[net.religion] Logic based on different sets of assumptions

rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Professor Wagstaff) (02/26/85)

Since Laura Creighton mentioned that this article never appeared to "get
out there", I am reposting it here.  It contains three minor revisions from
the original article plus a new final paragraph.  I will also post an
informatory message to net.religion.christian/jewish that this article has
been reposted here.

| From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Professor Wagstaff)
| Newsgroups: net.religion
| Subject: Logic based on different sets of assumptions
| Message-ID: <509@pyuxd.UUCP>
| Date: Mon, 11-Feb-85 12:29:14 EST
| Article-I.D.: pyuxd.509
| Posted: Mon Feb 11 12:29:14 1985
| Date-Received: Mon, 11-Feb-85 12:29:14 EST
| Organization: Huxley College

Since there is no hard evidence to support the existence of a deity, one would
normally work (in a typical analysis of a non-religious oriented phenomena)
from the assumption that the thing for which there is no evidence does not
exist.  Without evidence showing proof of a thing's existence, or its observed
effect on the "physical" world, via Occam people would generally assume that
it does not exist until evidence of a viable nature presents itself.  The
*possibility* that it may exist is left open, but such a possibility evinces
itself if and only if evidence is presented to support it.

However, obviously some people do believe in the existence of a deity despite
the lack of realistic evidence.  One can only assume that 1) these people have
a different set of criteria for acceptability of evidence, and/or 2) they have
some vested interest in believing that particular outcome of analysis that they
believe to be true.  Quite possibly both.  I think we have shown endless times
that the nature of the subjective evidence offered in favor of religious belief
is tainted:  How come your subjectivity shows a different world view than
someone else's?  Which one is right?  WHY is his/hers wrong and YOURS right? 
If he/she is being deceived, how can you be sure it is not YOU who has been
deceived?  (Not to mention the way the brain is known to impose patterns onto
events/phenomena/observations that upon closer examination are shown to be
quite wrong---like "recognizing" someone at the airport and realizing that it
wasn't them after all.)

With that in mind, the only other reason that such people might readily accept
the notion of the existence of a god is precisely because they already believe
it to be so:  they hold the existence of god as an assumption, an axiom, and
work ALL analysis of the world from there.  "Why is life full of problems? 
Because god designed the world that way knowing that it would be best for us
not to have a perfect life but rather to struggle and learn."  Contrast this
with the simpler, less presumptive notion that life is full of problems because
all those problems are simply a part of the natural flow of things, based on
what we observe and codify as physical laws.  We experience them as problems
because they conflict with our wishes for a world ordered around our lives,
and because such conflicts are inevitable in a world with trillions of
organisms and objects caught up in the "natural flow".  As opposed to assuming,
for whatever reason, the existence of an ultimate "good" force that "designed"
the universe to be a certain way.

I contend that all such analysis of the world by religious believers, and the
answers offered in such analysis, stem directly from an a priori assumption of
the existence of god.  Lewis' works are prime examples.  Jeff Sargent, for
example, has used the phraseology "Why would you want to believe that human
beings are 'nothing but' lab specimens?"  (... when you have this other
possibility to believe instead.)  "Wanting to believe", the desirability of
holding certain beliefs as opposed to others owing to their intrinsic
"aesthetic" value rather than their veracity, becomes a factor in forming
belief systems for certain people.

Thus my question is: why DO you presume the existence of god as a given
(obviously I and many others simply do not), if not because you have some
vested interest in believing that it is so, what I have endlessly and perhaps
monotonously labelled as WISHFUL THINKING?

Given that we are dealing with two forms of logic, one of which starts off
making the assumption that god exists and the other of which does not, a person
using one form of logic cannot possibly convince the person using the other
form of logic to accept his position.  This is not always true, because the
two forms of logic and their two sets of assumptions are NOT disjoint sets. 
In fact, for most reasonable people, they are practically equivalent, with the
addition of the a priori assumption of god being the only major difference
between the two sets.  Conclusions drawn from the two sets of assumptions,
however, can and will (and do) wind up being radically different.  The
"impossibility of convincing" that I mentioned above only comes into play when
the "extra" assumption has a role in the formation of some conclusion. 
Religions have (individually and collectively) formed whole volumes of such
conclusions and codified them.  In many cases, the "existence of god"
assumption doesn't even enter into certain of these conclusions, and they form
viable conclusions about the world at large and life itself. (Some have devoted
entire lifetimes to thinking and writing about such analysis and conclusions.)
In other cases, assumptions about the nature of god and "god's word" take
precedence over both scientific investigation and individual human needs.

The conflict comes into play where "existence of god" assumptions (compounded
by assumptions about what IS "god's word" and who is qualified to be god's
authority representative on earth) are contradicted by rational inquisitive
analysis and investigation of the world itself, or by individual human needs
(arbitrarily?) denied/forbidden/not met by "god's word".  Those who make such
assumptions may deny the claims of the investigators (in "protest") solely
because the claims would force them to change their whole view of the
universe based on the evidence.  If those people are in positions of earthly
authority, we may witness repression of such ideas, and of people who hold
them.  We HAVE witnessed such repression in the past, and we may be witnessing
it again today.

The points are: 1) Given that evidence contradicts, if not the basic assumption
that there IS a god, further assumptions that certain texts labelled as god's
word are what they are purported to be (absolute truth), what is the basis for
retaining those assumptions? and 2) Given that repression as described above
does indeed take place in the advent of that which contradicts the status quo,
can we afford to let ANY group, religious or otherwise, wield enormous power
over people's lives when the basis for their governing involves, not rational
thinking, but "does it conform to pre-conceived assumed ways of thinking?"

Despite what some people feel obliged to point out, I do NOT assume that there
is NO god, I simply do not assume that there is one.  The two are not
equivalent.  My point is not to show that "god doesn't exist" (I've speculated
on the net several times about what such a deity might be liked if it does
exist), but rather to show that there may be something very wrong with certain
notions of "god"-ness, when those notions were formulated based on presumptions
about the nature of the universe that may seem "appealing", not based on
evidence about reality, and when the premises surrounding those notions appear
to be contradictory and malformed.
-- 
Anything's possible, but only a few things actually happen.
					Rich Rosen    pyuxd!rlr

rlh@cvl.UUCP (Ralph L. Hartley) (02/28/85)

> "Wanting to believe", the desirability of holding certain beliefs as
> opposed to others owing to their intrinsic "aesthetic" value rather
> than their veracity, becomes a factor in forming belief systems for
> certain people.

For all people actually. In fact it has to be that way because
"veracity" is not really knowable. Remember that Ocams razor (which you
use quite a bit) is, in fact, an "aesthetic" principle. It really is
just a matter of taste.

> Thus my question is:  why DO you presume the existence of god as a
> given (obviously I and many others simply do not), if not because you
> have some vested interest in believing that it is so, what I have
> endlessly and perhaps monotonously labelled as WISHFUL THINKING?

Endlessly, monotonously, and incorrectly. You totally ignore an
important distinction between two lines of thought.

(1) I wish that A were true.	=> I believe A

(2) I wish to believe A		=> I believe A

Argument (1) is what is commonly meant by the phrase "wishful
thinking".  I have to admit that it is not a particularly good line of
reasoning.  (2) on the other hand is quite valid.  Rememember that
belief is an action and has consequences that may be completely
independent of the truth of the proposition believed in.  If someone
says "Believing in God (or whatever my religion believes in) makes my
life happyer" why do you insist on saying "[those beliefs] are
contradicted by rational inquisitive analysis and investigation of the
world itself". Maybe so, but so what?

> or by individual human needs (arbitrarily?)  denied/forbidden/not met
> by "god's word".

But what about "individual human needs ...not met" by "rational
inquisitive analysis and investigation of the world itself".
If you don't think there are such needs how do you explain religion?

Note that argument (2) cannot be used to convince other people; it does
not generalize to

(3) I wish to believe A		=> You should believe A

and

(4) I wish you to believe A     => You should believe A

is simple intrusiveness.

Note also that the consequences of believing something ARE important
even though they have no effect on the truth. This is why different
standards of proof are used when judgeing the toxicity of a chemical
(there must be a resonable basis for believing it is toxic) and the
guilt of a person accused of a crime (there must be no reasonable
dought that he is guilty). Another example: You are standing,
blind-folded somewhere in the Grand Canyon. You would be wize to
believe, until you have evidence to the contrary, that you are standing
on a peak with shear cliffs on all sides. Even though such peaks are
actualy quite rare.

Note that what I consider good reasoning differs form your definition.
Also note the the difference does NOT lie in my assuming anything about
this god character (I make no such assumptions).

			Ralph Hartley
			siesmo!rlgvax!cvl!rlh
			rlh@cvl

wkp@lanl.ARPA (03/01/85)

In article <589@pyuxd.UUCP>, Professor Wagstaff (what kind of Jewish
name is this, Rich?) writes:

>Since there is no hard evidence to support the existence of a deity, one would
>normally work (in a typical analysis of a non-religious oriented phenomena)
>from the assumption that the thing for which there is no evidence does not
>exist.  Without evidence showing proof of a thing's existence, or its observed
>effect on the "physical" world, via Occam people would generally assume that
>it does not exist until evidence of a viable nature presents itself.  The
>*possibility* that it may exist is left open, but such a possibility evinces
>itself if and only if evidence is presented to support it.

I don't understand your logic at all, Professor.  I use Newton's laws of
motion all the time--AND I BELIEVE IN THEM!--yet I can never hope to prove
them!  All that I can say is that Newton's laws of motion (for non-relativ-
istic motion, of course) are not inconsistent with any known       
observations or experiments.  These laws--and all scientific laws--can
never be proven.  However, their general applicability to a wide range
of EXPERIENTIAL evidence INDICATES that these laws do "exist".

Similarly, with the existence of a deity.  There is no way to prove the
existence of a deity, but a good case can be made for the fact that
certain peculiar physical coincidences and the structure of mathematical
and physical laws INDICATES to many intelligent people the existence of a  
creator.  Note the existence of such a creator is not inconsistent with
any known physical law or experimental observation.

Could you explain what you mean, Professor?
--
bill peter
!cmcl2!lanl!wkp

laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (03/01/85)

Okay Rich, this article got here. Here goes. I have tried to tell you
in the past that a religion does not imply a belief in God. I am going
to try again, but again I think that you are barking up the wrong tree
with respect to every mystical tradition I know of. But here goes
anyway....


	Since there is no hard evidence to support the existence of a
	deity, one would normally work (in a typical analysis of a
	non-religious oriented phenomena) from the assumption that the
	thing for which there is no evidence does not exist.  Without
	evidence showing proof of a thing's existence, or its observed
	effect on the "physical" world, via Occam people would
	generally assume that it does not exist until evidence of a
	viable nature presents itself.  The *possibility* that it may
	exist is left open, but such a possibility evinces itself if
	and only if evidence is presented to support it.

Delete the word ``deity'' and replace it with ``religious
experience''.  Now we have something which is verifiable. You can hook
up mystics of all flavours and have them go into trances and measure
things like Alpha waves, and lowered heart beats, and lowered blood
pressure, and increased electrical activity on their skin. You cannot
read their minds and find out what they are subjectively experiencing.
It is interesting that all mystics seem to talk of the same feelings,
despite different religious traditions in which to find a context fot
their experiences.

Religious experiences are direct, and (I believe) do not involve
concept formation. Instead they are direct sensation/impression of
divinity. When it comes time to think and reflect upon ones
experiences, though, one must think in concepts which are reprentations
of reality *in* the mind. The represenation is not the experience,
however.

Every religious system can serve as a vehicle for understanding and
contemplating such experiences. if you use a system which has a belief
in a deity who is external to the world, it is not surprising that one
would interpret one's experience as ``I met God''. If one uses another
tradition one can describe the same (well, close enough in description
that I presume they are the same) experience as ``I am God'' or ``God
is me'' or ``Everything is God'', or even ``Life is Good'' or ``The
Universe is Confident''.

	However, obviously some people do believe in the existence of a
	deity despite the lack of realistic evidence.  One can only
	assume that 1) these people have a different set of criteria
	for acceptability of evidence, and/or 2) they have some vested
	interest in believing that particular outcome of analysis that
	they believe to be true.  Quite possibly both.  I think we have
	shown endless times that the nature of the subjective evidence
	offered in favor of religious belief is tainted:  How come your
	subjectivity shows a different world view than someone else's?
	Which one is right?  WHY is his/hers wrong and YOURS right?

Bingo. Now we hit the point where I think that both you and the
Christians are wrong. You are thinking in your concepts. they are
thinking in their concepts. Both of you mistake your concepts for
reality *which* *is* *something* *else* *altogether*. Then there is the
endless argument over RIGHTNESS. You both are right. You both are
wrong. In so much as you cling to your concepts rather than to your
experience, you are distorting and thus wrong. There is no way to avoid
this and still think. You are thus right. It is only when you insist
that your concepts adequately describe reality (in the sense of being
comprehensive, rather than, say, useful) that you are making a
fundamental WRONG sort of error.

	If he/she is being deceived, how can you be sure it is not YOU
	who has been deceived?  (Not to mention the way the brain is
	known to impose patterns onto events/phenomena/observations
	that upon closer examination are shown to be quite wrong---like
	"recognizing" someone at the airport and realizing that it
	wasn't them after all.)

Mystic traditions call this ``self-deception''. They warn about it a
lot.  Some traditions say that you can never be sure that you are not
being deceived, and others claim that freedom from self-deception is
the mark of enlightenment -- and when you are enlightened you, and
everybody else will know it.

The best you can do is compare your experience with others. It also
helps to have a good guru/spiritual leader. But the system isn't
perfect, alas....

	With that in mind, the only other reason that such people might
	readily accept the notion of the existence of a god is
	precisely because they already believe it to be so:  they hold
	the existence of god as an assumption, an axiom, and work ALL
	analysis of the world from there.  "Why is life full of
	problems?  Because god designed the world that way knowing that
	it would be best for us not to have a perfect life but rather
	to struggle and learn."  Contrast this with the simpler, less
	presumptive notion that life is full of problems because all
	those problems are simply a part of the natural flow of things,
	based on what we observe and codify as physical laws.  We
	experience them as problems because they conflict with our
	wishes for a world ordered around our lives, and because such
	conflicts are inevitable in a world with trillions of organisms
	and objects caught up in the "natural flow".  As opposed to
	assuming, for whatever reason, the existence of an ultimate
	"good" force that "designed" the universe to be a certain way.

This notion that what we preceive as problems are as a result our
desires to have the world ordered around our lives, rather than ``the
natural flow''... gee, that could be taken from any Buddhist text you
care to mention. It describes viparyasa rather well, if perhaps too
succinctly.

	I contend that all such analysis of the world by religious
	believers, and the answers offered in such analysis, stem
	directly from an a priori assumption of the existence of god.
	Lewis' works are prime examples.  Jeff Sargent, for example,
	has used the phraseology "Why would you want to believe that
	human beings are 'nothing but' lab specimens?"  (... when you
	have this other possibility to believe instead.)  "Wanting to
	believe", the desirability of holding certain beliefs as
	opposed to others owing to their intrinsic "aesthetic" value
	rather than their veracity, becomes a factor in forming belief
	systems for certain people.

Given that one has the hard thing, called a religious experience, to
think about, it would be very unlikely if the desirability to certain
beliefs played no role. This seems essential to the process of concept
formation, though, and not particular to religion.

	Thus my question is: why DO you presume the existence of god as
	a given (obviously I and many others simply do not), if not
	because you have some vested interest in believing that it is
	so, what I have endlessly and perhaps monotonously labelled as
	WISHFUL THINKING?

I don't, of course, but what I want to ask you is how do you explain
religious experiences? And, of course, if yo think that your concepts
are RIGHT, how can you prove this?


	Given that we are dealing with two forms of logic, one of which
	starts off making the assumption that god exists and the other
	of which does not, a person using one form of logic cannot
	possibly convince the person using the other form of logic to
	accept his position.  This is not always true, because the two
	forms of logic and their two sets of assumptions are NOT
	disjoint sets.  In fact, for most reasonable people, they are
	practically equivalent, with the addition of the a priori
	assumption of god being the only major difference between the
	two sets.  Conclusions drawn from the two sets of assumptions,
	however, can and will (and do) wind up being radically
	different.  The "impossibility of convincing" that I mentioned
	above only comes into play when the "extra" assumption has a
	role in the formation of some conclusion.

Why are you so involved with your concepts that you think that playing
logic games with them is productive? Go out and meditate for a
while.... :-)

Beyond this you talk about things which can and have happened when
people confuse their concepts for reality. Here I agree totally. But
you missed part of the argument...

Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura

rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Professor Wagstaff) (03/04/85)

> In article <589@pyuxd.UUCP>, Professor Wagstaff (what kind of Jewish
> name is this, Rich?) writes:

It must be a Jewish name.  Groucho Marx used it.  ("My name is Captain
Spaulding, the African explorer, did someone call me 'schnorrer'?  Hooray,
hooray, hooray!")

>>Since there is no hard evidence to support the existence of a deity, one would
>>normally work (in a typical analysis of a non-religious oriented phenomena)
>>from the assumption that the thing for which there is no evidence does not
>>exist.  Without evidence showing proof of a thing's existence, or its observed
>>effect on the "physical" world, via Occam people would generally assume that
>>it does not exist until evidence of a viable nature presents itself.  The
>>*possibility* that it may exist is left open, but such a possibility evinces
>>itself if and only if evidence is presented to support it.  [ROSEN]

> I don't understand your logic at all, Professor.  I use Newton's laws of
> motion all the time--AND I BELIEVE IN THEM!--yet I can never hope to prove
> them!  All that I can say is that Newton's laws of motion (for non-relativ-
> istic motion, of course) are not inconsistent with any known       
> observations or experiments.  These laws--and all scientific laws--can
> never be proven.  However, their general applicability to a wide range
> of EXPERIENTIAL evidence INDICATES that these laws do "exist". [BILL PETER]

Nowhere in the previous paragraph did I mention the word "proof".  You can
say much more than what you've said.  You can say that no known phenomenon
has resulted in an inconsistency with those laws (until new laws had to be
formulated to more accurately describe motion at much higher speeds based
on relativity).

> Similarly, with the existence of a deity.  There is no way to prove the
> existence of a deity, but a good case can be made for the fact that
> certain peculiar physical coincidences and the structure of mathematical
> and physical laws INDICATES to many intelligent people the existence of a  
> creator.  Note the existence of such a creator is not inconsistent with
> any known physical law or experimental observation.

Not similarly at all.  The point being that the existence of a deity is just
an opinion that people have of the universe:  they (these "many intelligent
people" you describe) contend that the structure of the universe IMPLIES or
would seem to imply the existence of a creator.  "Intelligent people" should
(but they don't necessarily) know better than to play teleological games with
"it seems that this was 'designed' with *this* purpose in mind" when such
presumptions are in fact only in the eye of the beholder.  Moreover, taking
this opinion and utilizing it as an axiom is highly suspect in any viable
analysis of the universe.
-- 
"When you believe in things that you don't understand, you'll suffer.
 Superstition ain't the way."		Rich Rosen  ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr

mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) (03/06/85)

Eeeeeyargh!  400 lines of illogical argument.  I'm going to snipe at some
of the jucier tidbits.

In article <4898@cbscc.UUCP> pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) writes:
> ...  Trying to
> put things down in words helps me; even if everyone else thinks it's trash.

First, I hope to show that Paul is correct that everyone will think his
arguments trash.  "Helps" is a subjective notion: Paul may be "helped" to
more firmly believe in erroneous arguments.

For example, the following excerpt is from the "any analogy, no matter
how inappropriate constitutes an argument (so what if it isn't valid,
I said it wasn't exact anyway, didn't I?)" school of argument.

> ... As a crude illustration, pretend the evidence for the existence
> of screwdrivers had never "presented itself".  All you know about are hammers,
> nails, and wood screws.  You could then say that you are justified in assuming
> that screwdrivers don't exist, that hammers don't turn wood screws and
> therefore wood screws can't be turned.  We must pound both nails and screws
> in with hammers.  You could conclude that the screw is an inefficent sort of
> nail, because all you know about are hammers, or you might propose that
> something like a screwdriver exists though the hard evidence does not support
> it.  There you have two differing conclusions with the same "hard evidence".
> Either of them could completely explain the evidence.  If screwdrivers do
> not in fact exist, then the screw is a inefficent sort of nail which may
> look more interesting than a regular nail but is less functional.
> 
> But this is an object oriented analogy.  Is God an object like a screwdriver?
> If so then your method of analysis should work and sufficently encompass
> the issue of whether or not the object exists.  If God is not an object, he
> may still be a subject.  (The subject of this discussion for example.)  Then,
> at best your method of analysis is very limited.   It may only be able to grasp
> effects of God's existence which could be explained by something else.  
> God is not an object in the sense that we may be presented with his existence
> (like that of the screwdriver).  It seems that you are trying to say that since
> your methods cannot encompass the issue of whether or not God exists, then
> you feel justified in assuming he doesn't.  You can explain evidence presented
> for his existence in the same way you could explain the existence of screws
> without positing the existence of a screwdriver (Occam's Razor).

Did you spot how the analogy is bad?  Which of the several ways?  The most
appalling is the hammer.  What does that correspond to?  Does it correspond
to the God of some other religion, whom we are familiar with?

Having created a bad analogy, Paul then shamelessly tries to misapply Rich's
method of analysis to it.  This is the famous "straw man" fallacy of argument.

Much of the rest of Paul's argument is built on this foundation of sand
(to paraphrase from one of his favorite books.)

> ... So, we haven't excluded the possibility that although God isn't an
> object that you can go anytime and observe proof of its existence, he
> still may reveal himself to persons.  We may not be able to penetrate
> to God on our own, but that doesn't mean he can't penetrate to us.  Of
> course, you'll say this is subjective.  I agree.  But subjectivity
> doesn't automatically exclude accurate perceptions of reality.

Here, Paul says something that most of us would be willing to agree with.
The important question this raises is "how do we deal with contradictary
subjective perceptions?"  Let's see how Paul deals with this question.

> Another thing you seem to tacitly rule out is the testamony of others.  What's
> wrong with provisionally accepting God's existence based on the fact that
> many will tell me he exists and that I consider many of them to be rational
> people of sound judgement.  I know that South America exists in this way
> and also that Abraham Lincoln lived.  I think these are valid assumptions to
> make based on what I consider sound testamony.  They are provisional beliefs,
> however.  I can't prove that they're true.  I may someday find out that they
> are false, but as it is these beliefs help explain some things that I
> experience here in Columbus OH and now in 1985 (e.g. Headlines about political
> unrest in a South America and the fact that Blacks are no longer slaves).
> I cannot prove these things in their entirety (based on hard evidence that
> I have).  The same holds true for God's existence....

First, Paul lists a bunch of things that weren't and aren't contradicted.
Historical and geographical revisionism are rare enough that we usually
don't get contrasting subjective accounts.

Then SUDDENLY (_BOOM_) he tries to slip in "god's existence".  This is
another classical fallacy of argument, summarized as "overcoming resistance
to a doubtful proposition by a preliminary statement of a few easily
accepted propositions."  (Pg 175 of How To Think Straight, by Robert Thouless.)

People do have different subjective perceptions of gods.  Hindus are visited
by members of their pantheon, etc.  Jerry Falwell and Ayatollah Khomeni
both "talk to" putatively the same god, and can't agree on anything.

This fallacy, used to slip in "evidence" of god, is another basis of much
of Paul's argument.  Like the following rhetorical questions.

> Again, what constitutes "realistic" evidence?  I simply disagree that there
> is lack of realistic evidence.  You may look at the same evidence and say
> its not realistic.  So what is realistic?  What is real?  

Oooh.  What is real.  That's deep.  Lawdy, look at me shaking.  Here Paul
is threatening that if his "evidence" can't be "real", then neither is
yours, so there, nyah nyah.  Give us a break.  The essence of Rosen's
argument is being able to identify that which is NOT identifiable as
real (such as visions of god) and that which we can agree upon as real
(such as South America.)

More sniping in the next article.
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh

mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) (03/06/85)

I will now present to you Paul's finest achievement: Scientific Godism.
It's just like (surprise) Scientific Creationism.

In article <4899@cbscc.UUCP> pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) writes:
> Here is where I think your argument gets off on the wrong tack.  You conlude
> that belief that there is a God to be an assumption.  There is another
> possibility:  It is a proposition held to explain questions (often metaphyical)
> that we encounter about our own existence and that of the world we live in.
> In this sense I do not take God's existence to be axiomatic.  I offer it
> as a consistent explanation of the world as I encounter it.  It may not be
> the only one, but as far as *I* know it is the best for many things I consider.
> 
> I think that your example only appears to be less presumptive on your part.
> You haven't removed the "deity" you have only renamed it "natural flow".
> Show me the same evidence for the existence of natural flow (and it's
> performance of the functions you claim for it) that you want for
> the existence of God...

See?  Just as belief in creation is a Theory, so belief in the christian
god is a Proposition.  :-(  And he does it with a little miracle called
deification.  When Rich lumps together the unknown driving principles of
the universe under the term "natural flow", Paul leaps up and says
"prove it exists, and if you can't then leave me and my god alone."

The dishonest thing about all this is that here is where Occam's razor
should properly be applied, not as in all the places in the previous
note where Paul tried to misapply it.  Paul overlooks the Allah
proposition, the Buddha proposition, the Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva
proposition and a zillion others just like his.  What all those
"propositions" have in common, is an assumption of one or more deities.

These "propositions" all share the "natural flow" with the scientific
viewpoint.  Things happen-- that is natural flow.  These "propositions"
just use a diety to power or direct the happenings.  Thus, the diety is
an excess assumption.  It may exist, but it gives no more explanatory
power.

-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh

pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) (03/08/85)

This two part response to Rich was posed last week.  I apparently did
not propagate so I'm reposting.

Rich, your article definitely shows that you are capable presenting argument
in a reasonable tone.  I appreciate that.  It also stands above your other
writing for a couple of other reasons:  1) You are not just destroying argument
with a sledge hammer, but seem to be giving the subject more carful
consideration.  2) You are trying to give some support for your own view, not
just tearing apart that of others.  Even with all this I still feel like
I must be crazy to post this response.  What remains to be seen is if my
response will be given any thoughtful consideration or a malicious hacking and
twisting.  I still have a very bad taste in my mouth from what you've done
with some of my articles, Rich.  I'm starting to care less, though.  Trying to
put things down in words helps me; even if others don't think much of it.

>Since there is no hard evidence to support the existence of a deity, one would
>normally work (in a typical analysis of a non-religious oriented phenomena)
>from the assumption that the thing for which there is no evidence does not
>exist.  Without evidence showing proof of a thing's existence, or its observed
>effect on the "physical" world, via Occam people would generally assume that
>it does not exist until evidence of a viable nature presents itself.  The
>*possibility* that it may exist is left open, but such a possibility evinces
>itself if and only if evidence is presented to support it.

What makes you think that evidence used to analyse non-religious phenomena
also applies to religious phenomena?  Does this really point to the conclusion
that God doesn't exist or could it be showing the limited applicability of
your methods?  As a crude illustration, pretend the evidence for the existence
of screwdrivers had never "presented itself".  All you know about are hammers,
nails, and wood screws.  You could then say that you are justified in assuming
that screwdrivers don't exist, that hammers don't turn wood screws and
therefore wood screws can't be turned.  We must pound both nails and screws
in with hammers.  You could conclude that the screw is an inefficent sort of
nail because all you know about are hammers, or you might propose that
something like a screwdriver exists though the hard evidence does not support
it.  There you have two differing conclusions with the same "hard evidence".
Either of them could completely explain the evidence.  If screwdrivers do
not in fact exist, then the screw is a inefficent sort of nail which may
look more interesting than a regular nail but is less functional.

But this is an object oriented analogy.  Is God an object like a screwdriver?
If so then your method of analysis should work and sufficently encompass
the issue of whether or not the object exists.  If God is not an object, he
may still be a subject.  (The subject of this discussion for example.)  Then,
at best your method of analysis is very limited.   It may only be able to grasp
effects of God's existence which could be explained by something else.  
I don't think God is an object in the sense that we may be presented with
his existence (like that of the screwdriver).  It seems that you are trying
to say that since your methods cannot encompass the issue of whether or
not God exists, then you feel justified in assuming he doesn't.  You can
explain evidence presented for his existence in the same way you could
explain the existence of screws without positing the existence of a
screwdriver (Occam's Razor).

The problem with your critierion for proof is that it demands that God be
an object that is available for examination.  If he isn't you assume he
doesn't exist.  So for God to prove himself to you he would have to make
himself an object; a type of machine that produces conclusive evidence on
demand.  If God actually isn't this way then you justify the assumption
that he doesn't exist.  There are problems with this objectified constraint
for God's existence.  Just about any physical proof you could name (some
act for God to perform to prove his existence) would fall short of being
conclusive for a number of reasons.  1) It could be attributed to natural
as yet unexplained causes.  This happens alot.  Some phenomena will convince
some but not others.  2) If it is sufficient to prove God's existence it
will only do so for those who actually see or experience it.  So there
is the additional requirement that everyone be able to see it.  Even then
there's no gaurentee that everyone will draw the same conclusion from the
evidence.  So if God has sufficiently proven himself to me but not to
you the question still remains (i.e "Does God exist or not?").  3) An
observable event may only have temporal impact.  That is, it may have to
be repeated generations later.  But if the original event was sufficent
to prove that God definitely exists why should it have to be reproduced
in every place and in every time?  4) If God is not a machine but has
a will for those who beleive in him, then why should he be concerned about
just proving the mere fact of his existence to everyone?  If he did, what
is to prevent them from saying, "OK, God exists.  So What?".  There
is no gaurentee that people will follow the implications of his existence
or even understand them.  They might as well not believe. 

The whole point if the previous long paragraph is that I could take
any concieveable "evidence" that meets your criterion for viability and
"skepticize" it.  It seems to me that by insisting that God objectify
himself you necessarily require that he not be God at all, but a continual
evidence producing machine or some kind of genie in a bottle.  All I
can conclude is that the existence of God (especially the Christian
God) cannot be proven under your constraints.  But I don't think that
it compells me to assume God dosn't exist.  Why should I agree that
your constraints encompass the issue of God's existence well enough
to even justify the assumption that he doesn't?  You may say that
your constraints are all we have.  I say that that's not all *I* have.

So, we haven't excluded the possibility that although God isn't an
object that you can go anytime and observe proof of its existence, he
still may reveal himself to persons.  We may not be able to penetrate
to God on our own, but that doesn't mean he can't penetrate to us.  Of
course, you'll say this is subjective.  I agree.  But subjectivity
doesn't automatically exclude accurate perceptions of reality.  They
aren't as tangible with God as with physical, object oriented things.
There is no reason to assume God is less real because of this.  I understand
Newton's physics much better than Einstein's.  Sometimes the concepts
of the latter make my head spin when I try to grasp them.  But I can
still except them and work with them when "hard evidence" often
escapes me.

Another thing you seem to tacitly rule out is the testamony of others.  What's
wrong with provisionally accepting God's existence based on the fact that
many will tell me he exists and that I consider many of them to be rational
people of sound judgement.  I know that South America exists in this way
and also that Abraham Lincoln lived.  I think these are valid assumptions to
make based on what I consider sound testamony.  They are provisional beliefs,
however.  I can't prove that they're true.  I may someday find out that they
are false, but as it is these beliefs help explain some things that I
experience here in Columbus OH and now in 1985 (e.g. Headlines about political
unrest in a South America and the fact that Blacks are no longer slaves).
I cannot prove these things in their entirety (based on hard evidence that
I have).  The same holds true for God's existence.  Scientific investigation
does not encompass the issue of his existence by virtue of God's nature.  His
existence does explain some things I exprience and questions I ask.  I'm
not claiming that it's the only thing that could adaquately explain them,
but to me it seems resonable and the best.  

So is evidence self interpreting?  I think not.  You assume your own
framework for interpreting evidence allows you to draw valid conclusions.
What constitutes evidence of a "viable" nature?  To me and you, it may be
different things.  So how does evidence "present itself"?  I maintain that
in the act of its being presented some interpretation has gone unnoticed.
You assume that the explanation that is consistent with your worldview is
correct.

At the end of this article you deny that you assume there is no God.
Yet here you are defending that very assumption.  You expect everyone to
agree that there is insufficient evidence for God's existence (and that
the lack of "hard" evidence validates your assumption).  I don't think
the methods you limit yourself to can ever address the issue completely
enough to justify the assumption that God does or doesn't exist.

Now here you go again slipping Occam's razor in as your authority.  Lot's of
explainations that turn out to be correct would fail Occam's razor (e.g.
the existence of screwdrivers in the above example.  The existence of
a screwdriver is not necessary to explain the existence of screws).  It's
a rusty tool.  This has been gone over before between you and others (viz.
Torek and Wingate).  I am in agreement with their position.  

>However, obviously some people do believe in the existence of a deity despite
>the lack of realistic evidence.  One can only assume that 1) these people have
>a different set of criteria for acceptability of evidence, and/or 2) they have
>some vested interest in believing that particular outcome of analysis that they
>believe to be true.  Quite possibly both.

Again, what constitutes "realistic" evidence?  I simply disagree that there
is lack of realistic evidence.  You may look at the same evidence and say
its not realistic.  So what is realistic?  What is real?  

Also your position can easily be reversed and applied to those believe
God does not exist.  You have different criteria than I, or you may
have a vested interest in God's non-existence, or both.  It seems that
the purpose of your article here is to demonstrate that your position
has some inherent advantage over mine (less presumptive).  I don't see
how it does.  I think mine is at least equally valid.

>I think we have shown endless times
>that the nature of the subjective evidence offered in favor of religious belief
>is tainted:  How come your subjectivity shows a different world view than
>someone else's?  Which one is right?  WHY is his/hers wrong and YOURS right? 
>If he/she is being deceived, how can you be sure it is not YOU who has been
>deceived?  (Not to mention the way the brain is known to impose patterns onto
>events/phenomena/observations that upon closer examination are shown to be
>quite wrong---like "recognizing" someone at the airport and realizing that it
>wasn't them after all.)

Who is "we"?  Anyway, the argument cuts both ways.  All subjective evidence
is tainted.  You haven't shown any advantage of your point of view over mine.
Why is my assment of the evidence tainted and yours not?  Is it not just
as likely that you are being decieved as I?  You seem to make demands for
evidence (events/phenomena/observations presumably) as if you expect to make
an objective asessment (at least more so than mine).  Yet here you brush
aside the asessment of others on the basis of their faulty perceptions.  What
makes yours more reliable than anyone else's?  What makes you able to come
to more realistic conclusions about the things I experience than me?

			*** CONTINUED ***
-- 

Paul Dubuc	cbscc!pmd

pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) (03/08/85)

Part 2 of my response to Rich's article:

>With that in mind, the only other reason that such people might readily accept
>the notion of the existence of a god is precisely because they already believe
>it to be so:  they hold the existence of god as an assumption, an axiom, and
>work ALL analysis of the world from there.  "Why is life full of problems? 
>Because god designed the world that way knowing that it would be best for us
>not to have a perfect life but rather to struggle and learn."  Contrast this
>with the simpler, less presumptive notion that life is full of problems because
>all those problems are simply a part of the natural flow of things, based on
>what we observe and codify as physical laws.  We experience them as problems
>because they conflict with our wishes for a world ordered around our lives,
>and because such conflicts are inevitable in a world with trillions of
>organisms and objects caught up in the "natural flow".  As opposed to assuming,
>for whatever reason, the existence of an ultimate "good" force that "designed"
>the universe to be a certain way.

Here is where I think your argument gets off on the wrong tack.  You conlude
that belief that there is a God to be an assumption.  There is another
possibility:  It is a proposition held to explain questions (often metaphyical)
that we encounter about our own existence and that of the world we live in.
In this sense I do not take God's existence to be axiomatic.  I offer it
as a consistent explanation of the world as I encounter it.  It may not be
the only one, but as far as *I* know it is the best for many things I consider.

I think that your example only appears to be less presumptive on your part.
You haven't removed the "deity" you have only renamed it "natural flow".
Show me the same evidence for the existence of natural flow (and it's
performance of the functions you claim for it) that you want for
the existence of God.  Are our wishes part of that natural flow or separate
from it?  If they are part of it why do they conflict? How did such conflict
arise and why do we even percieve it as conflict?  Why and how is the
perception sustained?  If our wishes are separate from the natural flow
then you have opened the door to something that at least may not be rooted
in what is natural.  Your world view does not allow you to do that, however.
So your natural flow has produced something that to me seems to be unnatural;
wishes and a consiousness that pretend to asess the natural world somewhat
objectively as if it weren't itself controlled by that natural flow.  Here
you run into the possibility of you own objectivity being a delusion and
I think you must ascribe to your "natural flow" some deific functions
or charactistics (such are not demonstrable with "hard evidence") in order
to trust your objectivity when considering things beyond the physical
realm.

Some arbitrary series of natural events must have led humans to the ability to
hold these perceptions.  The ability and even the perceptions themselves
are somehow "caused" in the natural flow of things.  But to be caused is
not to be proven.  Determining that something *is* is a different matter
from determining wheter something is true or false.  Cause does not imply
proof.  I can cause a certain number to appear on the display of my
calculator by pushing buttons, but the fact that I caused the number
doesn't make it meaningful and the determination as to wheter the number
is true or false depends on some factors that are external to my causing
the number to appear.

Yet our own consciousness pretends to come to true and false perceptions
about the very natural processes that supposedly brought it
into being and sustain it?  How?  Maybe all our perceptions and wishes are
workable delusions,  but they are all we have  we must believe them or
we get nowhere.  Very well.  But here lies your hidden "deity".  Can you
explain (supporting your explanation with "hard evidence") how something
that is the product of the natural flow also trancends that flow in order
to make "viable" asumptions about the very things that produce and
control it?  Objective judgements require some measure of trancendence
over what is being judged.  How do your perceptions of things like evidence
achieve that?  At this point I think your "natural flow" takes on the
characteristics of a deity in order to achieve the feat.  Your deity is
pantheistic.  The only difference I see between a Naturalist
and a Pantheist is that the former rules out religious experiences as
such ...  unnecessarily, I think.  (Could this be right, Laura?)

>I contend that all such analysis of the world by religious believers, and the
>answers offered in such analysis, stem directly from an a priori assumption of
>the existence of god.  Lewis' works are prime examples.  Jeff Sargent, for
>example, has used the phraseology "Why would you want to believe that human
>beings are 'nothing but' lab specimens?"  (... when you have this other
>possibility to believe instead.)  "Wanting to believe", the desirability of
>holding certain beliefs as opposed to others owing to their intrinsic
>"aesthetic" value rather than their veracity, becomes a factor in forming
>belief systems for certain people.

Another note about Lewis:  If you are going to assert that Lewis' works
are a prime example of anything, I hope you have read them.  If you haven't
and I have how do you expect to convince me if I disagree with your
assertion?  What reason is there for me to believe that you might even
know what you're talking about?  The question then becomes, who are
you trying to convince?  Those who have read Lewis, or those who haven't?
I think that you should only use what you have read to support your position.
Cite those particular works if you will, don't make blanket assumptions
about all of it.  Would I be justified in saying that Aristotle's 'Ethics'
is a prime example of something, if I have only read his 'Politics', or
nothing of his at all?

Still, you haven't removed this factor for your own beliefs.  You say the
same thing as Jeff in effect:  "Why do I have to beleive in a god to help
explain certain things when I have this other possibility instead?"  Your
position doesn't make you inherently immune from "wanting (not) to believe"
any more than Jeff's does for him.  What makes yours the de facto standard?

>Given that we are dealing with two forms of logic, one of which starts off
>making the assumption that god exists and the other of which does not, a person
>using one form of logic cannot possibly convince the person using the other
>form of logic to accept his position.  This is not always true, because the
>two forms of logic and their two sets of assumptions are NOT disjoint sets. 
>In fact, for most reasonable people, they are practically equivalent, with the
>addition of the a priori assumption of god being the only major difference
>between the two sets.  Conclusions drawn from the two sets of assumptions,
>however, can and will (and do) wind up being radically different.  The
>"impossibility of convincing" that I mentioned above only comes into play when
>the "extra" assumption has a role in the formation of some conclusion. 
>Religions have (individually and collectively) formed whole volumes of such
>conclusions and codified them.  In many cases, the "existence of god"
>assumption doesn't even enter into certain of these conclusions, and they form
>viable conclusions about the world at large and life itself. (Some have devoted
>entire lifetimes to thinking and writing about such analysis and conclusions.)
>In other cases, assumptions about the nature of god and "god's word" take
>precedence over both scientific investigation and individual human needs.

One thing that you seem to have gotten confused here is deductive and
inductive methods.  I would agree that that there is no logical, deductive
proof for the existence of God.  I rather think natural theology is a dead
end.  We cannot deduce God's existence based only on the things around us.
However, when you talk about scientific investigation you are shifting
gears.  Science often involves positing explanations for observable phenomena.
These are not proven explanations in the logical sense.  They are positions
to be disproven; working models that may allow us to make sense out of
what we see.  *Anologous* to this (not identical to it) is the propositional
truth that God exists.  There are many things that just make a lot more
sense to me if I include him in the picture ... and I can't honestly rule
him out of the picture.

>The conflict comes into play where "existence of god" assumptions (compounded
>by assumptions about what IS "god's word" and who is qualified to be god's
>authority representative on earth) are contradicted by rational inquisitive
>analysis and investigation of the world itself, or by individual human needs
>(arbitrarily?) denied/forbidden/not met by "god's word".  Those who make such
>assumptions may deny the claims of the investigators (in "protest") solely
>because the claims would force them to change their whole view of the
>universe based on the evidence.  If those people are in positions of earthly
>authority, we may witness repression of such ideas, and of people who hold
>them.  We HAVE witnessed such repression in the past, and we may be witnessing
>it again today.

Here you step a little over the threshold of whether or not God exists to
the conflicts that arise when we accept that he does.  This is stepping
out of metaphysics into philosophy of religion or comparative theology.
Religious beliefs can be compared.  They are not all compatible, but
neither are the mutually exclusive.  They all present their own answers
to the same sort of questions.  (E.g. Who are we?  Why are we here?  For
what purpose, if any?  What should we do, if anything, about evil?  What
is evil?  Does God care?  Why do we often feel compelled to ask 'why?'? :-)
... On and on.)  In your example of an answer to why there are so
many problems in the world, I think you gave a description of how
they might be caused, but not why they are there.  I think your
answer to "why?" reduces to "It just is", or "Never mind 'why', I'll
explain 'how'".  "Why?" isn't really a valid question in your world
view for some of these things, is it?  "Why" asks for a reason; an
apparent purpose, not a mechanism.  I think comparing answers to the
"why" questions help people to ajudicate various religious beliefs.
It helps is to better decide what to do about certain problems and
if feeling like we need to do something is a right thing to do and
if doing something is really worthwhile and meaningful.  Lot's of people
don't stop to ask these questions, others (like myself) think they're
important.  If the people of various religious faiths really communicated
with one another instead of fighting holy wars, better choices might
become more apparent than they are.

The conflict and repression does not go away when you remove the existence
of God assumption.  It exists with or without it.  Anyone who is in a position
of earthly authority will have the same temptations to repress (directly
or inderectly) opposing views whether they believe in God or not.  The
Soviet repression of challenges to Lamarckism and Trofim Lysenko's jealous
guarding of his "vernalization" technique (claimed to boost the Soviet
winter wheat crop) are good examples.  (See "Betrayers of the Truth" by
Broad and Wade, Ch. 10).

In any case the conflict works both ways.  Atheists are just as likely
to deny theistic claims in protest to the change in world view
it would require.  Why should I go along with your assumption that your
view of the universe is correct "based on the evidence".  As I said before,
evidence may support more than one conclusion.  Conclusions are not
inherent in evidence, they are subject to the interpretation of such
evidence.

>The points are: 1) Given that evidence contradicts, if not the basic assumption
>that there IS a god, further assumptions that certain texts labelled as god's
>word are what they are purported to be (absolute truth), what is the basis for
>retaining those assumptions? and 2) Given that repression as described above
>does indeed take place in the advent of that which contradicts the status quo,
>can we afford to let ANY group, religious or otherwise, wield enormous power
>over people's lives when the basis for their governing involves, not rational
>thinking, but "does it conform to pre-conceived assumed ways of thinking?"

I cannot give you your first "given".  I disputed the notion that evidence
speaks your conclusions the way you imply and even the notion of evidence
itself as you use it.  You see evidence through your eyes.  I see it through
mine.  I think the god that supports your perceptions of evidence as being
accurate is a hidden one.  It is contained in the perceptions themselves.
I think mine must be trancendent to those perceptions for me to trust them
in the first place, so I'll work with that.

I agree fully with point 2 above, provided that "ANY group" means the one
you're in also and as long as my world view doesn't automatically exclude
me from supporting my own ideas in the "public square" simply because they
are religiously based.  One of the pre-concieved assumed ways of thinking
I see here is that the atheistic viewpoint is inherently more objective
than any theistic one; that the "evidence" is oviously on their side (obvious
to whom?).  I see no reason to assume that, of course.  I claim an equal
right to represent my own views.   Despite what some people feel obliged
to point out, having a religious world view does not automatically mean
that I aspire to dicatorship.  Some feel they can judge that better than
I do, it seems.

>Despite what some people feel obliged to point out, I do NOT assume that there
>is NO god, I simply do not assume that there is one.  The two are not
>equivalent.  My point is not to show that "god doesn't exist" (I've speculated
>on the net several times about what such a deity might be liked if it does
>exist), but rather to show that there may be something very wrong with certain
>notions of "god"-ness, when those notions were formulated based on presumptions
>about the nature of the universe that may seem "appealing", not based on
>evidence about reality, and when the premises surrounding those notions appear
>to be contradictory and malformed.

I'll grant you your assertion that you don't assume that there is no God.
But you made a lot of claims that that assumption was supported by 
evidence.  Why was that necessary if you don't make the assumption?
Also, as I have tried to point out the existence of God is not necessarily
and assuption on which everything else is based.  It is a proposition,
just like your belief that there is no God.  My point was not to show
that God exists, just to show that your notions of what constitutes
conclusive "evidence about reality" are not inherently better than mine.

-- 

Paul Dubuc	cbscc!pmd

flink@umcp-cs.UUCP (Paul Torek) (03/08/85)

	My disposal of Occam's Razor was not intended as a denial
that the Occam fans are onto something about the need for evidence.
Paul Dubuc suggests that God is the best explanation of certain
metaphysical questions (and perhaps he would also include subjective
experiences as indicating God as explanation, too).  I think that
is an interesting suggestion, but there is only metaphysical question
I see him discussing, and it won't do the job.
	I have jotted down a few passages from his article and hope
I'm not taking them out of context.  Dubuc says 
	"perceptions ... are ... [in Rich Rosen's world-view] 
	'caused' in the natural flow ... But to be caused is not
	to be proven. ... Cause does not imply proof...
	...Objective judgements require some measure of transcendance
	over what is being judged ..."
The point seems to be that if Naturalism is[were] true, all our
perceptions and judgements about reality are *caused* -- sound
familiar?  It should, since C.S. Lewis tried to make a *reductio
ad absurdum* out of this point.  Lewis stated, and Dubuc is hinting,
that if our perceptions/judgements are caused then they can't be
trusted.  WRONG.  Cause does not imply proof, *but it doesn't rule
it out either*.  Yes, our perceptions are caused, but they are
accurate anyway (at least most of the time).  Furthermore, there is
a good Naturalistic explanation (based on the evolutionary advantage
of accurate perceivers) of this fact -- *of course* our perceptions
are mostly trustworthy: if not, we wouldn't have survived.
--
Agnostic: One who doesn't know, and admits it.
Atheist:  One who doesn't know, but won't admit it.  :->
Believer: One who doesn't know that he doesn't know. :-> :->

padraig@utastro.UUCP (Padraig Houlahan) (03/10/85)

Here are some comments regarding some of the points raised in the above
article.

>>Since there is no hard evidence to support the existence of a deity, one would
>>normally work (in a typical analysis of a non-religious oriented phenomena)
>>from the assumption that the thing for which there is no evidence does not
>>exist.  Without evidence showing proof of a thing's existence, or its observed
>>effect on the "physical" world, via Occam people would generally assume that
>>it does not exist until evidence of a viable nature presents itself.  The
>>*possibility* that it may exist is left open, but such a possibility evinces
>>itself if and only if evidence is presented to support it.
>
>What makes you think that evidence used to analyse non-religious phenomena
>also applies to religious phenomena?  Does this really point to the conclusion
>that God doesn't exist or could it be showing the limited applicability of
>your methods?  As a crude illustration, pretend the evidence for the existence
>of screwdrivers had never "presented itself".  All you know about are hammers,
>nails, and wood screws.  You could then say that you are justified in assuming
>that screwdrivers don't exist, that hammers don't turn wood screws and
>therefore wood screws can't be turned.  We must pound both nails and screws
>in with hammers.  You could conclude that the screw is an inefficent sort of
>nail, because all you know about are hammers, or you might propose that
>something like a screwdriver exists though the hard evidence does not support
>it.  There you have two differing conclusions with the same "hard evidence".
>Either of them could completely explain the evidence.  If screwdrivers do
>not in fact exist, then the screw is a inefficent sort of nail which may
>look more interesting than a regular nail but is less functional.
>......................
>......................
>Now here you go again slipping Occam's razor in as your authority.  Lot's of
>explainations that turn out to be correct would fail Occam's razor (e.g.
>the existence of screwdrivers in the above example.  The existence of
>a screwdriver is not necessary to explain the existence of screws).  It's
>a rusty tool.  This has been gone over before between you and others (viz.
>Torek and Wingate).  I am in agreement with their position.  


This is just the argument from design in a clever guise. It is easy
to cite the hammer and screw since we cannot remove from our minds
knowledge of the existence of screwdrivers. Why not, instead, try
to deduce the existence of bug-eyed-monsters in the Andromeda galaxy
from the hammer and screw?


>Again, what constitutes "realistic" evidence?  I simply disagree that there
>is lack of realistic evidence.  You may look at the same evidence and say
>its not realistic.  So what is realistic?  What is real?  

> ...All subjective evidence
>is tainted.  You haven't shown any advantage of your point of view over mine.
>Why is my assment of the evidence tainted and yours not?  Is it not just
>as likely that you are being decieved as I?  You seem to make demands for
>evidence (events/phenomena/observations presumably) as if you expect to make
>an objective asessment (at least more so than mine).  Yet here you brush
>aside the asessment of others on the basis of their faulty perceptions.  What
>makes yours more reliable than anyone else's?  What makes you able to come
>to more realistic conclusions about the things I experience than me?

>Paul Dubuc	cbscc!pmd

These quotations seem to indicate the existence of confusion  when
determining whether certain evidence is permissible, or not. The problem
with the above argument is that it relies on the poorest quality
evidence to draw the most profound conclusions. This is not to say
that the conclusions are incorrect, or that the evidence is not
to be believed, but the fact remains that subjective evidence
is notoriously shakey. Yes, you can know of the existence
of S. America based on the testamony of individuals, but credibility
must be taken into consideration. There are some who will swear
that they can project themselves to other dimensions, planets etc.
There are others who will tell you that this sentence is in front
of you. These are all testamonies. But the former is the more
profound, and unless we are willing to recognize how
foolhardy it would be to say 'it must be true, since it's a
testamony...' then we are going to end up a most ludicrous
personal philosophy. This I think is the thrust of RR's point.

There is of course the danger that we refuse to commit our lives
to something of great importance, by waiting for sufficiently good data,
but on the other hand there are so many philosophies
around with poor supporting evidence that if we do
otherwise, we must accept them all if we are to be honest and consistent
with ourselves - it's too late then to complain that "this evidence is more
subjective than ours..." 

Padraig Houlahan.

padraig@utastro.UUCP (Padraig Houlahan) (03/10/85)

> 
>                                                        ...  You conlude
> that belief that there is a God to be an assumption.  There is another
> possibility: It is a proposition held to explain questions (often metaphyical)
> that we encounter about our own existence and that of the world we live in.
> In this sense I do not take God's existence to be axiomatic.  I offer it
> as a consistent explanation of the world as I encounter it.  It may not be
> the only one, but as far as *I* know it is the best for many things I consider.
> 

This is just a way of defining away things that you can't understand. The
problem with this approach is that it contributes nothing to your
understanding of the world around you. It fails to distinguish in quality
between explanations such as a) the pot boils because it is on the stove,
and, b) God made the water boil. The first is repeatable, the second
relies on God's whim.


> The conflict and repression does not go away when you remove the existence
> of God assumption.  It exists with or without it.  Anyone who is in a position
> of earthly authority will have the same temptations to repress (directly
> or inderectly) opposing views whether they believe in God or not.  The
> Soviet repression of challenges to Lamarckism and Trofim Lysenko's jealous
> guarding of his "vernalization" technique (claimed to boost the Soviet
> winter wheat crop) are good examples.  (See "Betrayers of the Truth" by
> Broad and Wade, Ch. 10).
> 
 
.
I agree with this. But when talking about repression of challanges,
let's include the crusades, the inquisition, and
let's not forget about the problems encountered when Geocentrism was
first challanged.


> In any case the conflict works both ways.  Atheists are just as likely
> to deny theistic claims in protest to the change in world view
> it would require.  Why should I go along with your assumption that your
> view of the universe is correct "based on the evidence".  As I said before,
> evidence may support more than one conclusion.  Conclusions are not
> inherent in evidence, they are subject to the interpretation of such
> evidence.
> 

Being an Athiest I must agree with you here also. My biases make
me say that the pot boils because it is on the stove, and that it will
probably do so to-morrow if I so desire. :-)

> I'll grant you your assertion that you don't assume that there is no God.
> But you made a lot of claims that that assumption was supported by 
> evidence.  Why was that necessary if you don't make the assumption?

It is not at all necessary, but why look a gift horse in the mouth?

Padraig Houlahan

laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (03/11/85)

From Mike Huybensz:

	The dishonest thing about all this is that here is where Occam's razor
	should properly be applied, not as in all the places in the previous
	note where Paul tried to misapply it.  Paul overlooks the Allah
	proposition, the Buddha proposition, the Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva
	proposition and a zillion others just like his.  What all those
	"propositions" have in common, is an assumption of one or more deities.

These propositions do *not* have this in common. You have Rich Rosen's
disease. I know a good many Hindus and even more Buddhists who would be
appalled that you consider either the Buddha, or Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva
deities. I know fewer Moslems, but those I know would claim that Paul's
God and Allah are *exectly* *the* *same* God and so he is not ignoring
their ``propositions'' -- merely the revelation of the Koran, which is,
of course, a very serious mistake -- rather much like the mistake both
Moslems and Christians agree that the Jews made in ignoring the
revelation of the New Testament.

	These "propositions" all share the "natural flow" with the scientific
	viewpoint.  Things happen -- that is the natural flow. These "propositions"
	just use a diety to power or direct the happenings.  Thus, the diety is
	an excess assumption.  It may exist, but it gives no more explanatory
	power.

Excuse me, but things do not happen. If you think that they do you are
stuck up to your ears in maya. When you finally understand that things do
not exist and thus do not happen, then you will be a lot closer to
enlightenment. In the meantime, how about not misprepresenting Buddhism,
okay?

Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura

rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Professor Wagstaff) (03/11/85)

>>    [DUBUC]                                            ...  You conlude
>>that belief that there is a God to be an assumption.  There is another
>>possibility: It is a proposition held to explain questions (often metaphyical)
>>that we encounter about our own existence and that of the world we live in.
>>In this sense I do not take God's existence to be axiomatic.  I offer it as a
>>consistent explanation of the world as I encounter it.  It may not be the
>>only one, but as far as *I* know it is the best for many things I consider.

> This is just a way of defining away things that you can't understand. The
> problem with this approach is that it contributes nothing to your
> understanding of the world around you. It fails to distinguish in quality
> between explanations such as a) the pot boils because it is on the stove,
> and, b) God made the water boil. The first is repeatable, the second
> relies on God's whim.  [PADRAIG]

I think the religious point of view is that both views have equal potential
validity, but they choose the latter.  However, when such people make claims
about the possibility of a deity's whim controlling the universe, they would
throw out the evidence of regularity and repeatability that we DO find.  Even
if there indeed IS a god, which we probably will never know, it would appear
that, if this god did create the universe (rather than being just a
consciousness within it), it designed it with "automatic mode" in mind:  if it
had to constantly break in and fine tune, it wouldn't have done a very good
design job.  Yet some people, to support beliefs that they hold that are
without real evidence, choose to say "well, it COULD have been a direct
interference from the will of god projected into the universe" without first
1) examining the veracity of their own claims and 2) showing such an example
of interference.
-- 
"Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body?  I dunno."
				Rich Rosen 	ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr

rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Professor Wagstaff) (03/11/85)

> The point seems to be that if Naturalism is[were] true, all our
> perceptions and judgements about reality are *caused* -- sound
> familiar?  It should, since C.S. Lewis tried to make a *reductio
> ad absurdum* out of this point.  Lewis stated, and Dubuc is hinting,
> that if our perceptions/judgements are caused then they can't be
> trusted.  WRONG.  Cause does not imply proof, *but it doesn't rule
> it out either*.  Yes, our perceptions are caused, but they are
> accurate anyway (at least most of the time).  Furthermore, there is
> a good Naturalistic explanation (based on the evolutionary advantage
> of accurate perceivers) of this fact -- *of course* our perceptions
> are mostly trustworthy: if not, we wouldn't have survived. [TOREK]

Exactly.  (What?  Rosen agreeing with Torek?)  Faulty perceptive abilities
would have resulted in starvation/failure/death.  The more elaborate our
perceptive (AND interpretive) systems become, the more the interpretation
may be prone to error.  Our perceptive abilities, through our senses, would
seem to offer us a fair picture of reality.  (Will those who deny this
please step forward and explain 1) why they feel this way and 2) why they're
typing a terminal if they don't believe it.)  It is only when our more complex
brains engage in high-speed analysis (another reason we survived so well)
about very complex things (like the nature of the universe), rather than
rigorous analysis and acknowledgment that our interpretation may be based on
wishful thinking, that we see a problem.

> Agnostic: One who doesn't know, and admits it.
> Atheist:  One who doesn't know, but won't admit it.  :->
> Believer: One who doesn't know that he doesn't know. :-> :->

Or:
When asked the question "WHY?"
The determinist says "BECAUSE".
The free-will advocate says "WHY NOT?"
And the chicken says "TO GET TO THE OTHER SIDE".
-- 
"It's a lot like life..."			 Rich Rosen  ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr

pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) (03/11/85)

A response to some of Padraig Houlahan's points:

}[In response to my analogy of the screwdriver:]
}
}This is just the argument from design in a clever guise. It is easy
}to cite the hammer and screw since we cannot remove from our minds
}knowledge of the existence of screwdrivers. Why not, instead, try
}to deduce the existence of bug-eyed-monsters in the Andromeda galaxy
}from the hammer and screw?

The analogy was not intended to provide evidence for the existence of
screwdrivers as analogous to the existence of God.  I was only meant
to show that, given a particular set of evidence, different 
conclusions are possible.  The feature of our not being able to remove
from our minds the existence of screwdrivers is significant.  It serves
as an example of a fact we already know to be true (i.e. screwdrivers
exist).  But, given that we had never seen a screwdriver, there is no
reason to infer from the evidence that one does exist.  The whole point
of the analogy is that argument from design doesn't work, even for
things that we already know exist (like screwdrivers)!  Of course it
can't be expected to work for the existence of God.  Yet Rich seems
to be demanding evidence of design ("hard evidence") that is conclusive
of God's existence.  I'm trying to tell him that it won't work,
that any evidence he could propose could be "scepticized".

}> The conflict and repression does not go away when you remove the existence
}> of God assumption.  It exists with or without it.  Anyone who is in a
}> position
}> of earthly authority will have the same temptations to repress (directly
}> or inderectly) opposing views whether they believe in God or not.  The
}> Soviet repression of challenges to Lamarckism and Trofim Lysenko's jealous
}> guarding of his "vernalization" technique (claimed to boost the Soviet
}> winter wheat crop) are good examples.  (See "Betrayers of the Truth" by
}> Broad and Wade, Ch. 10).
}> 
} 
}I agree with this. But when talking about repression of challanges,
}let's include the crusades, the inquisition, and
}let's not forget about the problems encountered when Geocentrism was
}first challanged.

I think Rich was implying examples like these in the paragraph to
which I was responding.  The point of my response was that this sort
of repression does not go away when "religious" motiviation for repression
is removed.  You are simply restating Rich's point with examples.

}> In any case the conflict works both ways.  Atheists are just as likely
}> to deny theistic claims in protest to the change in world view
}> it would require.  Why should I go along with your assumption that your
}> view of the universe is correct "based on the evidence".  As I said before,
}> evidence may support more than one conclusion.  Conclusions are not
}> inherent in evidence, they are subject to the interpretation of such
}> evidence.
}> 
}
}Being an Athiest I must agree with you here also. My biases make
}me say that the pot boils because it is on the stove, and that it will
}probably do so to-morrow if I so desire. :-)

What do your bias make you say about the nature of good and evil?  I would
agree with you that the pot boils because it's on the stove.  Did you think
I wouldn't?  :-)
-- 

Paul Dubuc	cbscc!pmd

rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Professor Wagstaff) (03/12/85)

> From Mike Huybensz:
> 
> 	The dishonest thing about all this is that here is where Occam's razor
> 	should properly be applied, not as in all the places in the previous
> 	note where Paul tried to misapply it.  Paul overlooks the Allah
> 	proposition, the Buddha proposition, the Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva
> 	proposition and a zillion others just like his.  What all those
> 	"propositions" have in common, is an assumption of one or more deities.
> 
> These propositions do *not* have this in common. You have Rich Rosen's
> disease. I know a good many Hindus and even more Buddhists who would be
> appalled that you consider either the Buddha, or Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva
> deities. [LAURA CREIGHTON]

Disease?  I don't think *I'm* the one with the disease, since I'm not the one
who, in one breath, complains that Rich Rosen fails to call "god"-less belief
systems by the name religion, and in the next breath calls the claim that
Buddhists consider Buddha to be a deity by the name "Rich Rosen's disease"!!!!!
Please refrain from such faulty categorizations.

>> These "propositions" all share the "natural flow" with the scientific
>> viewpoint.  Things happen -- that is the natural flow. These "propositions"
>> just use a diety to power or direct the happenings.  Thus, the diety is
>> an excess assumption.  It may exist, but it gives no more explanatory
>> power.  [more MIKE HUYBENSZ]

> Excuse me, but things do not happen. If you think that they do you are
> stuck up to your ears in maya. When you finally understand that things do
> not exist and thus do not happen, then you will be a lot closer to
> enlightenment. In the meantime, how about not misprepresenting Buddhism,
> okay?  [LAURA CREIGHTON]

First off, Mike wasn't talking about Buddhism or about ANY religion in
particular.  He was, as I was referring to the notion of the "natural flow".
As I explained in my reply to Paul Dubuc, giving the "natural flow" its own
will (in a given belief system) is creating the notion of god (irrespective of
its existence/non-existence).  Bequeathing the "natural flow" with a will and
with the power to control such things (or claiming that it has such properties)
is the "excess assumption" to which Mike was referring.  Re-read what Mike
said again, Laura, without force-fitting ANY religious precepts into it.  He
hit the nail on the head.
-- 
"Right now it's only a notion, but I'm hoping to turn it into an idea, and if
 I get enough money I can make it into a concept."       Rich Rosen pyuxd!rlr

rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Professor Wagstaff) (03/12/85)

> The analogy was not intended to provide evidence for the existence of
> screwdrivers as analogous to the existence of God.  I was only meant
> to show that, given a particular set of evidence, different 
> conclusions are possible.  The feature of our not being able to remove
> from our minds the existence of screwdrivers is significant.  It serves
> as an example of a fact we already know to be true (i.e. screwdrivers
> exist).  But, given that we had never seen a screwdriver, there is no
> reason to infer from the evidence that one does exist. [PAUL DUBUC]

Since you are analyzing after the fact, since you are referring to a world
in which you know there are screwdrivers because they were invented (to be
used with screws), it is bogus to say that "It's reasonable to assume that
there are screwdrivers---and look!  There's one over there!  My analogy is
correct!"  To use that same analogy regarding something you have no reason
to believe to exist based on evidence (such as the combination hammer and
screwdriver in my previous article) shows the erroneousness of the analogy.

> The whole point of the analogy is that argument from design doesn't work,
> even for things that we already know exist (like screwdrivers)!  Of course it
> can't be expected to work for the existence of God.  Yet Rich seems
> to be demanding evidence of design ("hard evidence") that is conclusive
> of God's existence.  I'm trying to tell him that it won't work,
> that any evidence he could propose could be "scepticized".

When you assume a designer and a purpose the way one might choose to assume
a hammer/screwdriver (and that is exactly what is being done), you are
engaging in faulty reasoning.  Any evidence presented SHOULD be skepticized.
That is the reasonable course to take in analysis.  There is no hard reason
to assume that the universe has some purpose/intent/controlling will behind
it---in fact, the evidence thus far accumulated shows that the universe
simply "runs" in a sort of automatic mode without external (whatever that
means) control.  Assuming the existence of a "will" as part of the "natural
flow" is irrational and unwarranted.

}Being an Athiest I must agree with you here also. My biases make
}me say that the pot boils because it is on the stove, and that it will
}probably do so to-morrow if I so desire. :-)  [PADRAIG HOULAHAN]

> What do your bias make you say about the nature of good and evil?  I would
> agree with you that the pot boils because it's on the stove.  Did you think
> I wouldn't?  :-)  [PAUL DUBUC]

(Quite frankly, yes.)  Why do these notions of good and evil keep cropping up,
when I thought we had all agreed that notions of good and evil are just
human-made words describing phenomena that are beneficial/detrimental to
the person/people saying the word(s)?   My "biases" say that its the usage
of the terms themselves that result in biases.  There is thus no intrinsic
"nature" to good and evil.  If all people can agree on what things are
detrimental to all (like starvation, slavery, deprivation, eroding of
personal freedoms), then we have a basis for a common definition of evil (and
potentially good as well---though I think personal good may be easier to
define than common good, as long as neither encroaches on those things labelled
as evil).  But this is not a set of absolute good/evil dichotomies.

mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) (03/12/85)

In article <5201@utzoo.UUCP> laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) writes:
> These propositions do *not* have this in common. You have Rich Rosen's
> disease. I know a good many Hindus and even more Buddhists who would be
> appalled that you consider either the Buddha, or Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva
> deities. I know fewer Moslems, but those I know would claim that Paul's
> God and Allah are *exectly* *the* *same* God and so he is not ignoring
> their ``propositions'' -- merely the revelation of the Koran, which is,
> of course, a very serious mistake -- rather much like the mistake both
> Moslems and Christians agree that the Jews made in ignoring the
> revelation of the New Testament.

My intent was not to find dieties in all religions (as you argue Rich does),
but to show that there is a proliferation of hypothetical dieties.  My
ignorance of the particulars and variation of religions is profound:
I make no pretense in that direction.  It was unnecessary for the point I
was attempting to make: that gods are unnecessary hypotheses for explaining
nature.

> Excuse me, but things do not happen. If you think that they do you are
> stuck up to your ears in maya. When you finally understand that things do
> not exist and thus do not happen, then you will be a lot closer to
> enlightenment. In the meantime, how about not misprepresenting Buddhism,
> okay?

(I'm glad I looked up maya.)  Yes, to your point of view I am up to my ears
in maya.  I do not intend to misrepresent Buddhism, or any other point of
view.  I'm sorry that you took such an uncharitable (in the logicians sense)
interpretation of what I wrote.  Perhaps you're too immersed in maya also? :-)
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh

laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (03/12/85)

	Exactly.  (What?  Rosen agreeing with Torek?)  Faulty
	perceptive abilities would have resulted in
	starvation/failure/death.

This depends on how you define ``faulty''. Dogs have survived without
colour vision, and we have survived without the hearing range of a
dolphin and all of us see optical illusions sometimes. Is this
``faulty''?

	The more elaborate our perceptive (AND interpretive) systems
	become, the more the interpretation may be prone to error.  Our
	perceptive abilities, through our senses, would seem to offer
	us a fair picture of reality.  (Will those who deny this please
	step forward and explain 1) why they feel this way and

Ah, I feel this way because I have been working on ways to perceive
more and pay attnetion to what I am perceiving for years. I am much
better now than I was then, but still, on days like today, I can
remember other days when I both perceived more and understood more.
Perceptions offer us a picture of reality, yes, but I don't know
whether it is ``fair'' or not. It is the only game in town! I would
have to know reality itself better to be able to make that sort of a
judgement, and this I cannot seem to do without using perceptions.

	2) why they're typing a terminal if they don't believe it.)

Because it is a useful way of getting done what I want to get done. I
still don't know whether it is ``fair'' or not -- it is just the only
game in town.

Interestingly, your posing this question seems to imply that I have
free will -- that I chose to type at a terminal. if you made the same
choice, Rich, then do you believe that you have a soul? Or was that
question bogus from your point of view?

	It is only when our more complex brains engage in high-speed
	analysis (another reason we survived so well) about very
	complex things (like the nature of the universe), rather than
	rigorous analysis and acknowledgment that our interpretation
	may be based on wishful thinking, that we see a problem.

What makes you think that rigorous analysis is going to produce any
better results than high-speed analysis? What if the problem is in the
analysis itself?

Also, it is wrong to assume that religious thinkers were not rigorous
in their thinking -- in many cases they believed that they had evidence
that you would either deny, or explain differently, but
misunderstanding evidence is a flaw shared by many rigorous thinkers.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura

laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (03/13/85)

Rich, i read very well. Here is what I read:

> 	Paul overlooks the Allah
> 	proposition, the Buddha proposition, the Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva
> 	proposition and a zillion others just like his.  What all those
> 	"propositions" have in common, is an assumption of one or more deities.

This means that the Buddha proposition, being one of those propostions,
has an assumption of one or more deities. And Buddhism does *not* have
an assumption of one more more deities. There are Buddhists who believe in
one or more deities, adn there are Buddhists who do not -- it is not
in any way part of a Buddha proposition.

Are you so enamoured of your concepts that you see them everywhere?

Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura

padraig@utastro.UUCP (Padraig Houlahan) (03/14/85)

Paul Dubuc writes:

>A response to some of Padraig Houlahan's points:
>
>}[In response to my analogy of the screwdriver:]
>}
>}This is just the argument from design in a clever guise. It is easy
>}to cite the hammer and screw since we cannot remove from our minds
>}knowledge of the existence of screwdrivers. Why not, instead, try
>}to deduce the existence of bug-eyed-monsters in the Andromeda galaxy
>}from the hammer and screw?
>
>The analogy was not intended to provide evidence for the existence of
>screwdrivers as analogous to the existence of God. 

Perhaps, but you used it in that context when in the original article
you wrote:

>>                                    ...  You can explain evidence presented
>>for his existence in the same way you could explain the existence of screws
>>without positing the existence of a screwdriver (Occam's Razor).

>}>                                   ...  Atheists are just as likely
>}> to deny theistic claims in protest to the change in world view
>}> it would require. Why should I go along with your assumption that your
>}> view of the universe is correct "based on the evidence".  As I said before,
>}> evidence may support more than one conclusion.  Conclusions are not
>}> inherent in evidence, they are subject to the interpretation of such
>}> evidence.


>}Being an Athiest I must agree with you here also. My biases make
>}me say that the pot boils because it is on the stove, and that it will
>}probably do so to-morrow if I so desire. :-)
>
>What do your bias make you say about the nature of good and evil?  I would
>agree with you that the pot boils because it's on the stove.  Did you think
>I wouldn't?  :-)

I'm not sure what the nature of good and evil has got to do with
this discussion, but since you ask, the answer is "nothing", since
I have never encountered any evidence for, or arguments showing,
their existence in an absolute sense.

As far as the pot boiling on the stove is concerned, I'm not
sure how you would place the following in order of reliability

1) you see the pot boiling, (objective data)
2) a drunk tells you this is the case, (subjective - testamony)
3) a sincere citizen tells you that this is so, (subjective - testamony)
4) a sincere citizen tells you that this is not so, (subjective - testamony)

Obviously the second option comes last, but how about the others?
Suppose for arguments sake that you were to be boiled in oil :-)
for reaching the wrong conclusion, on the basis of options 2,3, and 4,
what would you conclude (i.e. the pot is boiling/not boiling/
must suspend judgement)?

Padraig Houlahan.

rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Dr. Emmanuel Wu) (04/10/85)

Now that the superfluous brouhaha over definitions has hopefully passed,
perhaps we can return to discussing the main points of this article.
I'll include some additional wording to placate certain people who don't
like certain accepted definitions of words, so that they too may answer
the points in this article.  Since many adherents to non-religious belief
systems have claimed (1) that their belief systems are religions and (2)
that I shouldn't have included them in my analysis (NOTE:  I didn't, but...),
let me say that if they are religions, then they weren't included in the
analysis, but if they aren't then obviously they weren't included, so why are
you complaining?  Since such people seem to want to be included in the
analysis, I will gladly do so.  I have made some significant rewrites to
accomplish this (to a point).

[ORIGINALLY...]
| From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Professor Wagstaff)
| Newsgroups: net.religion
| Subject: Logic based on different sets of assumptions
| Message-ID: <509@pyuxd.UUCP>    [ ... and again as <589@pyuxd.UUCP> ]
| Date: Mon, 11-Feb-85 12:29:14 EST
| Article-I.D.: pyuxd.509  [pyuxd.589]
| Posted: Mon Feb 11 12:29:14 1985
| Date-Received: Mon, 11-Feb-85 12:29:14 EST
| Organization: Huxley College

Since there is no hard evidence to support the existence of a deity or, for
that matter, of any so-called "supernatural" entity, one would normally work
(in a typical analysis of a non-religious oriented phenomena) from the
assumption that the thing for which there is no evidence does not exist. 
Without evidence showing verifiable evidence of a thing's existence, or its
observed effect on the "physical" world, via Occam people would generally
assume that it does not exist until evidence of a viable nature presents
itself.  The *possibility* that it may exist is left open, but such a
possibility evinces itself if and only if evidence is presented to support it.

However, obviously some people do believe in the existence of deities and other
forms of the so-called supernatural despite the lack of realistic evidence. 
One can only assume that 1) these people have a different set of criteria for
acceptability of evidence, and/or 2) they have some vested interest in
believing that particular outcome of analysis that they believe to be true. 
Quite possibly both.  I think we have shown endless times that the nature of
the subjective evidence offered in favor of religious belief is tainted: 
How come your subjectivity shows a different world view than someone else's? 
Which one is right?  WHY is his/hers wrong and YOURS right? If he/she is being
deceived, how can you be sure it is not YOU who has been deceived?  (Not to
mention the way the brain is known to impose patterns onto events/phenomena/
observations that upon closer examination are shown to be quite wrong---like
"recognizing" someone at the airport and realizing that it wasn't them after
all.)

With that in mind, the only other reason that such people might readily accept
the notion of the existence of a god (or any other "supernatural" entity or
form) is precisely because they already believe it to be so:  they hold the
existence of such a thing as an assumption, an axiom, and work ALL analysis of
the world from there.  "Why is life full of problems? Because god designed the
world that way knowing that it would be best for us not to have a perfect life
but rather to struggle and learn."  Contrast this with the simpler, less
presumptive notion that life is full of problems because all those problems
are simply a part of the natural flow of things, based on what we observe and
codify as physical laws.  We experience them as problems because they conflict
with our wishes for a world ordered around our lives, and because such
conflicts are inevitable in a world with trillions of organisms and objects
caught up in the "natural flow".  As opposed to assuming, for whatever reason,
the existence of an ultimate "good" force that "designed" the universe to be a
certain way.  These assumptions are not confined to religions (or, if you
prefer, theistic religions).  The belief in so-called "supernatural" phenomena
of all sorts stems from the same sort of presumptions.  For example, when
statements are made about the similarities between experiences of "mystics"
of different belief systems, this is cited as "evidence" that there is a
supernatural force behind them, rather than the more likely rational
possibilities centering on simple human psychology and biochemistry---the
"physical" realm that some people would claim that these experiences are (a
priori) not a part of.  (Again, the question always left unanswered:  what is
meant by "non-physical" or "supernatural", if not "beyond that which humans
can perceive"?)

I contend that all such analysis of the world by religious believers, and the
answers offered in such analysis, stem directly from an a priori assumption of
the existence of god, or of some supernatural force of their own design. 
Lewis' works are prime examples.  Jeff Sargent, for example, has used the
phraseology "Why would you want to believe that human beings are 'nothing but'
lab specimens?"  (... when you have this other possibility to believe
instead.)  Laura Creighton has spoken in net.philosophy of how without the
existence of "free will", she would find her existence meaningless, and how
thus she chooses to believe in free will.  "Wanting to believe", the
desirability of holding certain beliefs as opposed to others owing to their
intrinsic "aesthetic" value rather than their veracity, becomes a factor in
forming belief systems for certain people.

Thus my question is: why DO you presume the existence of god/the supernatural
as a given (obviously I and many others simply do not), if not because you
have some vested interest in believing that it is so, what I have endlessly
and perhaps monotonously labelled as WISHFUL THINKING?  (From here on in,
please assume that phrases akin to "existence of god" refer to "existence of
any presumed supernatural phenomena".)

Given that we are dealing with two forms of logic, one of which starts off
making the assumption that god exists and the other of which does not, a person
using one form of logic cannot possibly convince the person using the other
form of logic to accept his position.  This is not always true, because the
two forms of logic and their two sets of assumptions are NOT disjoint sets. 
In fact, for most reasonable people, they are practically equivalent, with the
addition of the a priori assumption of god being the only major difference
between the two sets.  Conclusions drawn from the two sets of assumptions,
however, can and will (and do) wind up being radically different.  The
"impossibility of convincing" that I mentioned above only comes into play when
the "extra" assumption has a role in the formation of some conclusion. 
Religions have (individually and collectively) formed whole volumes of such
conclusions and codified them.  In many cases, "existence of god" and other
assumptions don't even enter into certain of these conclusions, and they form
viable conclusions about the world at large and life itself. (Some have devoted
entire lifetimes to thinking and writing about such analysis and conclusions.)
In other cases, assumptions about the nature of god and "god's word" take
precedence over both scientific investigation and individual human needs.

The conflict comes into play where "existence of god" assumptions (compounded
by assumptions about what IS "god's word" and who is qualified to be god's
authority representative on earth) are contradicted by rational inquisitive
analysis and investigation of the world itself, or by individual human needs
(arbitrarily?) denied/forbidden/not met by "god's word".  Those who make such
assumptions may deny the claims of the investigators (in "protest") solely
because the claims would force them to change their whole view of the
universe based on the evidence.  If those people are in positions of earthly
authority, we may witness repression of such ideas, and of people who hold
them.  We HAVE witnessed such repression in the past, and we may be witnessing
it again today.  Some belief systems that include notions of supernatural
phenomena and even deities do not fit this mold.  I am specifically talking
about those that do.

The points are: 1) Given that evidence contradicts, if not the basic assumption
that there IS a god, further assumptions that certain texts labelled as god's
word are what they are purported to be (absolute truth), what is the basis for
retaining those assumptions? and 2) Given that repression as described above
does indeed take place in the advent of that which contradicts the status quo,
can we afford to let ANY group, religious or otherwise, wield enormous power
over people's lives when the basis for their governing involves, not rational
thinking, but "does it conform to pre-conceived assumed ways of thinking?"

Despite what some people feel obliged to point out, I do NOT assume that there
is NO god, I simply do not assume that there is one.  The two are not
equivalent.  My point is not to show that "god doesn't exist" (I've speculated
on the net several times about what such a deity might be liked if it does
exist), but rather to show that there may be something very wrong with certain
notions of "god"-ness, when those notions were formulated based on presumptions
about the nature of the universe that may seem "appealing", not based on
evidence about reality, and when the premises surrounding those notions appear
to be contradictory and malformed.  These contradictions and flaws may be
present in a number of religions and belief systems, but my purpose is NOT to
simply poke around and find flaws with personal belief systems, since all such
systems are a matter of personal taste, and human beings need not justify
personal taste.  UNLESS that personal taste extends into interference in the
lives of other people, the imposition of one unprovable set of moralistic
notions unto all people.  At that point, when a movement seeks such control,
the very basis and foundations of the belief system must be questioned.
--
"When you believe in things that you don't understand, you'll suffer.
 Superstition ain't the way."		Rich Rosen  ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr
-- 
Meet the new wave, same as the old wave...
      				Rich Rosen     ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr

laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (04/10/85)

	Now that the superfluous brouhaha over definitions has
	hopefully passed, perhaps we can return to discussing the main
	points of this article.

Probably not, Rich. I think that your definitions are embedded in your
article and we will jsut find more of them.

	I'll include some additional wording to placate certain people
	who don't like certain accepted definitions of words, so that
	they too may answer the points in this article.  Since many
	adherents to non-religious belief systems have claimed (1) that
	their belief systems are religions and (2) that I shouldn't
	have included them in my analysis (NOTE:  I didn't, but...),
	let me say that if they are religions, then they weren't
	included in the analysis, but if they aren't then obviously
	they weren't included, so why are you complaining?  Since such
	people seem to want to be included in the analysis, I will
	gladly do so.

Because, what we perceived you as doing was setting your own definition
of ``religion''. In particular, it seemed to exclude a lot of what are
commonly considered religions -- but worse, it excluded many, if not
most of the people who claim to have the subjective experiences that
you claimed to want to talk about.

	I have made some significant rewrites to accomplish this (to a
	point).

	Since there is no hard evidence to support the existence of a
	deity or, for that matter, of any so-called "supernatural"
	entity,

Aha. Here is Rich Rosen belief #1. This belief is definitely not shared
by most of the people who claim to have religious experiences. They
claim that there is a lot of hard evidence that they are having an
experience.  This may not correspond to what you mean by a
``supernatural entity'', though. We can now play ``what does
supernatural mean'', but I warn you, there is much greater disagreement
here than over ``what does religion mean''.

	one would normally work (in a typical analysis of a
	non-religious oriented phenomena) from the assumption that the
	thing for which there is no evidence does not exist.

Wrong from the point of view of the people who have a religious
experience.  They think that there *is* evidence. Their problem is
``why don't you recognise it'' and ``why doesn't it happen to you as
well''?

	Without evidence showing verifiable evidence of a thing's
	existence, or its observed effect on the "physical" world, via
	Occam people would generally assume that it does not exist
	until evidence of a viable nature presents itself.

Again, wrong for the same reasons. I already *have* evidence, the
problem is that *you* won't accept it. You are waiting for evidence
that you will accept. The question becomes -- how likely is it that I
will *ever* present evidence that you will accept? Currently, I think
that the answer is ``extremely unlikely''. At this point, I generally
pack it in.

	The *possibility* that it may exist is left open, but such a
	possibility evinces itself if and only if evidence is presented
	to support it.

Again, this argument is only good if there in fact *is* no evidence. If
there *is* evidence then in dealing with you I have a problem. Either
the problem is one of communication, or the problem is that you are in
some way incapable of understanding even perfect communication.

	However, obviously some people do believe in the existence of
	deities and other forms of the so-called supernatural despite
	the lack of realistic evidence.

No. you cannot badger me into saying that my evidence is ``not
realistic'' because it does not suit you.

	One can only assume that 1) these people have a different set
	of criteria for acceptability of evidence, and/or 2) they have
	some vested interest in believing that particular outcome of
	analysis that they believe to be true.

The other assumption is that the people who do not accept the evidence
have some sort of problem which prevents them from accepting what they
normally would accept.

	Quite possibly both.  I think we have shown endless times that
	the nature of the subjective evidence offered in favor of
	religious belief is tainted:  How come your subjectivity shows
	a different world view than someone else's?

What is so odd about that? People have different world views regardless
of what experience is being evaluated. Why do some people like rock
music and some people like classical and some people like both?

	Which one is right?

Yes, you want to ask that question. A good many mystics *don't* and
find it quite irrelevant. They either say ``they are all right'' or
``they are all wrong'' depending.

	WHY is his/hers wrong and YOURS right?

If you mean in some absolute sense, then you are going to find very few
mystics who say that somebody else's religious experience is
``wrong''.  Misunderstood, perhaps. The reason you say that someone is
misunderstanding something is that they have a collection of
inconsistent beliefs that you believe can be made consistent.  You
explain your consistent version. If they like it, they say ``gee, I
made a mistake'' and if they don't like it they generally go along
their merry way and continue to do things that you think are a result
of a misunderstanding.  After some time you may find that it was *you*
who had the misunderstanding, or they may gradually come to see  their
misunderstanding themselves.

	If he/she is being deceived, how can you be sure it is not YOU
	who has been deceived?

You can't be absolutely sure. But you apply the same procedure that you
apply to find inconsistencies in any other beliefs that you have. By
the way, your phrasing ``YOU who has been deceived'' implies that the
deception is something that something else does to you. This fits into
the ``my religion is correct, yours is inspired by Satan'' model which
very few Christians use all across the board these days. Many
Christians use it to refer to a few religions, but at least they don't
seem to use it towards major religions any more. This is not the
generic mystic position which is more along the lines of ``deception is
something that you do to yourself''.

	(Not to mention the way the brain is known to impose patterns
	onto events/phenomena/ observations that upon closer
	examination are shown to be quite wrong---like "recognizing"
	someone at the airport and realizing that it wasn't them after
	all.)

If you mean this as an attempt to discredit mystics experiences as
happening at all, I would counter that by this logic you should not
believe that you ever recognise anyone since you could be mistaken.

If this is to insinuate that people who have religious experiences do
not question that they could be mistaken in interpreting them, then the
insinuation is wildly off the mark -- this is the second most common
topic of discussion whenever 2 or more mystics get together anywhere I
have been.  (The first is ``comparing notes''...)

	With that in mind, the only other reason that such people might
	readily accept the notion of the existence of a god (or any
	other "supernatural" entity or form) is precisely because they
	already believe it to be so:  they hold the existence of such a
	thing as an assumption, an axiom, and work ALL analysis of the
	world from there.

But here you reveal the axiom that you are using -- that the reason
Rich Rosen does not accept the evidence for the supernatural is that
such evidence does not exist. You conclusion, ``wishful thinking''
follows from that. But what about your axiom?  How can you be sure that
this is not ``wishful thinking'' on your part?

	"Why is life full of problems? Because god designed the world
	that way knowing that it would be best for us not to have a
	perfect life but rather to struggle and learn."  Contrast this
	with the simpler, less presumptive notion that life is full of
	problems because all those problems are simply a part of the
	natural flow of things, based on what we observe and codify as
	physical laws.

``The natural flow of things'' is, from my perspective, a lot less
simple than ``because God wanted it that way''. What makes you say that
it is simpler?

	We experience them as problems because they conflict with our
	wishes for a world ordered around our lives, and because such
	conflicts are inevitable in a world with trillions of organisms
	and objects caught up in the "natural flow".

Are such conflicts *really* inevitable? If our understanding *really*
grew, is it not possible that we could learn to avoid such conflicts
and not act in a manner that puts one into conflict with other
organisms?

	As opposed to assuming, for whatever reason, the existence of
	an ultimate "good" force that "designed" the universe to be a
	certain way.

This assumption is characteristic of theistic religions, but not
non-theistic religions.

	These assumptions are not confined to religions (or, if you
	prefer, theistic religions).  The belief in so-called
	"supernatural" phenomena of all sorts stems from the same sort
	of presumptions.

This statement is utterly inconsistent with religiojus belief that
``good'' and ``evil'' as such do not exist, or that teh universe was
not created, or that the universe *is* God.

	For example, when statements are made about the similarities
	between experiences of "mystics" of different belief systems,
	this is cited as "evidence" that there is a supernatural force
	behind them, rather than the more likely rational

``more likely'' -- here we find the embedded axiom that the existing
evidence is not good enough again...

	possibilities centering on simple human psychology and
	biochemistry---the "physical" realm that some people would
	claim that these experiences are (a priori) not a part of.

What an incredibly small number of mystics you must have talked to,
Rich.  I do not know a *single* one who claims that these experiences
have nothing to do with psychology and biochemistry. This leaves the
big question open, though. Psychology and biochemistry are facets of
the relationship that a man has with the rest of whatever-there-is --
God, the rest of the world, the supernatural, whatever.

What you need is a theory of meaning. Are my religious experiences any
more or any less meaningful than my expriences of a symphony, or of my
friends, or of any readoing on cosmology that I happen to be doing, or
watching a tv soap opera, or getting drunk? How one decides on how more
or less meaningful these things are depends on what values a person
holds. How one gets what values one has is a good question. You and I
will never agree to how it happens, however, since I think that certain
values are freely chosen, and you don't believe in free will.

	(Again, the question always left unanswered:  what is meant by
	"non-physical" or "supernatural", if not "beyond that which
	humans can perceive"?)

Ah, beyond which *certain* humans can perceive. The people who claim to
be doing the perceiving don't think that they are doing something which
they cannot do.

	I contend that all such analysis of the world by religious
	believers, and the answers offered in such analysis, stem
	directly from an a priori assumption of the existence of god,
	or of some supernatural force of their own design.

	Lewis' works are prime examples.  Jeff Sargent, for example,
	has used the phraseology "Why would you want to believe that
	human beings are 'nothing but' lab specimens?"  (... when you
	have this other possibility to believe instead.)  Laura
	Creighton has spoken in net.philosophy of how without the
	existence of "free will", she would find her existence
	meaningless, and how thus she chooses to believe in free will.

No. I do not ``choose to believe in free will''. I am incapable of
actually disbelieving it. There is a difference -- you (strangely for
someone who does not believe in free will) imply that I *could* choose
to not believe in it. But I find the effort of *trying* to disbelieve
in free will produces results which are sufficient for me to
extrapolate *if* I could disbelieve in free will *then* I would kill
myself.

	"Wanting to believe", the desirability of holding certain
	beliefs as opposed to others owing to their intrinsic
	"aesthetic" value rather than their veracity, becomes a factor
	in forming belief systems for certain people.

But I care about *both* veracity and aesthetic values.

	Thus my question is: why DO you presume the existence of
	god/the supernatural as a given (obviously I and many others
	simply do not), if not because you have some vested interest in
	believing that it is so, what I have endlessly and perhaps
	monotonously labelled as WISHFUL THINKING?  (From here on in,
	please assume that phrases akin to "existence of god" refer to
	"existence of any presumed supernatural phenomena".)

Because we think that we have sufficient evidence and for some reason
you can't accept it. Perhaps you have a vested interest in not seeing
it; perhaps you honestly can't see it; perhaps you *could* but just
couldn't be bothered to.

	Given that we are dealing with two forms of logic, one of which
	starts off making the assumption that god exists and the other
	of which does not,

Your claim, Rich. Your axiom. Atheists discover religion and religious
people become atheists. Both religious and non-religious people would
dispute that ``there is a good'' or ``there is no god'' was an axiom in
their thinking.

	 a person using one form of logic cannot possibly convince the
	person using the other form of logic to accept his position.

This doesn't explain why people leave or join churches very well.

	This is not always true, because the two forms of logic and
	their two sets of assumptions are NOT disjoint sets.  In fact,
	for most reasonable people, they are practically equivalent,
	with the addition of the a priori assumption of god being the
	only major difference between the two sets.  Conclusions drawn
	from the two sets of assumptions, however, can and will (and
	do) wind up being radically different.  The "impossibility of
	convincing" that I mentioned above only comes into play when
	the "extra" assumption has a role in the formation of some
	conclusion.

Again -- why do conversions happen? Why do people leave the church?

	Religions have (individually and collectively) formed whole
	volumes of such conclusions and codified them.  In many cases,
	"existence of god" and other assumptions don't even enter into
	certain of these conclusions, and they form viable conclusions
	about the world at large and life itself. (Some have devoted
	entire lifetimes to thinking and writing about such analysis
	and conclusions.) In other cases, assumptions about the nature
	of god and "god's word" take precedence over both scientific
	investigation and individual human needs.

	The conflict comes into play where "existence of god"
	assumptions (compounded by assumptions about what IS "god's
	word" and who is qualified to be god's authority representative
	on earth) are contradicted by rational inquisitive analysis and
	investigation of the world itself, or by individual human needs
	(arbitrarily?) denied/forbidden/not met by "god's word".  Those
	who make such assumptions may deny the claims of the
	investigators (in "protest") solely because the claims would
	force them to change their whole view of the universe based on
	the evidence.  If those people are in positions of earthly
	authority, we may witness repression of such ideas, and of
	people who hold them.  We HAVE witnessed such repression in the
	past, and we may be witnessing it again today.  Some belief
	systems that include notions of supernatural phenomena and even
	deities do not fit this mold.  I am specifically talking about
	those that do.

So, if you had made this clear 2 months ago, we wouldn't have had all
of this trouble.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura

barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry) (04/15/85)

	Rich, I actually agree with most of what you say when applied
to the kind of religion you seem to have had in mind when you wrote your
article. The point of the rebuttal I make below is that the question of the
existence of God/gods is not seen as a simple either/or question by everyone.
If you feel what follows strays from the issues you were raising, you're
probably right, but it seemed worth posting, anyway.

From pyuxd!rlr (Rich Rosen):
>Since there is no hard evidence to support the existence of a deity or, for
>that matter, of any so-called "supernatural" entity, one would normally work
>(in a typical analysis of a non-religious oriented phenomena) from the
>assumption that the thing for which there is no evidence does not exist. 
>Without evidence showing verifiable evidence of a thing's existence, or its
>observed effect on the "physical" world, via Occam people would generally
>assume that it does not exist until evidence of a viable nature presents
>itself.  The *possibility* that it may exist is left open, but such a
>possibility evinces itself if and only if evidence is presented to support
>it.

	Seems to me you have some assumptions about "deity" built into your
argument which do not hold true for all deities. When one is specifically
discussing an *external* deity who is able to influence the material world in
mysterious ways, then your argument applies; this, however, is not the only
possible conception of "deity". If I am unconcerned about whether my
experience of god has to do with a being whose existence and powers are
independent of my consciousness, then I think your argument fails. I can agree
that my "religious" experience can be explained solely in terms of brain
chemistry, and does not constitute evidence for an external deity; yet still
claim that the experience is meaningful because it enriches my understanding
of the perceivable world. If neither of us feel that logic and mathematics are
invalid because they are carried out via brain chemistry, why should brain
chemistry invalidate religious experience?
	My conception of religious experience (i.e., my way of understanding
it, not necessarily The Truth) is that it involves perceiving reality through
fewer layers of mental "filter", bypassing analysis and preconception and
objectification. We cannot know reality directly; our senses and preconscious,
lower-level brain functions are always participants in the creation of what we
perceive. But I think there can be times when we meet reality through the
lowest possible number of intervening curtains, and it is these experiences
which we call "mystical".
	Because such experiences bypass the rational, cognitive levels of
filter, they are not expressible in everyday terms. Like dreams, they present
an ordering of reality which ill-fits the dialectic strictures of human
language. When expression of such ideas is attempted (as I'm doing now),
distortions of the pristine experience are unavoidable.

>However, obviously some people do believe in the existence of deities and
>other forms of the so-called supernatural despite the lack of realistic
>evidence.  One can only assume that 1) these people have a different set of
>criteria for acceptability of evidence, and/or 2) they have some vested
>interest in believing that particular outcome of analysis that they believe
>to be true.  Quite possibly both.  I think we have shown endless times that
>the nature of the subjective evidence offered in favor of religious belief
>is tainted:  How come your subjectivity shows a different world view than
>someone else's?  Which one is right?  WHY is his/hers wrong and YOURS right?
>If he/she is being deceived, how can you be sure it is not YOU who has been
>deceived?  (Not to mention the way the brain is known to impose patterns
>onto events/phenomena/ observations that upon closer examination are shown
>to be quite wrong---like "recognizing" someone at the airport and realizing
>that it wasn't them after all.)

	I think the above paragraph makes two assumptions about believers in
deities which are not always true of them. The first is that all believers in
deities would make claims which are testable in theory. If someone, a Deist or
pantheist perhaps, claimed that there can be no physical evidence for their
claims, because no claims were being *made* about the workings of physical
reality, then the lack of objective evidence for their claim is *part* of
their claim, and does not argue against it.
	The second assumption is that all theists assert that their claims are
the only correct ones, and those of other theists, mistaken. While this
is true of some religions, and even common among Christian sects, it is
far from universally true. Not all religions are exclusivist; some conceive
of the various creeds as different paths to the same destination.
  	
>These assumptions are not
>confined to religions (or, if you prefer, theistic religions).  The belief
>in so-called "supernatural" phenomena of all sorts stems from the same sort
>of presumptions.  For example, when statements are made about the
>similarities between experiences of "mystics" of different belief systems,
>this is cited as "evidence" that there is a supernatural force behind them,
>rather than the more likely rational possibilities centering on simple human
>psychology and biochemistry---the "physical" realm that some people would
>claim that these experiences are (a priori) not a part of.  (Again, the
>question always left unanswered:  what is meant by "non-physical" or
>"supernatural", if not "beyond that which humans can perceive"?)

	Well, I, for one, don't assert *anything* supernatural, yet I'd still
describe some of my ideas as "mystical". And if I choose to believe there are
meaningful aspects of reality which are beyond my ability to apprehend
rationally, this is not meant to gainsay materialism, but to augment it. Is it
irrational for me to believe that the universe may have subtleties that cannot
be fully analyzed and understood in strictly Aristotelian terms? Even if I
accept your apparent assertion that the universe is mechanistic and "natural"
in its operations, I have no guarantee that my main tool for dealing with
reality (a human consciousness using the limited rational tools of human
consciousness) is sufficient for a complete understanding of What's Going On.
Speaking for myself, I find I need a meta-framwork in which to embed my
materialism.
	The picture of reality we receive through our senses is inevitably
highly incomplete. It is local, it is filtered through less than perfect
sensory equipment, and it is filtered through preconceptions we have learned
so thoroughly that we're hardly even aware of their existence. The essential
claim of the mystic, as I understand it, is to have had a more direct
experience of reality than this. Must such a claim be considered
"supernatural", a priori? Or is it that the thoroughgoing materialist may
*assume* that a supernatural claim is being made, because their preconceptions
of what is "religious" includes supernaturalism? I understand that your
remarks were only directed at those making supernatural claims; my point
is that it may not always be clear if claims *are* supernatural.
 
>Thus my question is: why DO you presume the existence of god/the
>supernatural as a given (obviously I and many others simply do not), if not
>because you have some vested interest in believing that it is so, what I
>have endlessly and perhaps monotonously labelled as WISHFUL THINKING?  (From
>here on in, please assume that phrases akin to "existence of god" refer to
>"existence of any presumed supernatural phenomena".)

	To the extent that I understand your use of the terms "god" and
"supernatural", I would have to say that I do not believe in such things,
though I try to keep an open mind. There are some who would describe my
beliefs as theistic, however, and that's OK, too. The point I'm trying to make
is that you assume too much even about those whom you *would* consider
theistic. Not all such people use their beliefs as their source for
understanding physical phenomena. If anything, it's the moral dimension of
existence which is most relevant to religious belief. In any case, your real
grievance seems to be against those who would give over their power to make
moral decisions to some higher authority, be it god, government, or gurus.

>The conflict comes into play where "existence of god" assumptions
>(compounded by assumptions about what IS "god's word" and who is qualified
>to be god's authority representative on earth) are contradicted by rational
>inquisitive analysis and investigation of the world itself, or by individual
>human needs (arbitrarily?) denied/forbidden/not met by "god's word".  Those
>who make such assumptions may deny the claims of the investigators (in
>"protest") solely because the claims would force them to change their whole
>view of the universe based on the evidence.  If those people are in
>positions of earthly authority, we may witness repression of such ideas, and
>of people who hold them.  We HAVE witnessed such repression in the past, and
>we may be witnessing it again today.  Some belief systems that include
>notions of supernatural phenomena and even deities do not fit this mold.  I
>am specifically talking about those that do.

	And some belief systems that *don't* incorporate supernatural
assumptions, *do* fit the mold. The evils you describe above seem to occur
whenever the group in power believe that they know what's best for everyone.
Many groups which do not meet your definition of religion, such as Communists
and Nazis, share this conviction of utter rightness, and act accordingly. If
your purpose is to warn of the dangers of being a True Believer, you can sign
me up on your side right now. But the Will of God is only one of many excuses
people have used for persecution of those they dislike. I share your dislike
of those who would defend repression as "God's will", but I find it no more
attractive when the defense is "historical imperative" or "manifest destiny"
or "the will of the people". It's all a cop-out.

-  From the Crow's Nest  -                      Kenn Barry
                                                NASA-Ames Research Center
                                                Moffett Field, CA
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 	USENET:		 {ihnp4,vortex,dual,hao,menlo70,hplabs}!ames!barry

ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (04/16/85)

Rich -	This article is in response to a few questions you recently
	posed in these newsgroups.

>However, obviously some people do believe in the existence of deities and
>other forms of the so-called supernatural despite the lack of realistic
>evidence.  One can only assume that 1) these people have a different set of
>criteria for acceptability of evidence, and/or 2) they have some vested
>interest...

    These people are no different from you or me.

    As mentioned in another article, you apparently believe in your
    own thoughts. They are plainly nonobjective. 

    At another level, you clearly believe in the physical world
    and in causality. These are also items of belief.

    Determinism, which cause you have espoused in many previous articles,
    is not only a philosophically  unjustified leap of faith on your part,
    it is also probably unscientific.

    Yet you BELIEVE.

>I think we have shown endless times that the nature of the subjective
>evidence offered in favor of religious belief is tainted: How come your
>subjectivity shows a different world view than someone else's?  Which one is
>right?  WHY is his/hers wrong and YOURS right? If he/she is being deceived,
>how can you be sure it is not YOU who has been deceived?

    This is an extremely good point, Rich. There are many people out
    there who frequently label the beliefs of others as `WRONG' while
    and label their own beliefs as `CORRECT'.

    Religious faith does not have to be judgemental. We should ALL
    take note of your observation.

>With that in mind, the only other reason that such people might readily
>accept the notion of the existence of a god (or any other "supernatural"
>entity or form) is precisely because they already believe it to be so:  they
>hold the existence of such a thing as an assumption, an axiom, and work ALL
>analysis of the world from there. 

   For example, determinism. There is a glut of believers in determinism
   on this net. At least most Christians and Jews recognize that their
   belief is part of a religion; the fanatical believers of determinism
   incorrectly claim to have objective scientific support for their dogma. 

   This makes them very difficult to reason with.

>Thus my question is: why DO you presume the existence of god/the
>supernatural as a given (obviously I and many others simply do not), if not
>because you have some vested interest in believing that it is so, what I
>have endlessly and perhaps monotonously labelled as WISHFUL THINKING?  (From
>here on in, please assume that phrases akin to "existence of god" refer to
>"existence of any presumed supernatural phenomena".)

    Since you hold so many supernatural beliefs yourself, the
    answer to this question should be apparent upon introspection.

		Khronos estai ouketi

-michael

rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Dr. Emmanuel Wu) (04/19/85)

> 	Seems to me you have some assumptions about "deity" built into your
> argument which do not hold true for all deities. When one is specifically
> discussing an *external* deity who is able to influence the material world in
> mysterious ways, then your argument applies; this, however, is not the only
> possible conception of "deity". If I am unconcerned about whether my
> experience of god has to do with a being whose existence and powers are
> independent of my consciousness, then I think your argument fails. I can agree
> that my "religious" experience can be explained solely in terms of brain
> chemistry, and does not constitute evidence for an external deity; yet still
> claim that the experience is meaningful because it enriches my understanding
> of the perceivable world. If neither of us feel that logic and mathematics are
> invalid because they are carried out via brain chemistry, why should brain
> chemistry invalidate religious experience? [KENN BARRY]

If, by "internal (as opposed to external) deity", you mean some sort of
self-determiner evincing free will, the same things really do apply.  See
my discussions with Ms. Creighton on the subject.

> 	My conception of religious experience (i.e., my way of understanding
> it, not necessarily The Truth) is that it involves perceiving reality through
> fewer layers of mental "filter", bypassing analysis and preconception and
> objectification. We cannot know reality directly; our senses and preconscious,
> lower-level brain functions are always participants in the creation of what we
> perceive. But I think there can be times when we meet reality through the
> lowest possible number of intervening curtains, and it is these experiences
> which we call "mystical".

It would seem just the opposite to me:  such experiences would seem to have
even more additional intervening preconceptive curtains, not fewer.

>>However, obviously some people do believe in the existence of deities and
>>other forms of the so-called supernatural despite the lack of realistic
>>evidence.  One can only assume that 1) these people have a different set of
>>criteria for acceptability of evidence, and/or 2) they have some vested
>>interest in believing that particular outcome of analysis that they believe
>>to be true.  Quite possibly both.  I think we have shown endless times that
>>the nature of the subjective evidence offered in favor of religious belief
>>is tainted:  How come your subjectivity shows a different world view than
>>someone else's?  Which one is right?  WHY is his/hers wrong and YOURS right?
>>If he/she is being deceived, how can you be sure it is not YOU who has been
>>deceived?  (Not to mention the way the brain is known to impose patterns
>>onto events/phenomena/ observations that upon closer examination are shown
>>to be quite wrong---like "recognizing" someone at the airport and realizing
>>that it wasn't them after all.)

> 	I think the above paragraph makes two assumptions about believers in
> deities which are not always true of them. The first is that all believers in
> deities would make claims which are testable in theory. If someone, a Deist or
> pantheist perhaps, claimed that there can be no physical evidence for their
> claims, because no claims were being *made* about the workings of physical
> reality, then the lack of objective evidence for their claim is *part* of
> their claim, and does not argue against it.

Nor does it offer support---it merely makes it into nothing BUT a claim.
They would claim "no physical evidence", yet their own physical bodies (their
brains at least) are affected).  By a "mystical source", or by their own
imposition of interpretation on their physical experience?

> 	The second assumption is that all theists assert that their claims are
> the only correct ones, and those of other theists, mistaken. While this
> is true of some religions, and even common among Christian sects, it is
> far from universally true. Not all religions are exclusivist; some conceive
> of the various creeds as different paths to the same destination.

Yes, I know.  This doesn't change the nature of subjectivity, though.

>>These assumptions are not
>>confined to religions (or, if you prefer, theistic religions).  The belief
>>in so-called "supernatural" phenomena of all sorts stems from the same sort
>>of presumptions.  For example, when statements are made about the
>>similarities between experiences of "mystics" of different belief systems,
>>this is cited as "evidence" that there is a supernatural force behind them,
>>rather than the more likely rational possibilities centering on simple human
>>psychology and biochemistry---the "physical" realm that some people would
>>claim that these experiences are (a priori) not a part of.  (Again, the
>>question always left unanswered:  what is meant by "non-physical" or
>>"supernatural", if not "beyond that which humans can perceive"?)

> 	Well, I, for one, don't assert *anything* supernatural, yet I'd still
> describe some of my ideas as "mystical". And if I choose to believe there are
> meaningful aspects of reality which are beyond my ability to apprehend
> rationally, this is not meant to gainsay materialism, but to augment it. Is it
> irrational for me to believe that the universe may have subtleties that cannot
> be fully analyzed and understood in strictly Aristotelian terms?

What does it mean to "augment materialism"?  Are you adding things to the
"lists" of things that ARE existing beyond those listed as "material"?  Why
weren't they in the list of "material" things?  Because we couldn't perceive
them?  Be careful what you're leaping into here.

> 	The picture of reality we receive through our senses is inevitably
> highly incomplete. It is local, it is filtered through less than perfect
> sensory equipment, and it is filtered through preconceptions we have learned
> so thoroughly that we're hardly even aware of their existence. The essential
> claim of the mystic, as I understand it, is to have had a more direct
> experience of reality than this. Must such a claim be considered
> "supernatural", a priori? Or is it that the thoroughgoing materialist may
> *assume* that a supernatural claim is being made, because their preconceptions
> of what is "religious" includes supernaturalism? I understand that your
> remarks were only directed at those making supernatural claims; my point
> is that it may not always be clear if claims *are* supernatural.
 
Good point.  Still, we must distinguish between your presumption that those
people are somehow closer (fewer intervening layers) to reality, and mine
(yes, it's a presumption, though I think a far more reasonable one) that they
are further (more layers) because they add in their preconceptions.

>>The conflict comes into play where "existence of god" assumptions
>>(compounded by assumptions about what IS "god's word" and who is qualified
>>to be god's authority representative on earth) are contradicted by rational
>>inquisitive analysis and investigation of the world itself, or by individual
>>human needs (arbitrarily?) denied/forbidden/not met by "god's word".  Those
>>who make such assumptions may deny the claims of the investigators (in
>>"protest") solely because the claims would force them to change their whole
>>view of the universe based on the evidence.  If those people are in
>>positions of earthly authority, we may witness repression of such ideas, and
>>of people who hold them.  We HAVE witnessed such repression in the past, and
>>we may be witnessing it again today.  Some belief systems that include
>>notions of supernatural phenomena and even deities do not fit this mold.  I
>>am specifically talking about those that do.

> 	And some belief systems that *don't* incorporate supernatural
> assumptions, *do* fit the mold. The evils you describe above seem to occur
> whenever the group in power believe that they know what's best for everyone.
> Many groups which do not meet your definition of religion, such as Communists
> and Nazis, share this conviction of utter rightness, and act accordingly. If
> your purpose is to warn of the dangers of being a True Believer, you can sign
> me up on your side right now. But the Will of God is only one of many excuses
> people have used for persecution of those they dislike. I share your dislike
> of those who would defend repression as "God's will", but I find it no more
> attractive when the defense is "historical imperative" or "manifest destiny"
> or "the will of the people". It's all a cop-out.

Yes, it's but one of a number of "techniques" and excuses.  You'll find though
that such excuses are more often than not TIGHTLY COUPLED with "god".  (Why
is it our manifest destiny?  Because God said so!---or go back and read Don
Black if you need further clues)  Maybe such people who have inferiority
complex problems that lead them to make such claims about manifest destiny
and such will find some other excuse in the absence of a belief in a god.
Removing this avenue and showing it for what it is will at least remove IT
from the pool of excuses.  Without the ability to claim that it's "willed
by god", where would they turn?
-- 
Otology recapitulates phonology.
					Rich Rosen    ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr