purplerat wrote:Hi jlowder,

I'm sure your busy with responding to everybody else and thanks for doing so. I'm reading through your posts and I still have a very basic question; how do you justify the application of scientific principles to the supernatural? By definition science deals with the natural world. Thus anything defined as supernatural would fall clearly outside of the scope of what science deals with. Is there something in these definitions or your understanding of them that allows for the presumption that science can even be applied to the supernatural? The way I see it something that is explicitly defined as supernatural can no more be assumed to have a probability than can it be assumed to have a mass or any other natural property.

jlowder wrote:
Hi -- Thanks for understanding. It is quite time-consuming (but extremely worthwhile and enjoyable) to respond to everyone on this thread, so I appreciate your understanding of this.

I have a feeling my answer to your question will not be very satisfying. Briefly: (1) I don't thnk of what I am doing with Bayesian confirmation theory as necessarily involving "the application of scientific principles to the supernatural;" (2) since I am using the epistemic interpretation of probability, I do not see how the supernatural necessarily and a priori creates a problem for assigning probability values. I'm not saying there aren't difficulties or challenges, but I don't see any reason to say "something that is explicitly defined as supernatural can no more be assumed to have a probability." The only reason I can see for saying that statements about the supernatural do not have probabilities would be if you were a noncognitivist, i.e., if you thought such statements were meaningless and hence do not have a truth value. I am prepared to allow that some propositions about the supernatural may have inscrutable probabilities, i.e., probabilities we have no way of knowing, but notice that is different from saying that probabilities do not even apply to propositions about the supernatural.

Does that help?

Regards,

2. Classical theism has a higher prior probability than other supernatural alternatives such as deism, Santa Claus, leprechauns, pastafarianism (flying spaghetti monster), invisible pink unicorns, etc., based on scope and simplicity.

jlowder wrote:

mikegage wrote:Jeff,

Have you read Roger White’s article Fine Tuning and Multiple Universes from Nous (2000)? Toward the end, he discusses the difference between something being improbable and surprising. I think I would say it is certainly a mistake to say M makes Pr(F/N) substantially higher, but I do actually think it makes it less surprising that we are in a universe like ours. And this point would become stronger the larger the multiverse (and I think the scientific theories positing multiverses predict them to be either quite large or infinite).

I had to skim, so sorry if this has been addressed already.

Hi Mike -- Yes, I do remember reading that, but it's been many years. Incidentally, Paul Draper was one of three co-authors on a paper which responds to White. In my opinion, Draper et al destroyed White's arguments. If you email him at Purdue University, I'm sure he'd be willing to send you a copy.

Regards,

Jeffery Jay Lowder.

Mick wrote:Someone should tell Cali to drop his arrogant tone. He should consider himself lucky and appreciative to have this opportunity.

andrewk wrote:

-Sylvan wrote:I've been reading this thread for an hour or so now and I must say, it has been very interesting.
I was hoping that someone in this thread could recommend a few proponents of naturalistic philosophy, I haven't ever read much philosophy and have no idea where to start

It depends whether what you want to read is general philosophy written from a naturalist perspective, or philosophy that specifically argues for naturalism against supernaturalism, and most usually theism.

For the former, a great starting point is Bertrand Russell's "The Problems of Philosophy", which is available at any good library, or free in electronic form in many places on the web, such as here.

For the latter, some good old examples are David Hume's "Dialogues concerning natural religion" and Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason", again available at good libraries or electronically on the web. For more modern material, there are many good books although only a minority of them are by philosophers. Just about anything by naturalist philosopher Peter Singer is worth a read, provided you don't mind controversy.

Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell" is an intriguing, if somewhat slow paced, analysis of religion as an anthropological phenomenon.

You may enjoy some of the articles on the websites of Stephen Law, a British naturalist philosopher, or Paul Almond, who participates in this forum.

Because one should never just expose oneself to one side of an argument, there are lots of attacks on naturalism out there to read. One that I find particularly interesting, because it is different from the more common cosmological, design and moral arguments for supernaturalism, is Alvin Plantinga's "Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism". It uses some conditional probability calculations generally similar to what has been discussed here (not Bayesian though).

andrewk wrote:Regina I think Mick believes (correctly in my opinion) that, as he and Cali are frequently in dispute, any suggestion coming from Mick himself would be ignored. I haven't read the posts to which Mick is referring and so don't have any opinion on whether they were arrogant but, sadly, arrogance and aggression are a very common feature of posts on these boards, so I fear that any request from anybody to anybody else to tone it down would be disregarded.

Regina wrote:

andrewk wrote:Regina I think Mick believes (correctly in my opinion) that, as he and Cali are frequently in dispute, any suggestion coming from Mick himself would be ignored. I haven't read the posts to which Mick is referring and so don't have any opinion on whether they were arrogant but, sadly, arrogance and aggression are a very common feature of posts on these boards, so I fear that any request from anybody to anybody else to tone it down would be disregarded.

Cali does what he's been doing for a number of years on assorted boards.
For some reason, Mick seems to be thinking we should be in awe of Mr Lowder's presence here.

Paul G wrote:Where's the lack of respect?

Nebogipfel wrote:

Paul G wrote:Where's the lack of respect?

Some people confuse presence of swear words with lack of respect.

Regina wrote:So you can make a living trying to calculate the probability of one figment of the imagination over the other?

Mick wrote:

jlowder wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:So, now that you're here, Jay, care to tell me which, if any, mythological assertions are supported by any evidence?

I'm an atheist. Furthermore, as a metaphysical naturalist, I don't think any supernatural beings exist. I don't believe mythological assertions are supported by the evidence. I suspect you already knew that, however. What are you getting at?

Hi,

But wouldn't you say that classical theism or Christianity is supported by some evidence? This is an awfully weak claim.

Mick wrote:Hey guys,

Here's a video debate involving Lowder. I think Lowder wins.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl2lUIku-zo


Mr. Lowder,

The last I heard of you, you left IIDB in search of of a phd. If that's right, did you attain your goal?

Mick wrote:

Regina wrote:So you can make a living trying to calculate the probability of one figment of the imagination over the other?

That's unchartiable. Philosophers philosophize for a living. One topic of philosophy from ancient times up until now is whether there is a god. Whether you like it or not, it remains a vibrant area of debate among professional philosophers. Perhaps the matter is settled for you, but who cares? You're not scholarly philosophy.

purplerat wrote:

jlowder wrote:
Well, I'm not a physicist, but I'll give this example. If the ONLY reason a person has for introducing the mutiverse hypothesis is to avoid the theistic conclusion of a fine-tuning argument for God, then that would be a prime example of what I categorize as a "speculative" and "far-fetched" doubt. It would be an ad hoc, "just so" story. Biblical errantists criticize inerrantists for "just so" stories all the time in the context of debates over Bible contradictions; they rightly point out that many of the attempted "harmonizations" are completely ad hoc. Some proponents of the multi-verse hypothesis can come across just as ridiculous as inerrantists and for the same reason.

Introducing a mutliverse hypothesis as a response to a fine-tuning argument for god is not about far-fetched or minor doubts. To the contrary it's done to illustrate the very large gaps, holes and doubts in both hypotheses.

purplerat wrote:All current multiverse hypotheses contain very good reasons to doubt. Yet even as such they work just as well if not better than a fine-tuning argument for god in explanatory power. Fine-tuning arguments rely on the notion that no other solution exists, therefore it must be viable despite serious reason to doubt it. Introducing a mutliverse hypotheses merely contradicts the idea that there is no other possible solution.

purplerat wrote:

jlowder wrote:
I disagree. My position can be summarized as follows:

1. So far as I can tell, the genre of the Bible is controversial. It is question-begging to assert that the Bible is a book of fiction, if by book of fiction you mean the author's intent was to invent stories about events that never happened.
2. The claim "even most Christians and theologians accept and acknowledge" that the Bible is a book of fiction is an empirical claim. I don't know of any empirical evidence to support that claim. I think it's false. The majority of Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants believe that the Bible contains at least some historically accurate details.
3. Regarding the idea of taking the Bible at face value, I am not saying we should believe that Jesus existed because we should take the Bible at face value. In fact, I think the question, "Should we take the Bible at face value?", is the wrong question to ask. Instead, we should ask, should we believe this passage or this verse.

1. Fiction does not necessarily mean "stories about events that never happened". Much of fiction is based-on real events and/or real persons. IMO this is the most likely case for the new testament, that it's a "based-on" story. But with any other "based-on" story we would want additional non-fiction sources to confirm the accuracy of details in the "based-on" story. I'm sure you've watched movies that were "based-on" real people and events, but would you take any part of that movie as historical fact without finding some additional source of confirmation?

purplerat wrote:2. Containing "at least some historically accurate details" falls far short of what we would call non-fiction. Tom Sawyer contains "at least some historically accurate details"as does Greek mythology but obviously that doesn't make them non-fiction. For the sake of argument I'll withdraw any empirical claims about how many Christians believe the Bible and/or NT is literally true. Many, or more importantly many apologist who argue for a historically accurate Jesus being portrayed in the bible, do not actually view the NT as non-fiction.
3. If you don't take the Bible as a whole at face value then why would you accept any part of it at face value? How do you go about determining what to take at face value and what not to? The only why I can think of would be to use an extra-Biblical source.