Dr M's points on prayer, eternity, and a few other things

[Aaron]

Hi Aaron You said

You'll have to forgive me but I don't exactly know what you're talking about Moonwood. All that comes to mind is the discussion I had with KTR recently about asking for proof to validate the claims of Christianity and my insistence that the entire core of Christianity is based on faith in promises yet to be displayed in their full glory (this is not to say I do not think there is not good reason for belief and faith in Christ (attack of the nooooooooooooooot!), but if Christianity is what you're after then faith and belief must play their part). So as I said, you'll have to forgive my dullness but I don't really know what you're talking about.

There are some approaches which I think are mistaken.
The first says we do not have any evidence that Christianity is true but we should believe it anyway. This is the religious irrationalist position advocated by Kierkegaard and some evangelicals. This makes a virtue of believing in spite of the total lack of evidence. I do not see any virtue in believing under these conditions.
The second says there is some evidence for Christianity but not enough to prove conclusively that it is true. This is okay because it puts Christianity in the same position as our best scientific hypotheses. Faith steps in and makes up the difference. The difficulty with this is that if we really were to put Christianity in the position of a scientific hypothesis we would have to accept it as something tentative and be constantly testing it. This is the position I have suspected you of holding.
The third position says there is absolutely convincing objective evidence for the truth of Christianity and it is only people's sinfulness that stops them seeing this. I do not think any of the traditional arguments for God's existence stand up to rigorous scrutiny and I take the view of Dooyeweerd that what could be proved would thereby not be God.

I take the view that we know God as a reality by our own direct experience. Faith can be defined as Abraham Kuyper says as

That function of the soul by which it obtains certainty directly without the aid of discursive demonstration. This places faith over against 'demonstration' not of itself over against knowing

It is in this sense and this sense only that I would regard faith as a type of knowing and so we know by faith there is a God because we directly experience God as a reality for us in much the same way as the materialist knows matter to be the ultimate reality. I often feel that by knowing by faith you are thinking of faith as believing a hypothesis on insufficient evidence and it is this I would disagree with.

Good job getting to the heart of the matter, I appreciate that. This has actually been something that I've thought about quite a bit. First of all I think you're right. If I choose to believe in Christianity because all of the evidence is currently pointing that way and then later on find out that a new piece of evidence shows that I had it all wrong and which prompts me to quit my beliefs, I agree that's problematic. What would I do farther on down the road when a new piece of evidence changes my mind again and shows that I actually probably had it right the first time? My beliefs in Christianity are not unto myself, its a relationship you know, and I am having trouble putting it into words right now, but it just doesn't seem right that I'd leave God, its a relationship, I dunno that part of it is hard for me to put into words, maybe I'll be able to explain it better after I've thought about it a little more. I guess it's just that the relationship itself, the loyalty, the faithfulness, it has a weight of its own, you know, and it should, its not a kite that blows whatever direction the flow is moving... I'm probably not making any sense.

But anyways while I don't know exactly how you're thinking, I think I'm on the same boat. Some time ago - while thinking about this very thing actually - I came to the realization that I felt I could know God was real more than I could know any other thing, I had experienced him. I had felt his love and his forgiveness. I read about Jesus and read his words and I just have to say, "I believe you God!". Lol, I'm sure what I'm saying doesn't make any sense, especially to nonbelievers, but that's okay I wouldn't expect it to. I wish i could explain this better, I think the realization really had an impact on me when I started to think about how I actually knew something. I realized that I didn't actually know stuff as absolutely as I - for some reason - thought I did. I guess I started to think about how the world is filtered through my senses and that was startling to me, when I actually started to think about how I see my environment, how the electromagnetic radiation bounces off of things and how my eyeballs can detect it and how really removed from the world I actually am. It's like one big transfer function in the s-domain. The world is an input, and my body is a filter and the output, what I get inside, is a function of both. It's like when a satellite takes a picture of the earths surface and before the picture can be viewed as it really is the imprint of the satellites camera properties must be deconvolved from the raw data. It really amazed me. Maybe I let go of a sort of materialistic misconception that I had been holding onto. I guess i realized that Jesus inside of me was more real to me than the frequencies of light that my retina is able to detect.

I can see how what I've written probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense, I really need to try and clean these feelings that I have up a little bit, actually make them presentable. Because right now that's really all they are, raw feelings, I have never actually tried to put this into words before.

[Keep The Reason]

OMFG....

could you elaborate a bit please? I am quite fond of your responses this one was to short to satisfy my cravings. Thanks in advance either way.

If I may, I took it to be a drop-jaw response to RTF's incredibly inept response to you about faith and healing.

[Dr Mundo]

OMFG....

could you elaborate a bit please? I am quite fond of your responses this one was to short to satisfy my cravings. Thanks in advance either way.

If I may, I took it to be a drop-jaw response to RTF's incredibly inept response to you about faith and healing.

To be perfectly honest. just about every single response from the theists in this particular thread has me feeling those exact words.

*Edit: Probably an exaggeration on my part, But I just don't understand where or how they can say the things that they say, and be satisfied with the "justifications" they provide for holding those thoughts/beliefs. Its almost exactly like me telling you KTR that the cell phone monster that lives in the sky hates it when you don't use 4G phones to search for books written by an author who's name is Tom. Ask me how I know this and I will tell you that there is no way for me to prove to you that this monster feels this way, but i can assure you that not only does it exist but it does indeed feel this way. Why would you ask me to provide proof to you about this KTR, don't you know that if you try to prove this monster than it ceases to be the monster that I believe in!

[Keep The Reason]

.*Edit: Probably an exaggeration on my part, But I just don't understand where or how they can say the things that they say, and be satisfied with the "justifications" they provide for holding those thoughts/beliefs. Its almost exactly like me telling you KTR that the cell phone monster that lives in the sky hates it when you don't use 4G phones to search for books written by an author who's name is Tom. Ask me how I know this and I will tell you that there is no way for me to prove to you that this monster feels this way, but i can assure you that not only does it exist but it does indeed feel this way. Why would you ask me to provide proof to you about this KTR, don't you know that if you try to prove this monster than it ceases to be the monster that I believe in!

Or worse, it's MY job to prove the cell phone monster doesn't exist!

[mitchellmckain]

To be perfectly honest. just about every single response from the theists in this particular thread has me feeling those exact words.

To be perfectly honest, blanket statements like this tend to reveal more about the abilities and attitudes of the person speaking them than about those of whom they speak. It also speaks of a need to turn this in to team sport where there is the "us" who are right (or rational or whatever other euphemism you choose to employ) and the "them" who is not.

*Edit: Probably an exaggeration on my part, But I just don't understand where or how they can say the things that they say, and be satisfied with the "justifications" they provide for holding those thoughts/beliefs.

Right and since this is regardless of the reasons and explanations,this strongly suggest that you just ain't going to understand no matter what because you have your mind made up about what is reasonable to believe despite the fact that we are talking about objectively undecidable issues. I just don't see any difference between this attitude and all the religious fundies I have encountered.

Its almost exactly like me telling you KTR that the cell phone monster that lives in the sky hates it when you don't use 4G phones to search for books written by an author who's name is Tom. Ask me how I know this and I will tell you that there is no way for me to prove to you that this monster feels this way, but i can assure you that not only does it exist but it does indeed feel this way. Why would you ask me to provide proof to you about this KTR, don't you know that if you try to prove this monster than it ceases to be the monster that I believe in!

Excellent. This reveals the translation process that is going on in your head whereby you willfully replace what people have said with complete nonsense. It is an excellent demonstration of the convenient stupidity that ideologues indulge in. Of course there is difference between the questions of how one knows something and whether it can be demonstrated objectively. Yes, I certainly do NOT accept your absurd and objectively unprovable logic that the only things that exist are things which are objectively demonstrable.

So lets do a different cell phone example which is not manufactured solely by your need to see people who disagree with you on objectively undecidable things as stupid.

Someone tells you that there is a someone out there calling people on their cell phones, but is somehow able to erase any record of the call on the cell phone and everywhere else. If you ask them how they know that, then they tell you that they have received such a call themselves and that they have friends that have received such calls also. What are they to tell you in response to your absurd demand that they should not believe that they have received such calls because they have no way of proving it to you? They will rightly think that you are completely insane.

[Dr Mundo]

Yes, I certainly do NOT accept your absurd and objectively unprovable logic that the only things that exist are things which are objectively demonstrable.

That is funny, because I too don't accept that statement, which you claim belongs to me.

So lets do a different cell phone example which is not manufactured solely by your need to see people who disagree with you on objectively undecidable things as stupid.

It sounds like nonsense TO ME. I am not saying that you are wrong about there being a God or a soul or that you are stupid, I am saying I have no evidence to conclude that there is or isn't either of those things so I don't believe in them. Its not because I have come to a conclusion that they don't exist and so I oppose anyone who says they do. When you say spiritual, Soul, God. any of those things, TO ME it sounds like what it would sound like to you if I talked about the Cell phone monster, or a GERATWES. incomprehensible. No matter how much ignorance I have of an issue, has no impact on the actual existence of what ever is in question I understand that and I wonder why you think that is what I am claiming. I am just talking about what goes on in my head. When have I ever said that because I don't understand it, it therefore does not exist?

Someone tells you that there is a someone out there calling people on their cell phones, but is somehow able to erase any record of the call on the cell phone and everywhere else. If you ask them how they know that, then they tell you that they have received such a call themselves and that they have friends that have received such calls also. What are they to tell you in response to your absurd demand that they should not believe that they have received such calls because they have no way of proving it to you? They will rightly think that you are completely insane.

Why would I respond in that way? If I had sufficient reasons to trust them than I would tentatively trust them with respect to phone calls, I would have no evidence for or against it. If I ever got evidence one way and it was opposite what that person was telling me, now I have reasons to distrust this person because this person now has a history of lying. But with Phone calls. I know that people can make them and I know what they are, So its not a stretch for me to accept that proposition as true. Something as trivial as that I have no issue with accepting as true. I will only for myself have a higher degree of certainty for things of which I have empirical evidence for. Either way I don't really think you understand my posts.

[mitchellmckain]

I was going to expand on my example before I read your response here.

Someone tells you that there is a person out there calling people on their cell phones, but he is somehow able to erase any record of the call on the cell phone and everywhere else. If you ask them how they know that such a person exists, then they tell you that they have received such a call themselves and that they have friends that have received such calls also. What are they to tell someone in response to an absurd demand that they should not believe that they have received such calls because they have no way of proving it? They will rightly think that they are completely insane. If people declare that they cannot possibly know that this is a person and not some invisible dragon or a spagetti monster that is calling them, they can only respond that the call they got does give them reason to believe that a person is doing this but not in the things that they are suggesting, regardless of whether they can prove it. Furthermore they can honestly say that if they heard people claiming that they recieved calls from an invisible dragon or a spagetti monster then they would not be able to believe in such a caller.

Yes, I certainly do NOT accept your absurd and objectively unprovable logic that the only things that exist are things which are objectively demonstrable.

That is funny, because I too don't accept that statement, which you claim belongs to me.

I claim that this is the logic you are using not that this is precisely some statement you have made.

It sounds like nonsense TO ME. I am not saying that you are wrong about there being a God or a soul or that you are stupid, I am saying I have no evidence to conclude that there is or isn't either of those things so I don't believe in them.

I have very little doubt that God knows how He can make you believe that He exists if that is what He wanted, thus it seems all to likely to me that this simply isn't what God wants. So this is not about convincing YOU to believe in God. I could care less. That is between you and God as far as I am concerned and is really none of my business. But you are here to talk to Christians and the question is why? Well the reasons you have given over and over again is that it is immoral or harmful for people to believe differently than you do on this undecidable issue -- thus suggesting that you are on this crusade to save people from such harmful errors. My response has been that it is this attitude of yours which is immoral and harmful to people who desire to live in a free society. So if you ask why I am here to talk to atheists then I give a very different sort of answer, to say that there are other things that are far far more important that this undecidable issue of whether God exists. They are things that theists and atheists can agree upon that are more important, such as to understand the differences and relationship between science and relgion and to accept the limits that must be imposed by a free society.

[Moonwood the Hare]

Just to be clear - you are claiming that the only thing you can know are facts and facts can only be known empirically so only that which can be empirically demonstrated can be known. I think this claim can easily be refuted; so easily that I doubt you are actually making it.

When I say "know", I mean it as knowledge -- corroborated information. Not merely "aware of". I'm aware of brain surgery, but do not know it in any expert manner (I could if I applied myself to learning it, but that's a different issue).

You do not know there is a god-- because you do not have any demonstrable evidence to corroborate it-- if you did, you'd deploy it and end this debate in a thrice. You don't know Jesus saves you, you don't know you go to heaven or hell, you don't know that sin offends god, and so on. You certainly are aware of these claims, and you sure do believe these claims are true (or, you believe some version of them are true), but you do not have any demonstrable knowledge of them. That is why they are articles of faith, and not articles of empirical knowledge.

Well you seem to be making two quite distinct and prima facie incompatible epistemic claims.

The first is that you can only know things on the basis of what your senses tell you - that means ultimately that what you can know are patches of colour, traces of smell, sounds. An alternative view, a less strict empiricism, would be to say that you know the order your mind makes from these sensory experiences, so although in one sense you are experiencing sense data in another sense you are experiencing a world of objects which this data enables you to construct. In either case these are undoubtedly private experiences.

The second claim you are making is that you can only know things that have been corroborated. It might seem that this would mean that if you were alone eating an apple you could not know you were eating an apple as there was no one there to corroborate this belief and turn it into knowledge but I think in fact you would say that because you remember people in the past corroborating that things that looked a bit like what you are eating now are really there and are apples and what you are doing is eating you can still know this. However your memory is not something that can be corroborated. It is another private experience..

So I think you need to decide whether you mean you can only know things that are corroborated or can only know on the basis of empirical evidence.

[Moonwood the Hare]

Good job getting to the heart of the matter, I appreciate that. This has actually been something that I've thought about quite a bit. First of all I think you're right. If I choose to believe in Christianity because all of the evidence is currently pointing that way and then later on find out that a new piece of evidence shows that I had it all wrong and which prompts me to quit my beliefs, I agree that's problematic. What would I do farther on down the road when a new piece of evidence changes my mind again and shows that I actually probably had it right the first time? My beliefs in Christianity are not unto myself, its a relationship you know, and I am having trouble putting it into words right now, but it just doesn't seem right that I'd leave God, its a relationship, I dunno that part of it is hard for me to put into words, maybe I'll be able to explain it better after I've thought about it a little more. I guess it's just that the relationship itself, the loyalty, the faithfulness, it has a weight of its own, you know, and it should, its not a kite that blows whatever direction the flow is moving... I'm probably not making any sense.

But anyways while I don't know exactly how you're thinking, I think I'm on the same boat. Some time ago - while thinking about this very thing actually - I came to the realization that I felt I could know God was real more than I could know any other thing, I had experienced him. I had felt his love and his forgiveness. I read about Jesus and read his words and I just have to say, "I believe you God!". Lol, I'm sure what I'm saying doesn't make any sense, especially to nonbelievers, but that's okay I wouldn't expect it to. I wish i could explain this better, I think the realization really had an impact on me when I started to think about how I actually knew something. I realized that I didn't actually know stuff as absolutely as I - for some reason - thought I did. I guess I started to think about how the world is filtered through my senses and that was startling to me, when I actually started to think about how I see my environment, how the electromagnetic radiation bounces off of things and how my eyeballs can detect it and how really removed from the world I actually am. It's like one big transfer function in the s-domain. The world is an input, and my body is a filter and the output, what I get inside, is a function of both. It's like when a satellite takes a picture of the earths surface and before the picture can be viewed as it really is the imprint of the satellites camera properties must be deconvolved from the raw data. It really amazed me. Maybe I let go of a sort of materialistic misconception that I had been holding onto. I guess i realized that Jesus inside of me was more real to me than the frequencies of light that my retina is able to detect.

I can see how what I've written probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense, I really need to try and clean these feelings that I have up a little bit, actually make them presentable. Because right now that's really all they are, raw feelings, I have never actually tried to put this into words before.

There are a couple of things I would recommend you reading. The first is Roy Clouser's 'Knowing with the Heart' or any of Clouser's shorter pieces on how we know which can be found on his website 'The Clouser Pages'. The other is C. S. Lewis's Obstinacy in Belief which has been printed in a number of collections not least one put together by Lewis just before he died and called Screwtape proposes a toast. You might also like to take a look at some of the writing of Alvin Plantinga though these are heavier going. Over the last 50 years a number of Christians in the Reformed tradition have been tackling the issue of epistemology or how we know. One of the earliest was Cornelius Van Til and he was followed by his student Francis Schaeffer. At the heart of this has been the question of whether God is something we need to infer from some other facts about the world or whether his existence can be properly basic, something we can start from. Of course it is very frustrating to atheists for Christians to say God is basic for them and one might think the next step for the atheist would be to say that while some kinds of things can be basic God is not one of those kinds of things. I suspect that the reason atheists do not do this is that many of them have no clear idea what kind of thing can be basic and there is certainly no agreement among atheists. Whereas earlier generations of atheist thinkers could be divided neatly into empiricists, materialists, rationalists etc the current trend is for vagueness so that they say in effect that lots of different kinds of things might be basic for them but God can't. In one sense they are right if they are atheists God cannot be basic for them but this does not explain why God cannot be validly basic for someone else. At this point the atheist may say God cannot be basic as he does not exist whereas sense data, reason, matter etc. can be basic because we know they do exist. However when you ask how we know these things exist you end up saying either that we know they exist because we experience them or we know we exist because other people agree they exist. Both of these claims can be made by theists about God.

[Dr Mundo]

Yes, I certainly do NOT accept your absurd and objectively unprovable logic that the only things that exist are things which are objectively demonstrable.

That is funny, because I too don't accept that statement, which you claim belongs to me.

I claim that this is the logic you are using not that this is precisely some statement you have made.

But thats not the logic I am using, That isn't even Logical. I don't believe that only things that are objectively demonstrable are the only possible things that can exist. I have a vast amount of ignorance for the things that exist (if any do) for which there is no demonstrable properties or attributes to. All I can say about those things is I don't believe that they exist. Not that i believe they don't exist. Does that make sense to you at all, many people (especially theists) have trouble understanding that distinction. Since I can only accept the things for which verification is possible I am limited as to what I can believe, because that is how my mind works. You apparently are comfortable with a belief that has no demonstrable justification, I am unable to behave in the same fashion. I don't think your stupid, I don't hate you, I don't want to limit your freedoms what so ever (so long as they don't infringe on anybody else) Say some bullshit like that again and I will just stop responding to you because I have addressed that countless times and you refuse to listen. Can you take me on my word that my desires are not to be bigoted or intolerant? If not then we will just keep dancing around this issue over and over again, And I for one am tired of it.

I have very little doubt that God knows how He can make you believe that He exists if that is what He wanted, thus it seems all to likely to me that this simply isn't what God wants. So this is not about convincing YOU to believe in God. I could care less. That is between you and God as far as I am concerned and is really none of my business.

And I have little doubt that BGESRER knows how to convince you that Jesus was just a person, and that no such God type entity exists in the universe, but that is between you and BGESRER, you can take it up with BGESRER if you have an issue with that.

For all we know the BGESRER and your God don't exist, perhaps they do. but you claiming that something is between me and God is like me claiming something is between you and BGESRER.

But you are here to talk to Christians and the question is why?

Becuase I used to be a Christian and talking to them about some of the things I used to believe and what they currently believe is a fun and interesting conversation I like having.

Well the reasons you have given over and over again is that it is immoral or harmful for people to believe differently than you do on this undecidable issue

Fuck off Mitch.

[Moonwood the Hare]

Hi Dr M - been meaning to respond - here it is - sorry you feel misunderstood - always a problem finding the balance between empathy and rhetoric.

It’s not that I think it cannot happen just because I think its ridicules. It’s just that I think magical thinking like that is very bizarre. Please note that I am not saying it’s impossible for it to happen, I don’t how many times I have to make that distinction. I thought by now you guys would understand what I was trying to say. IF I had said, because I find it ridicules I know it cannot happen, then you would have a point I suppose. But you don’t, because I didn’t.
As to the magical aspect, if God did heal you how the hell else would you classify it other than magic? Jesus turning water to wine seems like magic as well. So to does spontaneous healing of cancer because of God’s intervention. What process would God use to cure you of the cancer you had telepathically asked to be cured of?

Well if you explained to me what you meant by magical I might say yes it was. For example if you want to use the word magical for any event that science cannot explain or that involves intervention by something not a part of nature. But if by magic you mean a form of manipulation through occult laws which is what the word usually means I would say no it isn't magic. The term magical thinking has a quite specific meaning in psychopathology; are you using the word in that sense?

If your claim about finding it ridiculous was just an observation about your own psychology then that is fair enough. Many Christians including myself would say they find the same psychological response in themselves. But the fact that you respond to my beliefs by finding them ridiculous is no reason for me or anyone else to disbelieve them.

But suppose God wants me to ask for things.

Why would/should I?

Why should I put limiters on him.

I don’t follow you here??

God may want to heal me why should I think he would no do that on the basis of someone else's feeling that this would be ridiculous. He may want me to ask as part of what he is teaching me.

Besides it is your idea that his existence cannot be known not mine.

No its not my idea… it’s what damn near all of you theists have told us atheists here on these forums. We asked for any demonstration of your God entity and you all say you cannot provide because it cannot be demonstrated. You see why this is so hard, I don’t understand one bit of what any of you are talking about. Now what my idea is, is that I have no idea about this God. If I were pressed I would likely say, that given the history of religions and the knowledge that we have that people make up gods all the time I would be inclined to say there probably isn’t a god. But I wouldn’t ever go that far, I have no evidence to back that up and so I cannot hold that position. Provide some that there is and I will believe, I still wouldn’t worship but I would no longer be an atheist. Until you provide the evidence sufficient for us to accept the existence of a god though I will remain an atheist.

Well you are making the same mistake as Keep the Reason here and identifying being known with being demonstrable. I think as I have said several times that the epistemological framework you are proposing is naive and unworkable; to give the same example again: do I really only know that I am thinking if I share my thoughts with someone else.

The God you are describing is the God of Deism and yes frankly it would be incredible if such a God ever intervened in creation. But then I never pretended to believe in that God.

Again you lost me. How did I describe a deistic god?

Well when you say:

The arrogant part is that you believe that the greatest being in the universe one whose existence can’t even be known, is somehow looking out for you, waiting for you to ask to remove a cancer from your body, even though you have access to some pretty sophisticated medical equipment and treatments.

You are positing a remote being, unknowable and distant from people's needs and concerns

My thoughts on that where for the people treating God like a genie in a lamp, where a prayer(wish) is granted by asking for it. Say curing you of cancer. Or help with a loan modification on your house. If you could wish for something like that in the real world, why not wish(pray) for something that has significant impact on the most amount of people. To wish for just yourself seems a bit odd to me at least.

Seems odd to me as well. But why not do both?

I don't think Christians have avoided the issues of world poverty, do you? And it seems to me that it is the false humility you are advocating that is really punitive for in this view the person with cancer must look on the suffering of the world and find no place for his own pain. How is that kind?

How have you got that we must find no place for our own pain from what I was saying. I am participating less and less on these forums and for that I am sorry because I really liked it when I was more active. But as the time goes by and I read more of how you and the others misrepresent what atheism is and what each of our own unique different perspectives are, it makes it hard for me to even think of a response that I have not already given. Which is stop misrepresenting my views, which I don’t suspect you will do, so I guess we will just have to soldier on with this same old song and dance.

Well you had said that God would not want to heal a person with cancer living in a better off country because he must have better things to do. The implication is that if I am rich I can look at my cancer and compare myself with people suffering in poorer countries and conclude it is not bad really, at least not bad enough to trouble God about, and so not bad enough for me to be troubled about. So although this did trouble and upset me I would need to tell my self that on the scale of things it did not matter. And by telling myself that I would very easily slip into a kind of thinking where because I felt I had no right to any mental anguish I was feeling I was not in fact feeling that anguish. So if a person in that situation wanted to pray to God or Allah or anyone else, if they wanted to beg for help or else wave an angry fist I would say do it.

[Keep The Reason]

Great post, Moonwood. I like that you make me think on my positions and show me places where there's weakness or thinness. Kudos.

That being said, let's look at it, ok?

Well you seem to be making two quite distinct and prima facie incompatible epistemic claims.

The first is that you can only know things on the basis of what your senses tell you - that means ultimately that what you can know are patches of colour, traces of smell, sounds. An alternative view, a less strict empiricism, would be to say that you know the order your mind makes from these sensory experiences, so although in one sense you are experiencing sense data in another sense you are experiencing a world of objects which this data enables you to construct. In either case these are undoubtedly private experiences.

Partially agree. They are private yet between individuals that privacy can be shared. Are there intuitive elements to this? Of course-- we all know that the idea of a "color" is based primarily on a context we all agree upon but cannot necessarily objectively prove to be true. For instance, you and I might look at a red shirt and you see green and I see blue, but we both agree that it's "red". With further appeals to reason, like reading temperatures of color and chemical compounds of dyes, we can narrow it down to an agreed upon fact, but you and I both know that ultimately we can't prove anything -- we can only approximate proof in our penultimate materialist existence.

The second claim you are making is that you can only know things that have been corroborated. It might seem that this would mean that if you were alone eating an apple you could not know you were eating an apple as there was no one there to corroborate this belief and turn it into knowledge but I think in fact you would say that because you remember people in the past corroborating that things that looked a bit like what you are eating now are really there and are apples and what you are doing is eating you can still know this. However your memory is not something that can be corroborated. It is another private experience..

While this is somewhat defined by time-related limits, I can corroborate such a thing as eating an apple -- for one, I can puke it up and show that it was in me. If too much time has gone by, well, it's more difficult, of course, but then if I am functioning, healthy, and robust in my physical body, it means I must be eating something. Philosophically, I concede I might not be able to definitively prove I ate an apple two weeks ago, but if I adequately describe an apple, and its flavor, which others can concur upon, and can repeat the action, such a mundane act in a realist sense would easily be granted knowledge status even if it does "break" the law that knowledge is a corroborated fact.

In fact, in some instances we can tell what was eaten long after the person has died. Ice Man's Last Meal 5,000+ Years Ago. In this instance, we don't even need the testimony of the person who did the eating.

So I think you need to decide whether you mean you can only know things that are corroborated or can only know on the basis of empirical evidence.

Philosophically speaking it's both due to overlap and the fact that not all things are mathematically categoric in nature.

What we can deduce however is that something wholly undemonstrable, provable, tested, examined or corroborated cannot be claimed as a knowledge fact. At best, it is a belief or an opinion, and it ends there.

[Dr Mundo]

Hi Dr M - been meaning to respond - here it is - sorry you feel misunderstood - always a problem finding the balance between empathy and rhetoric.

yeah it sometimes can be, I appreciate your desire to try.

Well if you explained to me what you meant by magical I might say yes it was. For example if you want to use the word magical for any event that science cannot explain or that involves intervention by something not a part of nature. But if by magic you mean a form of manipulation through occult laws which is what the word usually means I would say no it isn't magic. The term magical thinking has a quite specific meaning in psychopathology; are you using the word in that sense?

I am using the former. I have no reason to use the occult manipulation, when we are talking about your religion. We have no way to distinguish between magical and divine actions, Do you have one? What if you were praying to God to heal you of cancer but instead, a healing fairy passed by your body one day and noticed you had cancer so it removed it for you at the same time you just so happened to be praying to God? Is there a way to distinguish between which of those two is responsible for your cancer being gone? If turning water to wine is not magical what else would you call it?

If your claim about finding it ridiculous was just an observation about your own psychology then that is fair enough.

It was.

But the fact that you respond to my beliefs by finding them ridiculous is no reason for me or anyone else to disbelieve them.

And I don't expect it to be, I am just giving you some feedback so that you can see a bit more deeply into my train of thought.

But suppose God wants me to ask for things.

Why would/should I?

God may want to heal me why should I think he would no do that on the basis of someone else's feeling that this would be ridiculous. He may want me to ask as part of what he is teaching me.

Why should I assume that he wants to heal you though? I don't think that he will stop healing you on the basis that I find it ridiculous that you are asking for help of something for which I don't think there is sufficient evidence to believe it actually exists, but I also don't think that praying has any direct impact on the cancer in your body. You keep saying that God may want to do these things, but again God also may not want these things you are saying he may want. God may not even exist so it would be impossible for us to say that It wants something. How can something that does not exist exhibit desires? So again, Give me a reason, a good reason, to suppose that God wants you to ask these things? assuming that there is a God to ask.

Well you are making the same mistake as Keep the Reason here and identifying being known with being demonstrable. I think as I have said several times that the epistemological framework you are proposing is naive and unworkable; to give the same example again: do I really only know that I am thinking if I share my thoughts with someone else.

No you have other avenues for confirmation that you are thinking. Instead of KTR and I making the mistake is it possible that it is you who are mistaken? How is it even possible to "Know" something for which you cannot demonstrate, repeat, test, observe, or manipulate? Just by hoping that its true? By having faith that its true? None of those things is what I would call knowledge. You certainly claim to know it, but with out being able to demonstrate the veracity of the claim I have no reason to actually believe you. You are entitled to your own beliefs, but not to your own facts.

Again you lost me. How did I describe a deistic god?

Well when you say:

The arrogant part is that you believe that the greatest being in the universe one whose existence can’t even be known, is somehow looking out for you, waiting for you to ask to remove a cancer from your body, even though you have access to some pretty sophisticated medical equipment and treatments.

You are positing a remote being, unknowable and distant from people's needs and concerns

No I am positing a Being who is being prayed to and answering those prayers. It was my understanding that a Deistic God does not intervene in human affairs, in essences it is a God that created the universe and then left it to be on it own. How is that even close to what I was describing?

My thoughts on that where for the people treating God like a genie in a lamp, where a prayer(wish) is granted by asking for it. Say curing you of cancer. Or help with a loan modification on your house. If you could wish for something like that in the real world, why not wish(pray) for something that has significant impact on the most amount of people. To wish for just yourself seems a bit odd to me at least.

Seems odd to me as well. But why not do both?

Why not skip the prayer all together and go right to helping?

Well you had said that God would not want to heal a person with cancer living in a better off country because he must have better things to do.

.....Where did I say that? I was talking about the people Praying for the cure to their cancer or financial help for them and their neighbors, If you thought you had what I would consider akin to a Genie in a bottle, then why waste a wish on just yourself? Why not direct that to where it can do the most good for the most amount of people? Do you believe you have multiple wishes(prayers that will be answered)? I still don't see the purpose of prayer. If its just to make you feel better then I understand, but if you think its more than that, I just don't see the evidence or reasoning to continue to support that claim.

The implication is that if I am rich I can look at my cancer and compare myself with people suffering in poorer countries and conclude it is not bad really, at least not bad enough to trouble God about, and so not bad enough for me to be troubled about.

Since I do believe that for the most part we are on our own, I don't think that is a reasonable thing to do, to not worry about something because others are worse off. I am talking about people who are praying to a God to do something specific in their life, when asking for that same help but geared towards what would benefit so many others, in positions so much worse than mine, would be a better idea IN MY BOOK. If its not for you than so be it, I have no issue with what you think is better, I am giving you insight into what I think is better, if you were right about prayer.

So although this did trouble and upset me I would need to tell my self that on the scale of things it did not matter. And by telling myself that I would very easily slip into a kind of thinking where because I felt I had no right to any mental anguish I was feeling I was not in fact feeling that anguish.

Seems like faulty reasoning to me. But if you think people would feel/think that way than that is what you think, what would you like for me to say about that?

So if a person in that situation wanted to pray to God or Allah or anyone else, if they wanted to beg for help or else wave an angry fist I would say do it.

Do what wave the angry fist, or pray? Either way I would say do what you feel is right. Just don't do anything that would give us a reason to have to stop you ie, harming others. You do what you feel is right, and I tell you why I agree or disagree with your, Reasons, evidence, and/or Justifications for doing that action or holding that belief.

[mitchellmckain]

But thats not the logic I am using, That isn't even Logical. I don't believe that only things that are objectively demonstrable are the only possible things that can exist. I have a vast amount of ignorance for the things that exist (if any do) for which there is no demonstrable properties or attributes to. All I can say about those things is I don't believe that they exist. Not that i believe they don't exist. Does that make sense to you at all

Sure that makes sense, but it is not consistent with the outrage you constantly express that anyone should believe in the existence of things which they cannot provide you with objective proof. You ask why they believe in the existence of God and they tell you that they have a personal relationship with him. Is it because you don't want to think about similar experiences that you have had that you just gloss right over this and pretend they did not say any such thing? If you really believed what you just said right here then the proper response is simply to say that you haven't had any personal experience that convinces you and so they cannot expect you to believe the same thing. That is perfectly reasonable. If there is no objective evidence for something you believe, then no matter what your personal experience and subjective evidence you cannot expect others to accept the truth of the claim.

All I can say about those things is I don't believe that they exist. Not that i believe they don't exist. Does that make sense to you at all, many people (especially theists) have trouble understanding that distinction.

Yes and I also know the inherent ambiguity in that statement that distinguishes it from simply saying you don't have the belief that God exists, and thus allows atheists to play word games. Regardless, you are constantly making statements on the matter which are not objectively demonstrable, like when you said that people cannot know that God even exists.

Since I can only accept the things for which verification is possible I am limited as to what I can believe, because that is how my mind works. You apparently are comfortable with a belief that has no demonstrable justification, I am unable to behave in the same fashion.

If you mean that I actually know that I do not limit my knowledge to what is objectively provable rather than indulging in the delusion that I only believe those things for which I have objective evidence then you are absolutely correct. No I do not reject experiences of reality that do not agree with what I have already decide is real, just because I cannot prove it to other people. All of my experiences are included in the data upon which I decide what is real, for I feel absolutely no need to hide in a crowd and justify my beliefs by insisting that other people have to believe the same thing. If aliens visited me and provided me no proof of their visit, I would not expect other people to believe that this happened, but I would know that it happened.

I don't think your stupid, I don't hate you, I don't want to limit your freedoms what so ever (so long as they don't infringe on anybody else) Say some bullshit like that again and I will just stop responding to you because I have addressed that countless times and you refuse to listen.

I don't think you are stupid and I haven't claimed that you said I was stupid. I don't hate you and I haven't claimed that you said that you hated me. I have defended your freedom to believe whatever you like about such undecidable issues but absolutely have no control over what you decide to imagine me saying. But be my guest and respond or not as you like.

Can you take me on my word that my desires are not to be bigoted or intolerant?

Absolutely. I always have thought this anyway.

I have very little doubt that God knows how He can make you believe that He exists if that is what He wanted, thus it seems all to likely to me that this simply isn't what God wants. So this is not about convincing YOU to believe in God. I could care less. That is between you and God as far as I am concerned and is really none of my business.

And I have little doubt that BGESRER knows how to convince you that Jesus was just a person, and that no such God type entity exists in the universe, but that is between you and BGESRER, you can take it up with BGESRER if you have an issue with that.

For all we know the BGESRER and your God don't exist, perhaps they do. but you claiming that something is between me and God is like me claiming something is between you and BGESRER.

So what is your point??? You know that I do believe that God exists and I know that you do not. There is nothing in what I said that demands that you believe in God, quite the opposite. So are you expecting me to pretend to be an atheist whenever I talk to you? That is wrong on so many levels. One reason is that it begs the question, why are you here? Do you want to talk to Chrisitians or not? What do you think the gay right's community would say to those who tell them to pretend they are heterosexual in public? WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM? What I said is simply to explain why my belief in God does not require me to expect or demand that you believe in God at all.

You cannot seriously expect me to believe that you do not understand what I am saying simply because you do not believe in God. I know that you are familar with the concept. I do not believe that tachyons exist and yet when someone says things about tachyons, I don't pretend that I cannot understand what they saying. On the contrary, I know the concept so well that I am usually able to explain what is right and what is wrong in what they are saying.

Because I used to be a Christian and talking to them about some of the things I used to believe and what they currently believe is a fun and interesting conversation I like having.

Why is it fun? You include the fact that you used to be Christian in this explanation, does that mean that your fun requires people to understand Christianity the way that you used to?

Well the reasons you have given over and over again is that it is immoral or harmful for people to believe differently than you do on this undecidable issue

Fuck off Mitch.

You have posted threads claiming that Christianity is immoral or harmful to people. Does your response here mean that you have learned to discern between Christianity in general and the particular beliefs you encountered when you were Christian, that you found to be harmful?

[Aaron]

There are a couple of things I would recommend you reading. The first is Roy Clouser's 'Knowing with the Heart' or any of Clouser's shorter pieces on how we know which can be found on his website 'The Clouser Pages'. The other is C. S. Lewis's Obstinacy in Belief which has been printed in a number of collections not least one put together by Lewis just before he died and called Screwtape proposes a toast.

Thanks for the suggestions. I ordered a copy of both off Amazon (used cheap books are the best thing ever), I look forward to reading them.

At the heart of this has been the question of whether God is something we need to infer from some other facts about the world or whether his existence can be properly basic, something we can start from. Of course it is very frustrating to atheists for Christians to say God is basic for them and one might think the next step for the atheist would be to say that while some kinds of things can be basic God is not one of those kinds of things. I suspect that the reason atheists do not do this is that many of them have no clear idea what kind of thing can be basic and there is certainly no agreement among atheists. Whereas earlier generations of atheist thinkers could be divided neatly into empiricists, materialists, rationalists etc the current trend is for vagueness so that they say in effect that lots of different kinds of things might be basic for them but God can't. In one sense they are right if they are atheists God cannot be basic for them but this does not explain why God cannot be validly basic for someone else. At this point the atheist may say God cannot be basic as he does not exist whereas sense data, reason, matter etc. can be basic because we know they do exist. However when you ask how we know these things exist you end up saying either that we know they exist because we experience them or we know we exist because other people agree they exist. Both of these claims can be made by theists about God.

I find this very interesting.

Somewhere in my life I fell into this trap that I thought that what I saw (optically speaking) was undeniable truth. Now I'm not saying that we shouldn't jump out of the way when we see an angry moose running at us simply because we aren't sure if our eyes are playing tricks on us, but I am saying that we don't see the world as it actually is. We get input and that input is modified by our physical body. Its not like our minds are plugged into the universe's outlet for absolute truth. But for some reason I had that idea, that I was plugged directly into the material world and I could know things in an absolute sense, although I would have never thought that, it was quite subtle. But I'm still struggling to describe what I mean to say.

Perhaps after some slow quiet thinking and reading I'll be able to explain myself a little better... lets hope anyway...