Is belief in the supernatural, by definition, not rational?

[wenglund]

Buy the way, were I to have ever used the word "stupid" on this board, I would define it in a way that is intentionally NOT insulting. For example, I might define it simply as someone who thinks like Jaybaer.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Jason]

Good.

So we all agree it all depends on how we define the terms.

Now let's have lunch and go Christmas shopping. Is that better?

Didn't I point that out about 90 posts ago?

[mfbukowski]

Didn't I point that out about 90 posts ago?

Yeah. I think I did too.

[mfbukowski]

Not a bad idea.

Unfortunately, though, with good folks like Jaybear, who take themselves and me way way too seriously, there is a high risk that telling them to read Wittgennstein will somehow be interpreted as insulting (i.e. calling them "stupid"), and ironically thought to be somehow motived by you taking things too personally.

[Edit: Too late. I just now saw your exchange with Jaybear, and he has already accused you of insulting him.]

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Well I guess you nailed it.

And just to clarify, Jaybear, I meant no offense, and I apologize for any offense if you took any. Sometimes, like all of us, I guess, I get carried away, though no offense was meant.

[3ToedSloth]

[mfbukowski]

What if they just replied with,

[Droopy]

Mr. Larsen's salient point is, has a supernatural explanation of an event ever advanced human understanding of the world?..

1 In what sense?

2. What, for you, constitutes "the world" to which such understanding would refer?

[Jaybear]

You don't know Wittgenstein. Not the Tractatus - but the later stuff.

He is a teacher of language- he doesn't reach "conclusions". He gives exercises in thought.

Are you sure about that. In his 1938 Lectures on Religious Beliefs (post Tractatus), it seems clear to me that he concluded that religious beliefs are not reasonable.

They base things on evidence which taken in one way would be exceedingly flimsy. They base enormous things on this evidence. Am I to say they are unreasonable? I wouldn't call them unreasonable.

I would say, they are certainly not reasonable, that's obvious.

'Unreasonable' implies, with everyone, rebuke.

I want to say: they don't treat this as a matter of reasonability.

Anyone who reads the Epistles will find it said: not only that it is not reasonable, but that it is folly.

Not only is it not reasonable, but it doesn't pretend to be.

Wittgenstein "Lectures on Religious Beliefs", pp. 57 -58

I make no pretense of being an expert on the subject, ie "I don't know Wittgenstein," but I am not sure how his conclusion on the matter is any different that mine, even to the point, where I choose to use the phrase "not rational," in lieu of "irrational," so as to not convey rebuke.

And just to clarify, Jaybear, I meant no offense, and I apologize for any offense if you took any.

I interpreted your post, punctuated by the declaration... "Go away. Sho..." as condescending. Though, I suppose one can be condescending without intending insult. I can only imagine that it must be quite exasperating having to engage in discussions with simple minded people.

[Droopy]

If by "world" you mean "natural world", then Mr. Larsen's point may be somewhat salient. However, if by "world" you include the presumed "spiritual" aspects thereof, and the presumed mutually impactive relationship between the "spiritual/eternal" and the "natural/temporal" (as I believe), then it is not at all salient, but myopic.

This is, as I've pointed out above, a salient aspect of any discussion of "supernatural" phenomena: we must first define just what we mean by "natural".

This dual world between the natural and supernatural you propose is going to have to be expounded upon.

Where has Wade claimed that this world exists between the natural and "superntural"? He appears to only have said that the natural and "supernatural" impinge upon each other at points of interface.

I have never seen, felt or smelled the spiritual world and I remain unconvinced by a priori arguments that there is a strong chance that it exists.

1. That one has never experienced (or is not consciously aware of having experienced) spiritual or "supernatural" phenomena is not, in itself, logically related to the question of whether or not these exist.

This is really nothing more than a specific, individual appeal to ignorance grounded in a larger, but unstated philosophical assumption regarding the nature of the cosmos on a far larger scale.

2. We are not here dealing with the chance of this world existing, but with the conceptual and logical strength of arguments for or against its existence. Its chance of existence has no rational basis, as we have no way to know what the basis of comparison is. What Sloth is really asking for here is the specificity of God's existence; what the probability is of a purely random search producing something like God given the probabilistic variations that could arise from the same random search.

The more possible random variations, the higher the specificity.

The problem here, however, is the presupposition that existent beings of

any kind, can be or were created by a purely random search.

Before this proposition can be considered, we'd need to see some kind of justification for it.

Only under strictly materialist, rationalist, positivistic assumptions. Under other assumptions, this precondition evaporates.

It is especially interesting to not how this claim sets us in utter conflict with the core principles of the gospel, which are that faith precedes the miracle, the revelation, the understanding.

We ask God to reveal that world to us only after we have chosen to open ourselves to the possibility of its existence. The secularist approach, drawn from the empirical science (and in particularly, its most extreme positivistic form) is to deny the existence of such a world until "evidence" has already been received according to criteria grounded precisely in the the very world from which those criteria have been derived.

The epistemological problem that arises then would appear to be one generated by a misuse and misunderstanding of otherwise legitimate methodologies and approaches and an attempt to use the principles and perceptual techniques relevant to one perceptual level as the basis for comprehending a wholly different one.

Thats the strength behind John Larsen's comment, there is a lot we agree about in the natural world. We are epistemic peers in the natural world, but in the spiritual one, you have the upperhand becuase John (I presume) and I don't have that experince.

Excatly. I should probably point out here too that the clean dichotomy between the "natural" and "supernatural" worlds here may itself be an artifact of the secular materialist world view.

It certainly is no part of the LDS view.

[Droopy]

The

[mfbukowski]

Are you sure about that. In his 1938 Lectures on Religious Beliefs (post Tractatus), it seems clear to me that he concluded that religious beliefs are not reasonable.

Religious beliefs are based on faith. That is why they are called "beliefs" and not "science".

This may help, maybe not.

I am sorry I hurt your feelings.

[wenglund]

Way to completely ignore the Bayesian reasoning there Wade. I guess in your studies of logic, you haven

[Droopy]

I just noticed that, given all of the, what I thought to be philosophically substantive, intellectually serious responses to Sloth's arguments relative to the existence of God and "supernatural" phenomena I posted here, in anticipation of a stimulating philosophical debate, as of yet he has failed to engage or respond to those arguments either here or on the Other Board, where I posted a response to his claims there on the same subject.

It seems that, once out of his statistical and Bayesian element, his less than covert intellectual smarm dissipates into resounding silence rather quickly.

Intellectus interruptus.

[SlackTime]

The way I always heard it was...

e^pi*i = -1

Therefore: God exists

But my sister was the deep mathematician in the family, I'm just an engineer, so what do I know

- SlackTime

[Euthyphro]

I note that all the definitions, clarifications, or descriptions of the term