What is Faith?

[Komodo]

No, I was referring to most everyone in the early church knew who they were.

The early church.

It is common sense for the early church to do it.

It is possible that the earliest Christians knew that the Gospel According to Matthew was written by the apostle Matthew, but that the name was only added later, after Matthew's death. I don't see why this would be "common sense," though; what was the benefit of withholding the name while he was alive? More to the point, what facts are available to us now, which make a strong case that the apostle was the author, besides the testimony of church fathers in the 2nd century A.D.?

We have the ancient creed recorded by Paul (who was a skeptic) written within five years of the resurrection and recording that 500 people saw the resurrected Christ all at one time. Including another skeptic, Jesus' brother James.

Needless to say, Paul was not a skeptic when he reported this. You are essentially saying that the evidence that Christ was resurrected is the existence of testimony, by the leading Christian missionary of the time, that there were people who saw the resurrected Christ. How can that possibly be a good reason for us to believe in the resurrection, when it wasn't even a good enough reason for Paul himself to believe in the resurrection? If these stories, about people who witnessed the resurrection, were circulating soon after the crucifixion, then they were circulating at a time when Paul was persecuting the very people who claimed to have seen the risen Christ; so Paul himself remained a skeptic, despite hearing those stories.

Moreover, you were claiming to have evidence of the resurrection that was "independent of the NT." If our only source for this creed is Paul's writing in the NT, then it is not independent of the NT.

 

[Komodo]

You're making an empirical conclusion (brain states can't instantiate logic) based on a categorization (brain states are in a different category of thing than logic). Why is it, then, that just because two things are different - even very different - that means that one can't be instantiated in the other?

I might well end up agreeing with you, but all the work leading up to your conclusion needs to be shown, and we're not quite there yet.

As I'm sure you know, "logic is instantiated in brain states" is an ambiguous phrase. If it meant something like "inside the brain is an avatar of logic which does the neuron firings which cause us to reach the proper conclusions," then obviously nobody believes this, and there's good reason not to believe it. (It would be a variation on the old "homunculus" theory, which runs into the problem of infinite regress: how would the avatar know which firings to use? Well, it has an avatar in its mind which tells it...)

Maybe we can avoid talking about "instantiation" here. It seems to me that the laws of logic, or the laws of multiplication, are basically after-the-fact summaries of things we've found to be true, whether personally or through cultural transmission. They're not the sorts of "things" that can cause events to happen. If it were the laws of logic which actually caused me to come to a correct conclusion about something, what would be the cause of my coming to an incorrect conclusion about something? The laws of illogic? (And would my blunders in calculation be caused by the demon of anti-math?)

I think we can keep it reasonably straightforward in this case: certain chemical actions in the brain cause certain brain states; those brain states cause mental states, like pleasure and pain; in brains of sufficient complexity, brain states also cause mental states like weighing evidence and doing calculations; natural selection can craft brains which do this in a way which comes more and more closely (though still quite imperfectly) to correspond with the rules we've codified as "laws of logic" and "laws of multiplication."

Of course we've only begun to touch on a fragment of the details about how this all comes to be, and maybe we'll never be able to do more than scratch the surface. But what we know (or can reasonably hypothesize) doesn't compel us to say that naturalistic accounts of how the brain works are somehow self-contradictory, or that we have to posit "logical laws" as a cause for mental events.

 

[El Cid]

No - you made the same mistake.

We do not pick from Christian principles.
We pick from principles, with no regard to what Christianity thinks of them.

That is not what Whatsisface said, he said he follows Christian principles.

 

[El Cid]

There is probably no university in the UK with a chair on Scientific Evidence for the Christian God.

That's because there isn't any, it's not a subject science can investigate.

Parapsychology is even less a subject science can investigate. Unlike parapsychology, there actually IS scientific evidence for the Christian God.

El Cid said:
wif: Btw, I already live my life according to Christian principles, not because they they are specifically Christian, but because they are good principles that Christianity has adopted.

ec: I have a hunch you pick and choose what Christian principles you live by though. Do you live according to the Christian principles on sex?

Yes I pick and choose, for example, I don't live by the principles outlined in the Bible in how to treat slaves.

So you would treat your slaves badly?

 

[El Cid]

How, exactly, is this relationship confirmed?

Through experiences such as answered prayer, circumstances confirming His written communication to us, and other experiences that cannot be explained using language.

 

[Whatsisface]

Through experiences such as answered prayer, circumstances confirming His written communication to us, and other experiences that cannot be explained using language.

Looking at this, without examples and a full explanation, I could not say that any relationship has been confirmed. Whenever i've seen examples of answered prayer they don't confirm they come from a deity.

 

[Whatsisface]

Parapsychology is even less a subject science can investigate. Unlike parapsychology, there actually IS scientific evidence for the Christian God.

There is none. By all means prove me wrong.

So you would treat your slaves badly?

This is poor for you. You usually make your points without getting personal which is unusual in this place.

However, I wouldn't have slaves in the first place, and I certainly wouldn't beat them to within an inch of their lives, nor would I sell my daughter, as the Bible sanctions.

 

[El Cid]

Once you convert you start having a relationship with Him, confirming His existence.

What would cause one to convert, if not knowledge of his existence?

"Know he exists,
convert,
know he exists"

?

There are people that know He exists but dont live as if He does, they did not convert.

El Cid said:
Logical reasonng.

Anybody can say that about any conclusion they reach. Watch:

"Your god most likely does not exist. Logically speaking."

Likelihood is based on data, and assertions of likelihood require data.

Yes, if they can provide data or evidence why they think it is unlikely He does not exist, It certainly would help their case.

El Cid said:
Actually there are millions that have confirmed His existence through experience.

And more than twice as many that have not.
Be careful when appealing to popularity.

I am not. but you were claiming that no one has confirmed His existence.

Also, by "confirmed case of the supernatural", I mean confirmed in the sense that evidence is exhibitable to others.

An LSD users doesn't "confirm" that pink dragons were crawling on their bedroom ceiling during their latest trip

There are cases of events that violate the laws of physics, that were observed and exhibitable to others. I mentioned three cases earlier in this thread.

 

[El Cid]

I never said the universe is supernatural. The inorganic aspects were created using His natural laws. I said its origin is supernatural.

Then the universe can't be natural.

What I meant was the content of the universe is mostly natural. You are right its origin is supernatural. So I guess you are saying that if its origin is supernatural then it is supernatural overall. I will concede that if that is your point.

El Cid said:
A theory of everything would just show that we understand all the laws of physics or nature. And so actually that would help us to recognize even better when something occurs because of a suspension of those laws, ie a supernatural event.

If that theory of everything showed how the universe exists due to its own nature, then that God was responsible is no more than a speculation.

It is not clear if his theory of everything also includes its origin. If it does, then it is unlikely it will ever be discovered from a purely naturalist perspective. This has been shown with Godels Incompleteness Theorem.

 

[Whatsisface]

What I meant was the content of the universe is mostly natural. You are right its origin is supernatural. So I guess you are saying that if its origin is supernatural then it is supernatural overall. I will concede that if that is your point.

Yes, that is what I mean.

It is not clear if his theory of everything also includes its origin. If it does, then it is unlikely it will ever be discovered from a purely naturalist perspective. This has been shown with Godels Incompleteness Theorem.

Maybe. But just because we might not be able to explain everything doesn't mean the universe isn't natural.

 

[El Cid]

How do you know it has that capacity?

You claimed that if naturalism were true, and chemical events gave the brain the capacity to make judgments, then naturalism was self-refuting; I said no, if naturalism is true, and chemical events gave the brain the capacity to make judgments, it would not be self-refuting. It makes no sense at all for you to respond, "how do you know that naturalism is true, and that chemical events give the brain the capacity to make judgments"!

My point is that there is no evidence that chemical reactions can produce rational conclusions. We know that chemical reactions operate according to the laws of chemistry not the laws of logic.

El Cid said:
You are assuming what you are trying to prove again.

But I'm not trying to prove the truth of naturalism, I'm only trying to show that your particular criticism of it is wrong.

See above.

El Cid said:
The weighing of evidence would require the brain to operate according to the laws of logic, but if it is just physical brain states then it is only operating according to the laws of physics. While there is some minor overlap between the two, overall they are two very different things.

When you say that the brain "operates according to the laws of physics," you presumably mean certain physical activities (in accordance with physical laws) cause the brain to enter certain physical states; and that's a reasonable summary of what the naturalist would say. So when you say that in weighing evidence, the brain "operates according to the laws of logic," do you mean "logical activities (in accordance with logical laws) cause the brain to weigh evidence and reach conclusions"? That wouldn't be what a naturalist would say, because "logic" in itself isn't something which can cause anything to happen, certainly not in the naturalistic view of things.

No, what I mean is that laws of logic are not cause and effect relations like the laws of physics.

Perhaps a better summary of the naturalist position is that certain physical activities (in accordance with physical laws) cause the brain to enter certain physical states; that those physical states cause sentient states; and that those sentient states include such things as weighing evidence. In other words, sentience is an emergent property of physical brain states. And it may be the case that an emergent property operates according to laws which are not present in the stuff that causes those properties to emerge. Moving water acts according to laws of fluid dynamics; but there is no fluidity, let alone laws of fluid dynamics, in hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms.

Even emergent properties are bound by the physical and therefore only a cause and effect relation.

Now it may well be that you just find the naturalist position about the mind being an emergent property of brain chemistry entirely implausible; you wouldn't be alone in thinking so. But even if it were an implausible position, that wouldn't make it a self-contradictory position. "Brain states cause sentient states; sentient states allow us to pretty reliably weigh evidence and make decisions" is not a self-evidently inconsistent claim. It really makes no more sense to say "if naturalism is true, there's no such thing as weighing evidence, there's just brain chemistry" than it does to say "if physics is right, there's no such thing as water in motion, there's just molecules."

Do you agree or disagree with this: "If there is a chain of causes, in which an underlying cause gives rise to a more immediate cause, the immediate cause does not thereby become irrelevant or gratuitous."

Naturalism itself is not self contradictory but arguing for it with evidence and logic is. Physics is a cause and effect process, Premises and conclusions are a logical relation of inference. So while naturalism may theoretically be true, it makes no sense to argue for it because your conclusion is just based on the ratio of chemicals in our brains and not on rationally inferred conclusions.

 

[Komodo]

My point is that there is no evidence that chemical reactions can produce rational conclusions.

No, the point you were making, up until now, was that even if chemical reactions caused correct or reasonable conclusions, we couldn't trust those conclusions because their cause was chemical and not logical. That's the point I've been disputing.

No, what I mean is that laws of logic are not cause and effect relations like the laws of physics.

Agreed. (In fact, that's exactly what I just said.) What you seem to believe, however, is that a naturalistic account of how human beings weigh evidence must implicitly assume that at some point the laws of chemistry hand over control of the reasoning process to the laws of logic. (Or, as you put it, "The weighing of evidence would require the brain to operate according to the laws of logic.") But that is not the case. The naturalistic account is that physical activities cause brain activities, which cause mental activities; and that among those mental activities (at least for humans) were desires to know the right answers to things, consideration of how best to reach the right conclusion, and (sometimes) knowledge of what are considered the best kinds of rules for doing that; and that because of natural selection, our brains (and therefore our minds) have gotten pretty good at this, though obviously far from perfect.

At no point in this account does the naturalist need to assume any causal role for the laws of logic. And if this account is true, there is no self-undermining going on, no basis for saying you couldn't trust such a process to produce rational conclusions.

Even emergent properties are bound by the physical and therefore only a cause and effect relation.

I don't know what you mean by "only a cause and effect relation" in this context, or how that meets my objection. If naturalism is true, then physical events have a cause and effect relation with mental events like considering and weighing, and those mental events have a cause and effect relation with the conclusions we draw based on the weighing of evidence. Do you dispute this? If so, why?

Naturalism itself is not self contradictory but arguing for it with evidence and logic is. Physics is a cause and effect process, Premises and conclusions are a logical relation of inference. So while naturalism may theoretically be true, it makes no sense to argue for it because your conclusion is just based on the ratio of chemicals in our brains and not on rationally inferred conclusions.

The claim is that chemicals cause brain states, brain states cause mental states like considering, weighing and concluding, and the conclusions reached as a result of those mental states pretty reliably correspond with sound principles of logic and evidentiary reasoning: that is to say, they result in rationally inferred conclusions. Instead of simply repeating the claim in bold, could you tell me why this process is either A) impossible or B) could not result in rationally inferred conclusions?

Could you also answer my question about whether or not you agree that "If there is a chain of causes, in which an underlying cause gives rise to a more immediate cause, the immediate cause does not thereby become irrelevant or gratuitous"?

Lastly, given that you agree that logical laws don't cause things; and given that you believe (I assume) that people are indeed capable of producing rational conclusions; then what sorts of causes can produce those rational conclusions, if physical causes cannot? For example, suppose you asserted that the "choices of the spirit," and not chemical reactions, were responsible for the conclusions we drew. It would still be true that "laws of logic are not cause and effect relations like the laws of spiritual choice," so if you have a refutation of philosophical naturalism here, you also have a refutation of philosophical idealism (or basically any "ism", so far as I can tell).

 

[Gus Bovona]

As I'm sure you know, "logic is instantiated in brain states" is an ambiguous phrase. If it meant something like "inside the brain is an avatar of logic which does the neuron firings which cause us to reach the proper conclusions," then obviously nobody believes this, and there's good reason not to believe it. (It would be a variation on the old "homunculus" theory, which runs into the problem of infinite regress: how would the avatar know which firings to use? Well, it has an avatar in its mind which tells it...)

Maybe we can avoid talking about "instantiation" here. It seems to me that the laws of logic, or the laws of multiplication, are basically after-the-fact summaries of things we've found to be true, whether personally or through cultural transmission. They're not the sorts of "things" that can cause events to happen. If it were the laws of logic which actually caused me to come to a correct conclusion about something, what would be the cause of my coming to an incorrect conclusion about something? The laws of illogic? (And would my blunders in calculation be caused by the demon of anti-math?)

I think we can keep it reasonably straightforward in this case: certain chemical actions in the brain cause certain brain states; those brain states cause mental states, like pleasure and pain; in brains of sufficient complexity, brain states also cause mental states like weighing evidence and doing calculations; natural selection can craft brains which do this in a way which comes more and more closely (though still quite imperfectly) to correspond with the rules we've codified as "laws of logic" and "laws of multiplication."

Of course we've only begun to touch on a fragment of the details about how this all comes to be, and maybe we'll never be able to do more than scratch the surface. But what we know (or can reasonably hypothesize) doesn't compel us to say that naturalistic accounts of how the brain works are somehow self-contradictory, or that we have to posit "logical laws" as a cause for mental events.

We agree, I'm not wedded to the word "instantiate." Your recent posts explaining things to El Cid are good ones.

 

[Eightcrackers]

There are people that know He exists but dont live as if He does, they did not convert.

People who know that Christianity is true, but are not Christians?
Name one.

I am not. but you were claiming that no one has confirmed His existence.

Only to my satisfaction.

 

[El Cid]

No, I am not. Not at all. Again, I am not trying to prove that naturalism is true, I am only trying to prove that your particular argument against naturalism is invalid. You are making the claim that "if naturalism is true, then our conclusions are unreliable"; I dispute this, and say "if naturalism is true, it does not follow that our conclusions are unreliable." I am starting with exactly the same assumption you are starting with: that naturalism is true.


But the claim of naturalism is not that logical relations cause us to draw conclusions from evidence; the naturalist claim (really, the common sense claim) is that our beliefs about logical relations (like "this is valid reasoning, that is invalid reasoning") cause us to draw conclusions from evidence. The naturalist claim, then, is that chemical activities cause certain brain states, that those brain states cause certain mental states (like "belief in certain rules about what constitutes good evidence"), and those mental states cause the drawing of conclusions based on evidence. Where is the self-contradiction?

Just Changing your understanding of naturalism as beliefs still has the same problem. Beliefs are just chemical reactions, therefore not based on any evidence or logic.

 

[El Cid]

Using arbitrary criteria that we invented, and appealing to subjective pleasure.

No, scientists have found that only certain objective sounds are considered pleasant to most all humans, It is not arbitrary or subjective.

I said that declaring the supernatural to be non-existent is foolish - did you not read what I wrote?

I do not need to make that assertion because none of my argumentation rests on it.

Ok I guess I misread it.

 

[Eightcrackers]

No, scientists have found that only certain objective sounds are considered pleasant to most all humans, It is not arbitrary or subjective.

"Pleasant to most humans" =/= objectively pleasant.

You would have to remove the "... to humans" to get there.

 

[El Cid]

You're making an empirical conclusion (brain states can't instantiate logic) based on a categorization (brain states are in a different category of thing than logic). Why is it, then, that just because two things are different - even very different - that means that one can't be instantiated in the other?

I might well end up agreeing with you, but all the work leading up to your conclusion needs to be shown, and we're not quite there yet.

Brain states are cause and effect relationships. One physical state does not logically imply another or prescribe that the other ought to occur logically. It either causes or fails to cause that second state. Physical states simply are, they are not things that ought to be.

 

[Komodo]

Just Changing your understanding of naturalism as beliefs still has the same problem. Beliefs are just chemical reactions, therefore not based on any evidence or logic.

The naturalistic position isn't "beliefs are just chemical reactions," it's "beliefs are ultimately caused by chemical reactions." The latter claim does not imply that the former claim is true.

Remember also that your argument against the naturalistic account of weighing evidence was, "the relations between physical states are cause and effect, but the relation between premises and conclusions are not cause and effect they are a logical relation of inference." That would imply that any account which of mental states which proposed anything which employed a cause-and-effect relation as part of the process would also be ruled out.

So, can you propose any account of how we come to have beliefs, in which the cause of those things does not obey cause-and-effect rules? If you cannot, then it would seem that, by your logic, any account of how we come to have beliefs -- materialistic, idealistic, dualistic -- would leave us with no basis for trusting those beliefs.

 

[Whatsisface]

My point is that there is no evidence that chemical reactions can produce rational conclusions.

Another way of looking at this is that often human minds don't reach rational conclusions which corresponds somewhat to your view of naturalism, although often they do.

We know that chemical reactions operate according to the laws of chemistry not the laws of logic.

The brain sits in a complex mixture of chemicals that when disturbed affects the mind. This effect can cause minds to behave irrationally, which also corresponds somewhat to your view of naturalism.