're probably not as comfortable/familiar with trying to think from someone else's perspective. For example, it is a well-known fact of psychology that two different people can see the same thing and reach two different conclusions based on the knowledge and assumptions that they have going into the observation.

The question is not of how it was acquired.

If there are millions of blondes and I've met one that was a terrible person. Is it a reasonable inference to conclude that I've met the *ONLY* terrible blonde in the world? I think it's not unreasonable to conclude that at least some other blondes are terrible people. And from the fact that there are just so many of them, it's not unreasonable to conclude that there are actually a lot of blondes that are terrible people. This can also be affirmed in the idea that people's personalities are not particularly defined by their physical characteristics, and since I know lots of terrible people of all types of physical forms, that it's probable that there are lots of terrible blondes.

I think the argument I've presented above justifies my belief that there are lots of terrible blondes. (And this is a belief I actually hold, but more on the basis of the confirming argument. I think it's not an unreasonable extrapolation to believe that lots of people out there are terrible people based on the sheer volume of people out there.)

It's not false, it's correct. Unlike your analogy involving physics and psychology which are not mutually exclusive or in anyway useless or an impediment to each other, the supernatural and the natural are mutually exclusive.

Far from being ignorant I think I've demonstrated a clear understanding of the different ways in which the scientific method, with regard specifically to Methodological Naturalism, can be approached. Some adhere rigidly to it (the majority of scientists), some ignore it and include the supernatural, and some simply ignore the conflict between it and their beliefs.

It's an Inductive starting point, it's a good example. What it will never be is a Valid and reliable conclusion, it's simply useful for developing scientific hypotheses. I've already covered why science uses inductive logic, and why the scientific criteria were developed in order to move from inductive, and therefore unreliable, conclusions toward something that can be considered 'scientific'. You haven't shown why that's wrong, you've simply given another example.

I didn't say it did or didn't exist, I said that science treats it as if it didn't exist in order to discover new knowledge.


'True' will do. If one claim is 'the supernatural exists', and another is 'the supernatural doesn't exist', and one of those claims is true, then only one of the two can be true. I think including the third option that neither are true, isn't useful.

It only seems like a red herring to you because you don't accept that the main approach to modern science is to assume that the supernatural doesn't exist. Because you deny this, you can't ever agree that there is an incompatibility. You can't provide any examples of mainstream scientific theories that include a supernatural element because they're aren't any. This isn't an overstatement, it's simply a fact. I'm not sure how you're explaining this to yourself.


I'm fine with this definition:

"Methodological naturalism is the label for the required assumption of philosophical naturalism when working with the scientific method. Methodological naturalists limit their scientific research to the study of natural causes, because any attempts to define causal relationships with the supernatural are never fruitful, and result in the creation of scientific "dead ends" and God of the gaps-type hypotheses. To avoid these traps scientists assume that all causes are empirical and naturalistic; which means they can be measured, quantified and studied methodically."

Source


I don't disagree, they are called 'science fairs', because they're related to subjects that are considered 'the sciences', but that is not any kind of meaningful evidence in a conversation about high level scientific concepts.

I moved this sentence to the top of my reply because it's critical to the discussion. Absolutely the question is one of how beliefs are acquired, that's the purpose of my OP, to examine what constitutes the 'rational' acquisition of beliefs.

And on the subject of 'rational and 'irrational', you appear to have accepted that one is the opposite of the other (at least in the context of the definition I'm using), but earlier you were arguing that they weren't, so I'm a little confused by that. You were arguing that 'not irrational' was not equal to 'rational'.

But, if there are only two possibilities of the value this property of thinking can have, rational, or irrational, if it's not one, then it's the other, no? You've met the conditions for 'rational' or you haven't.


Sure, why not. You're acting as if them being labelled 'conspiracy theories' automatically makes them irrational, but why would it, you would have to examine the thinking behind each individual belief before you could make any kind claim about that. See my example below.


This is missing the point that even if two people reach two entirely different conclusions about something, as long as the thinking behind their belief has the property of being rational, then they both have a rational belief. That their beliefs have in part been influenced by other concepts they understand (or don't), and/or prior beliefs doesn't change that (and is actually a very interesting subject, do you have a view on whether or not it's even possible to have a purely empirical view if whatever we form beliefs about is always influenced by other beliefs that we already have?).

For example, two first time visitors to Australia could visit a zoo and go to the Wallaby cage. One is widely read and has accurate prior knowledge of what a Wallaby is, the other has only read a book that unknown to him was a joke and called Wallabies 'Kangaroos'. Based on the evidence available to him, he believes that he is seeing a Kangaroo. Both have a rationally acquired belief and both beliefs are justified.


It's not unreasonable based on what you know about human beings so you're actually bringing more 'evidence' to the example than it actually contains and therefore changing the parameters/conditions. In any case, your conclusion is still inductive and should be treated as such.

Blondes may well be the exception to a general rule about how many horrible people you could usually expect to encounter in a group of 'millions'.

Sure, with the extra evidence, it's justified. My belief that all blondes are horrible because of my experience with one blonde, is not rational and not justified.

The latter is the practical application of the former. I'm not confusing them.


Science is not 'biased', it operates from a paradigm that assumes the supernatural does not exist. You can't 'ignore' something that doesn't exist. When I think of the natural explanation for why airplanes can fly, I'm not thinking 'it's the physics behind the shape of the wing, but I can't rule out that poltergeists are holding the plane up and I hope that they don't change their minds'. I don't 'ignore' that second possibility, I don't even consider it to be a possibility.

The only difference is that PN makes a truth claim, that the natural world is all that there is, where MN is simply the tool that applies that philosophy through the scientific method.

So, if you think that the supernatural and the natural both exist, and that science simply 'ignores' the supernatural, then you are accepting that any scientific theory could be wrong in that there is actually a supernatural explanation for whatever science is explaining as having natural causes. So Gravity might not be a 'Natural', 'Physical' property of mass, it may be invisible ghosts sitting on everything and pressing them to the ground. In your paradigm, this is a possibility that you can't rule out. By arguing that science 'ignores' the supernatural, i.e. accepting that the supernatural could actually exist, you are rejecting science as an accurate means of explaining anything, and that's fine, but then don't try to disprove anything using science.

What do you mean by 'rationalised'?

'Rational' is not a property of the belief, it's a property of the thinking that led to the belief. The belief has the property of being 'justified' or not.

What? This sentence literally calls any belief rational. Or you dont understand what rational means or are using a different definition.

By your reasoning above, you have answered your own question. Belief in god is a rational belief.

No, it doesn't, and I'm using the definition I quoted in the OP. 'Rational', is a property of the thinking leading to acquiring a belief, not of the belief itself, so two contradictory beliefs could both have been arrived at rationally.

(See the 'wallaby/kangaroo' example in post #62)

Your understanding of that reasoning is incorrect. However, a belief in god could be considered rational if it doesn't go beyond the available evidence or closes out possibilities not actually closed out by that evidence, which I think a belief in god does do.

However, one thing that has been sorely lacking ITT is a discussion about that evidence.

When I said "...'science' has nothing at all to say about the supernatural, hence it ignores it" I thought it was clear that "ignores" included whether or not such a category even exists. You wouldn't think "hmmmm, I should ignore poltergeists", you'd ignore the category entirely.

If I wasn't clear enough, I apologise, but I think this has taken a turn down Pedantic Lane. Let's blame Aaron


I'll just ask this instead: If it required the outright rejection of the supernatural, how could miracle-believing theists honestly go into science?

This is where the disagreement is, the idea that our beliefs, the belief in a god specifically, emerges from uneffected thinking. That is the common, default perception. Even ignoring suggestion/indoctrination, there are so many unconscious, psychological aspects at play.

Let's say someone has never been indoctrinated or contemplated the existence of a god. As soon as this person focuses their attention on the question, a belief will instantly form, and then the thinking begins after the belief has already began forming. We don't know this is happening, so it's impossible for us to not perceive our belief about a god to be based on the rational thinking. Rational thinking that confirms a preexisting belief is 'rationalizing' which is why I use that term.

The instantaneous belief is going to be very low resolution. The thinking will articulate/organize the belief, so it seems very much like the thinking is the driver from which the belief emerged, but it's not the case. The only way to realize this is from the place of pure chaos, like I mentioned, which is where we are when we are completely outside of the protective belief structure. The only way to get to the place of chaos is to (psychologically) follow doubt, fear, and uncertainty, not intellectual uncertainty but emotional uncertainty.

The intellect will never take us into the unknown, since it is a slave to our survival instinct, which is what was necessary from an evolutionary viewpoint. We know this from experience. If we start walking toward an area at night that is pitch black and unknown to us, that voice in our head will flood us with reasons why we should cease and head back to the known. That same mechanism which regulates our physical actions in the external world also regulates our psychological world.

But that's difference from saying that science and the supernatural are mutually exclusive. Supernatural and natural are just labels that we've created to describe aspects of the universe around us. The labels don't actually mean anything to universe.

And I would also say that physics and psychology are mutually exclusive, in the sense that you cannot take a psychology concept and apply it to physics, and you cannot take a physics concept and apply it to psychology.

You can assert that, but the evidence seems clear that it's not true. It's not true because you're merging methodological and philosophical forms of naturalism. One can be methodologically natural while not believing that the the methods are sufficient to describe everything in the universe.

There you are capitalizing random words again. It's like you're trying to capitalize vocabulary words or something.

The word "Valid" here is with regards to formal, deductive reasoning. And you're right. But that's not the only standard of reasoning available.

Let's say that I've built a coin-flipping device that flips a million coins and returns the number of heads. I can "reliably" conclude that there will be at least one head even though it's theoretically possible that they would all be tails. And that would be considered a scientific conclusion. It's based on both mathematics (probability) and can be confirmed through observation and experimentation.

So I don't think you're using the proper logical structures to advance your argument.

No, it doesn't. It doesn't treat anything about it at all. In the exact same way that physicists don't need to pretend as if psychology doesn't exist in order for them to discover new knowledge.

No, it won't. But you'll need to think longer about it to understand why.

I can say that "Newtonian mechanics is true" and say that "Relativistic mechanics is true" even though there are contradictory assumptions woven into each theory.

If you want to talk about falsification being the necessary component that drives science forward, then there's a very real way in which you would be able to conclude that *NOTHING* in science can be concluded to be "true."

This sentence reflects a weakness in your understanding of science. See above.

This is wrong. You can assert this, but it would just point to a fundamental misunderstanding that you have.

It's simple, and I've already explained it.

Pro-tip: Don't quote rationalwiki if SEP and IEP have articles. I am willing assert straight up that rationalwiki has it wrong.

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

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Does science only consist of "high level scientific concepts"? Are the "low level scientific concepts" not actually scientific concepts?

Nothing so far really seems to indicate this. If you look at the way you're structuring yourself, the challenge is not about the acquisition, but the justification. There's a big difference there. I can come to believe something for irrational reasons, and then later on discover a rational explanation that supports that belief.

I'm arguing they're not, because the definition you've provided would include a lot of conspiracy theories that I consider irrational. the reason that conspiracy theories advance is mostly through exaggerating possibility into plausibility. Since your definition of rational includes ALL possibilities, that is sufficient.

I would rather have a definition of rational that includes some structure that addresses the plausibility side of things. I don't think that possibility is sufficient.

Actually, you've met the conditions for "irrational" or you haven't. I'm wanting to emphasize here that your definition is for "irrational" and not "rational."

I also need to point out a subtle but essential flaw in the definitions you put forth. It comes at the level of formal logic, and I thought glossing over it would be fine, but it's not.

You've defined "irrational belief" in the form "P and Q." If you negate this, you get "not P *OR* not Q" (DeMorgan's law). This means that rational beliefs only need to satisfy one of the two properties put forward. This specifically weakens your definition far more than you seem to understand.

I'm saying specifically that there exist irrational conspiracy theories. I'm not saying that they all are on the basis of being labeled as conspiracy theories.

I would argue that the person whose only knowledge consists of a joke that they've heard is unjustified in their belief. Let's change that justification slightly:

"I once heard a joke about black people, and so I believe X about black people."

Do you want to say that this person is justified in believing X? Are you sure?

I'm not rejecting that it's inductive. But as in the other post, you're bringing the wrong logic to the table. There is no formal deduction that can be made about blondes. There's basically nothing that can formally be derived about blondes from a logical point of view (other than perhaps their blonde-ness).

The watchmaker argument is a perfectly rational way of arriving at the belief in god.

Evidence shows that complexity can naturally arise from simple structures (Evolution), so to call what we observe 'Design' is going beyond the available evidence and also failing to factor in available evidence, it fails on both counts. So the watchmaker argument isn't rational.

No it wasn't clear, because there are at least two people in this thread who are disagreeing that science 'rejects' the supernatural and saying that it simply chooses to ignore it instead, as if it may exist but simply wasn't part of the scope of science. That's why I used the term 'rejects' rather than 'ignores', because I thought it made it more clear.

You tell me.... but they do. As I said earlier ITT, I don't understand those who neither embrace nor reject non-supernatural methodological naturalism, but instead simply work with it despite their personal beliefs. They're arriving at results that they themselves must necessarily consider unreliable for denying another potential source of explanations....

The question is one of whether or not the current belief was achieved rationally.

I don't agree. There is much we know now that was once 'new'. How we arrived at those new discoveries doesn't change that they are/were new.

It's not different if you agree that science only deals with the natural, then there is a clear and very important difference. Science only works because of that difference. If you include the possibility of the supernatural existing, science becomes at best a limited and biased source of explanations, and at worst useless and unable to explain anything.


What evidence? I'm not merging them, I understand what they are. What use is something that is 'not sufficient to describe everything in the universe'? If you don't think science (using MN) is sufficient, then do you instead think that the theistic paradigm is sufficient?

This is part of what I'm going to discuss in SMP so I'm not going to respond in detail here.

Yes it does, but we're both just restating our assertions here and that's kinda redundant. I had hoped that through showing how the concepts on which science is based, none of which can be applied to the supernatural, and are therefore the only reason that science has been effective in providing Useful explanations, would convince you of why science rejects the supernatural.

I don't think you have, I think that you've sidestepped it. The simple reason that no mainstream scientific theories include supernatural elements is that science rejects the existence of the supernatural. Aside from actually being true, it's also the most reasonable explanation, rather than using an explanation (that science 'ignores' the supernatural) that undermines both the effectiveness, crediblity and claimed objectivity of science.

All you've provided there is the section that explains how some scientists (a minority) can reconcile their religious views with MN, but you haven't disproved that the majority of scientists adhere to a strict interpretation of MN that rejects the supernatural.

How those minority scientists then produce results that are meaningful to them is something I don't understand because they think science is simply not taking the supernatural into account, therefore any scientific theory could be wrong not just because there may be something we haven't discovered or understood yet, but because it has simply chosen to ignore an alternative source of explanations.

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The concepts that are relevant to this conversation are those that define what science is and determine how it is practiced. You can call those concepts whatever you like, I chose 'high level' but I don't mind what we use since we're agreed that children are not likely to be aware of them (re: your 'baby science' point).