Reason, Experience, And The Existence Of God

[LinuxGal]

I can understand you needing more than just my testimony before *you* know something, but I'm not sure why you need more than just my testimony before you think it's acceptable for *me* to know something.

 

You know something when it conforms with the way things are.   If someone has the testimony that they have seen a pink unicorn, that is such an extraordinary claim that we would require him to produce this pink unicorn before we could agree that he knows there is one.  If someone has the testimony that he has seen a triangle with four sides we can dismiss this out of hand because it is an attack on language.  If someone has the testimony that he knows God exists because his mother recovered from cancer after much prayer, all we can agree on is that his mother recovered, not how or why.

[bluebell]

You know something when it conforms with the way things are. If someone has the testimony that they have seen a pink unicorn, that is such an extraordinary claim that we would require him to produce this pink unicorn before we could agree that he knows there is one. If someone has the testimony that he has seen a triangle with four sides we can dismiss this out of hand because it is an attack on language. If someone has the testimony that he knows God exists because his mother recovered from cancer after much prayer, all we can agree on is that his mother recovered, not how or why.

Yes, this is all true. Just because someone says they know something doesn't mean they actually do, or if they do that we have to believe them.

But that's not really my point. My question is, why does someone have to be able to prove to US that they know something before it is valid for them to declare that THEY know it?

Teancum has said that it bothers him (or her) when people say "I know" because they obviously don't know so they shouldn't use that word. That doesn't seem reasonable.

[pogi]

You know something when it conforms with the way things are. 

 

In other words, you know something when it conforms to the current popular perceptions of reality.  For you, only the ordinary is real, anything "extraordinary" must be dismissed outright?  That is kind of limiting isn't it.  I think we would still be stuck in the dark ages if we followed this mentality. 

 

If someone has the testimony that he knows God exists because his mother recovered from cancer after much prayer, all we can agree on is that his mother recovered, not how or why.

 

Bluebell is not asking you to agree, simply to acknowledge her claims.  

Edited November 29, 2014 by pogi

[Teancum]

Yes, this is all true. Just because someone says they know something doesn't mean they actually do, or if they do that we have to believe them.

But that's not really my point. My question is, why does someone have to be able to prove to US that they know something before it is valid for them to declare that THEY know it?

Teancum has said that it bothers him (or her) when people say "I know" because they obviously don't know so they shouldn't use that word. That doesn't seem reasonable.

 

 

Ok bother is a bit strong.   I am not sure what word to use.  You see when know is used in the LDS testimony I do think most use in the way we mean the word know.  And the expectation is to have them believe us.   When I was a missionary I bore testimony with the hopes the person would believe and I said I know and then I thought I did.

[bluebell]

Ok bother is a bit strong. I am not sure what word to use. You see when know is used in the LDS testimony I do think most use in the way we mean the word know. And the expectation is to have them believe us. When I was a missionary I bore testimony with the hopes the person would believe and I said I know and then I thought I did.

Ok.

I just want to say that I have never born my testimony with the hopes that someone would believe me. In fact in has never occurred to me that someone would bear a testimony with that hope until talking to you. My hope when I bear my testimony is that the spirit will touch someone's heart.

And I don't think I HAVE to use the words I know before the spirit can do that.

As you have said though, perhaps there are many like you who do believe such.

Next time you hear someone bear their testimony maybe remember that their motivations might not be what you have previously assumed.

[mfbukowski]

You know something when it conforms with the way things are.   If someone has the testimony that they have seen a pink unicorn, that is such an extraordinary claim that we would require him to produce this pink unicorn before we could agree that he knows there is one.  If someone has the testimony that he has seen a triangle with four sides we can dismiss this out of hand because it is an attack on language.  If someone has the testimony that he knows God exists because his mother recovered from cancer after much prayer, all we can agree on is that his mother recovered, not how or why.

And what evidence do you have that it is wrong for men to dominate women?

 

To kill without reason?

 

What evidence do you have that you love your significant other?  Your children?

 

Have any of those factors been important in your life?  Why do you accept them without evidence?

 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/

Edited November 29, 2014 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

Now it is you who are playing semantics. What then does it mean!

I thought you would never ask.

 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/

 

Now we have no reason to discuss it further until you refute this position, held by most philosophers today.  I wish you well.

[LinuxGal]

In other words, you know something when it conforms to the current popular perceptions of reality.  For you, only the ordinary is real, anything "extraordinary" must be dismissed outright? That is kind of limiting isn't it.  I think we would still be stuck in the dark ages if we followed this mentality. 

 

In the dark ages, everyone agreed in the reality that the Earth did not move, and the Sun did.   Then Galileo looked through his telescope and saw Venus three-quarters full, which would only be possible if it moved behind the sun.  This confirmed the claim of Copernicus that the Sun was the center of the universe, and falsified the claim of scripture that the Earth did not move.  It took until 1992 for the Roman Catholic Church to apologize for suppressing Galileo's work.  They dismissed his claim outright because it was extraordinary.  However, at any time, the authorities could have made observations of their own to confirm.  Believers have recourse to the same procedure.  They are welcome at any time to describe an experiment by which God can be observed.

[canard78]

It is talking about the people who believe an infant needs to be baptized in the church, look at the context "there have been disputations among you concerning the baptism of your little children" Moroni 8:5. If you study the chapters that Moroni wrote, you will realize that he is talking about the church. Baptism in other religions doesn't exist.

Religions may use the same word, but their definition is different, for example, evangelicals believe that James 2 is talking about salvation in the world, not salvation in heaven. Catholics agree that infants do not commit sin, see

Scientists find reasonable posibilites that do not have hard evidence. Dismissing reasonable possibilities is not a good thing.

By your logic any personal experience is not reliable. We can evaluate a spiritual experience ourselves under the same conditions too, if someone gets a different answer, it may be because of different conditions, circumstances, or factors.

Sure, scientists can debate, but a scientists doesn't need to debate to look at the evidence himself, there are no authorities in science.

Again, Dr. Jerry R. Ehman was alone when he discovered the wow signal.

You cannot debate the reality of other minds, or that the world is real, you make that decision on your own.

Again, that does nothing to prove the world is real, it is an assumption, we all have a degree of faith or confidence.

What if the world is a computer program, and the laws of physics are simply the rules of a program? Your example is not helpful.

We simply assume that the world is real, that is faith or confidence.

I keep trying to sum up the inclination to engage in some sort of conversation with you but I hardly see any point doing so when all you so is repeat the same answer over and over again.

[MormonFreeThinker]

I keep trying to sum up the inclination to engage in some sort of conversation with you but I hardly see any point doing so when all you so is repeat the same answer over and over again.

 

because you don't challenge what I am saying, straw-man arguments are not challenges. 

[pogi]

In the dark ages, everyone agreed in the reality that the Earth did not move, and the Sun did.   Then Galileo looked through his telescope and saw Venus three-quarters full, which would only be possible if it moved behind the sun.  This confirmed the claim of Copernicus that the Sun was the center of the universe, and falsified the claim of scripture that the Earth did not move.  It took until 1992 for the Roman Catholic Church to apologize for suppressing Galileo's work.  They dismissed his claim outright because it was extraordinary.  However, at any time, the authorities could have made observations of their own to confirm.  Believers have recourse to the same procedure.  They are welcome at any time to describe an experiment by which God can be observed.

 

I'm not going to defend the Catholic church.

What is real must be observable by all?  

Even when things are observable by all, our understanding of what we are observing is limited to our individual perception of it in relation to everything else we think we know.  Until we can perceive of all variables and their relation to each other, we can't really know what we are looking at with a perfect knowledge.  Our understanding of past "truths" evolve as our perceptions grow.  That's why I don't like this description of how we know something: 

 

You know something when it conforms with the way things are.   

 

Until we can see the whole picture, the way things are is completely and entirely relative to individual perspective, which is incomprehensibly limited to humans.  We can't really know the way things are, all we can know is how we perceive and interpret them. 

Edited November 29, 2014 by pogi

[LinuxGal]

Even when things are observable by all, our understanding of what we are observing is limited to our individual perception of it in relation to everything else we think we know.  Until we can perceive of all variables and their relation to each other, we can't really know what we are looking at with a perfect knowledge.  

 

Everyone has had to deal with a four year old girl who gets on the "Why?" chain.   No answer will suffice, she simply asks why that is so.  Science can take us back to the first split-second after the expansion of the universe began, but it can't explain why or how it began to expand or where the stuff came from to be involved in the expansion.  And it doesn't have to, except for those unfortunate souls with a kind of philosophical Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  If it pleases some people to postulate a god (or eternal progression of gods) to create the universe, that is fine, however the same thing can be accomplished by postulating that the universe itself is eternal, and that theory has the benefit of cutting out any divine middle-men.  But this void in our understanding of the origin is not something science is equipped to answer because the scientific method depends on repeatability.  Someone would say his theory predicts that universes would have the same ratio of the strength of the nuclear force relative to the electromagnetic force 80% of the time, and I would go, "Well, there's just this one."

[pogi]

So what are you positing about knowledge exactly?  I can't tell if you agree or disagree with my statement.

 

If it pleases some people to postulate a god (or eternal progression of gods) to create the universe, that is fine, however the same thing can be accomplished by postulating that the universe itself is eternal, and that theory has the benefit of cutting out any divine middle-men. 

 

 I don't know what you mean by this.  I thought you said that science can pin-point the beginning of the universe, who would postulate that it is eternal then, and how would that be the same?  How is cutting out the divine "a benefit" to a person who finds great joy and peace in the divine?

Edited November 29, 2014 by pogi

[LinuxGal]

So what are you positing about knowledge exactly?  I can't tell if you agree or disagree with my statement.

 

The upshot of my argument is that science is designed to investigate questions that have answers.  Some questions do not have answers.  For example, how can it be a meaningful question to ask what came "before" time started to operate, if such words as before and prior require the operation of time to be coherent?

[pogi]

The upshot of my argument is that science is designed to investigate questions that have answers.  

 

That's great and all, but what does that say about knowledge?  Are scientific answers certainty?  What do we really know for sure?

 

For example, how can it be a meaningful question to ask what came "before" time started to operate, if such words as before and prior require the operation of time to be coherent?

 

It can be meaningful if you accept that time is not limited to our understanding of it.  Why put limits on science?  Scientific discoveries are born from thinking outside the box.  It seems like you want to limit what is possible to the box. 

Edited November 29, 2014 by pogi

[LinuxGal]

I don't know what you mean by this.  I thought you said that science can pin-point the beginning of the universe, who would postulate that it is eternal then, and how would that be the same? 

 

I hope I can make myself clear.  Science has determined that our universe had a beginning about 13.7 billion years ago in linear time.  However, since time is measured by activity (rotations of the earth, or the moving hands of a clock), and the rate of activity depends on the density of the universe (when things are closer together they dance with each other more frequently), a more accurate picture of time is to use a logarithmic scale rather than a linear scale, one based on the actual things that are being timed rather than an arbitrary span.   If you set the center of this scale around one second (10^0 seconds), then the total quantity of interactions between any two epochs (the span between 10^-1 to 10^0 seconds being one such epoch, for example, corresponding to 1/10 to 1 second in linear time) is constant.  So in log time the universe has no beginning, in linear time it does.  I'm not sure everyone will grok this if they haven't been to Uni for a STEM degree and taken calc, but some will.

[LinuxGal]

t can be meaningful if you accept that time is not limited to our understanding of it.  Why put limits on science?  Scientific discoveries are born from thinking outside the box.  It seems like you want to limit what is possible to the box. 

 

If something exceeds our limit of understanding of it, as a quantum theory of gravity currently does, I'm not putting a limit on that thing, and I certainly don't want to limit that thing, but I will acknowledging a limit on our ability to understand that thing.  And I will put on notice anybody who wants to locate their god in that space where our knowledge fails that you are giving him an ever-diminishing piece of real estate.

[pogi]

If something exceeds our limit of understanding of it, as a quantum theory of gravity currently does, I'm not putting a limit on that thing, and I certainly don't want to limit that thing, but I will acknowledging a limit on our ability to understand that thing.  And I will put on notice anybody who wants to locate their god in that space where our knowledge fails that you are giving him an ever-diminishing piece of real estate.

 

 

What doesn't exceed our limit of understanding?  What do you mean by "space where knowledge fails"?  You still haven't answered my question.  What is knowledge?  

 

Because the human senses are easily deceived, fallible, and extremely limited in their scope, the amount of information that we can gather is so negligible when you consider the vastness of the universe and beyond.  We as mortal humans can only perceive of the tiniest fraction of the likely infinite number of variables that make up the entirety of space, matter, energy, and time as we understand it.  

 

Think of the limits of space, matter, and energy alone that are within the reach of our faculties.  Many of us have not even been outside of our countries of origin.  I have only been to 10 or 12 of the western 50 United States.  90% or more of my knowledge is based completely on trust of the experiences of others.  For all I know, the eastern states do not even exist.  Until I can see, hear, smell, touch, and taste them for myself, I don’t have any real knowledge of them, all I have is trust that they exist.  The evidence seems overwhelming in their favor, but if everybody told me that the world was flat, then I would probably believe that too.  They could show me pictures of the precise spot where the ocean drops off and tell me grand stories of brave sailors who went too far, never to return.  I wouldn’t need to fall off the end of the Earth to discover that the earth is flat…or would I?  You can see how easy it is to confuse trust for knowledge.   

 

The furthest place that man has stepped is the moon; at least I “trust” that is so.  When you throw in the alluring temptations of greed, power, and fame, one must consider the reliability of trusting in the mortal man?  Everything seems to have a price; even the purity of science and religion are not out of the grasp of filthy lucre to be manipulated for personal gain. 

 

While we have been able to process and explain many of the variables that we can perceive, we have to keep in mind that man’s reason and logic are fallible and corruptible by greed, power, and fame.  Also, his conclusions are not certain and may possibly change in time.  The best that we can do is to form probabilities while realizing that even those probabilities are questionable.  

 

What we are left with is a probable picture and explanation of a few of the variables that we have gathered within our reach in an endless sea of variables.  It is like we are limited to 3 pieces of a puzzle with a possible infinite number of pieces, and we are not even sure if what we are holding are even real puzzle pieces because we can’t know anything for 100% certainty, but they probably, hopefully are; that’s our best guess of what they are anyway.  Does this give you the sense of the nothingness of man and his measure?  He simply cannot see the big picture. 

Edited November 29, 2014 by pogi

[Calm]

"that theory has the benefit of cutting out any divine middle-men"

I would like to know why this is a benefit, especially if there happens to be divinity out there.

[LinuxGal]

What doesn't exceed our limit of understanding?  

 

To listen to Al Gore, our understanding that humans are responsible for global warming is complete.

[LinuxGal]

What we are left with is a probable picture and explanation of a few of the variables that we have gathered within our reach in an endless sea of variables.  It is like we are limited to 3 pieces of a puzzle with a possible infinite number of pieces, and we are not even sure if what we are holding are even real puzzle pieces because we can’t know anything for 100% certainty, but they probably, hopefully are; that’s our best guess of what they are anyway.  Does this give you the sense of the nothingness of man and his measure?  He simply cannot see the big picture. 

 

You must be filled with warm fuzzies every time you step on a commercial jet.

[Calm]

Considering what flight was like just 110 years ago, everyone should be.

[pogi]

To listen to Al Gore, our understanding that humans are responsible for global warming is complete.

 

You mean you trust that humans are responsible for global warming, right?

[pogi]

Once again, What is knowledge?

[LinuxGal]

You mean you trust that humans are responsible for global warming, right?

 

No, I consider claims that the climate science is "settled" to be offensive.