Old China Patterns

3 Comments

1. ProletarianArt
   09/15/2010 at 8:09 pm

2. viewfromreality
   10/04/2010 at 4:45 am

   For the record, before I begin my reply (final reply as I believe our differences are irreconcilable), while I disagree with you on many things, as a writer and enthusiast in these subjects, I do find your work interesting reading. I actually find reading “the other side” to enrich my understanding – I’m open to challenging ideas articulated well I so actually enjoy your work. Just thought I’d say that because blog comment sparring is kinda like meeting someone and punching them in the face…

   Reply:

   A few quotes that relate to my discussion below:
   “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”
   - Charles Darwin

   The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
   -Bertrand Russell

   Ian, I respect that you and many people around the world for as long as we have been around have had experiences that have transformed their life and views of the world around them. That is one of the truly magnificent qualities of being human (and Dawkins would agree with you here). I don’t think we can use that as evidence for objective reality (isn’t that why there is the objective-subjective distinction?) Isn’t the fact that our experiences cannot be trusted to provide reliable evidence of reality the reason a scientific method exists to systematically weed human bias and influence out of the results?

   Argument from popularity
   Are you seriously asking us to believe the testimonies of billions of people throughout history when for the most part the human race has been ignorant about the universe and their place in it. In the past 300 years we’ve learned more about the universe and ourselves than at anytime in history (thanks to the scientific method).

   Here’s what we know that all those people throughout history did not:

   - The universe we see today originated from a Big Bang.
   - There is nothing special about any one part of the universe
   - Complex life evolved from simpler organisms
   - Human reasoning works to confirm prior biases and beliefs
   Religious experiences have a natural explanation and the subjective experience of the individual in question is ALWAYS within the framework of their belief system (Islamic religious experiences don’t involve Jesus or Vishnu). We could take the word of religious believers throughout history but then we get divergent results as everyone’s subjective experience is different.
   Religious experiences throughout the ages have often been induce through mind-altering molecules – suggesting the feeling is merely chemical.
   - Explanations that invoke causation beyond experience is the default setting of the human mind. These explanations always precede reliable knowledge. In other words, where no explanation currently exists, the mind will invent one so as to make sense of the environment.
   - Intuition is consistently overturned by science. We cannot trust intuition and emotions as reliable indicators of objective truth as there are far too many innate baises, reasoning and perceptual flaws that skew data from the environment.
   - Above all, we have found that human reasoning as applied in philosophy and theology is not enough. Philosophers and theologians have thought up all kinds of arguments for and against anything you care to bring up. However, until tested their ideas are still provisional. Aristotle thought men had more teeth than woman – all he had to do was count.

   Now, you insist I can’t prove God isn’t immaterial. That’s true but no one is under the obligation to believe anything without proper reasoning. Bertrand Russell made this explicit with his china teapot example. I claim there is a china teapot orbiting the Earth. You can’t prove that there isn’t but… by the same token, I can’t prove there is. It would therefore be pointless to believe it. It would be ridiculous for me to expect you to believe it or try and prove it false. Let’s extend this, lets say billions of people have believed this china teapot exists over several millennia. Does this make it any more true?

   As for the irrational heart of rationalism – as an equal opportunity skeptic (I am as skeptical of anything that can’t be demonstrated empirically) I apply the same standards of evidence to whatever claim is made. I simply do not permit myself to believe that which goes beyond experience and reason – all too often beliefs of that kind are what people want to believe (and there is no standard of evidence applied that could falsify them). A good example of this in your argument is thus:

   “Time is a property only of the universe that God created. Presumably, God knew what He intended when He set it up.”

   How can you, or anyone else know that with justifiable certainty? It is just assumed in your argument and therefore is a false premise. The more we learn about the universe the less need there is for God to explain it. For an explanation we don’t currently have, the best we can say is we don’t know. Inserting your favourite supernatural agency in there does not magically solve the problem.

   The quote from Hawkings is another example of speculation that you are seem to be using as a “told ya so” type of argument. However, this is still speculation and I never said a God could not exist. There are several valid logical points that make God all the more implausible. These philosophical speculations are scarcely evidence in favour of it – they do seem to be used as placeholders for the religious to hang their beliefs on. The fact something isn’t impossible doesn’t make it probable.

   In science, data from the environment is either supportive of it or not – there is no continuum (again, science would be useless if this was the case). Of course, evidence is a separate realm from facts. A fact is something observable that anyone could conceivably confirm. This is publicly accessible precisely because it is not subjective. There is a Cosmic Microwave Background; fossils become less complex as you dig through geological strata. These by themselves don’t mean anything specifically. The whole endeavour of science using facts to test a hypothesis. One line of evidence can never be enough, we need data from other lines that could conceivably be isolated and tested to see what effect it has on our original hypothesis.

   I therefore dispute the “positive evidence is subjective” statement. Evidence is subjective when people use their own bias to select facts and ignore others (not to mention distort and deny data). This is not science, however. Of course, that means scientific facts are provisional as there could conceivably be new information that could falsify the hypothesis. That doesn’t mean that in the meantime we are making subjective judgements… it means the probability we can ascribe to the theory given testing is never 100% but can we can be certain of theories that have withstood multiple tests and are backed by multiple separate lines of evidence.

   “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts.” – Dr Steven Novella.

   The continuum for evidence you propose seems to be not unlike the post-modern stance and I can see would be a nice way to justify beliefs that have no logical or empirical justification.

   You say supernatural beings are not on an equal footing and can therefore be ranked in order of plausibility. Really? That is illogical because surely we would need to discriminate on the basis of detectable evidence.

   If we can’t explain gravity (currently our understanding is limited) it makes no sense to posit that fairies are responsible for the curvature of a ball I toss into the air. While this explanaion may give us the satisfaction that we have an answer, we can never know such an agency actually exists so belief in said agency is outside the reach of human knowledge (and consistent with the hypothesis that it is completely imagined).

   In summation, and this is the unresolvable disagreement we have here – I don’t think we can reliably – that is with a high degree of probability – confirm the existence of a supernatural agency. After we have posited such an entity, it seems that we have put a fullstop on the inquiry. This is always a premature argument as there will always be more to know. When we fill in further blanks, the supernatural agency diminishes until it is pushed off limits from inquiry, safe from rational attack.

   Occam’s razor prevents us from taking on additional untested and therefore unjustified assumptions. Besides, without positive evidence for supernatural entities, how do we know that they are not completely imagined?

   So our main difference here is: I say I need positive evidence that God exists – any of the miracles of the bible will do – there were miracles all over the that book, alas, they don’t happen anymore. So God intervening in nature would be a good start (natural phenomena that we have well-supported natural explanations for don’t count) . I know you argue from the God’s fingerprints in nature platform (especially in the Divinity Code). I don’t buy that natural phenomena show God exists, you do so maybe we ought leave it at that.

   Definitely read this:

   Some books I would recommend on Epistemology and the God Hypothesis:
   God the Failed Hypothesis – Victor Stenger
   Supersense – Why We Believe the Unbelievable – Bruce M Hood
   Demon Haunted World – Carl Sagan
   Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion – David Hume
   An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
   Why I Am Not A Christian – Bertrand Russell

   A couple of good podcasts recently:

   P.S. I was once a religious believer – not quite like yourself as I was never that sure of my beliefs. Once I did my own research (this was not encouraged by the church I might add) I couldn’t ignore the philosophical problems, logical loopholes required for belief and ultimately the lack of evidence. It is not in my makeup to do mental hand stands to believe something (whether that be homeopathy or religious claims) – presumably God made me that way?

3. AzvrPlz
   10/05/2010 at 5:38 am

   Fuck globalization: a porcelain story – Now, tell me why we Europeans have made in China teapots and in Japan…