Is there a way to distinguish between "miracles" and "random chance"?

[leftrightleftrightleft]

Show me why isn't it possible for some events to be naturally inexplicable?

Oy...

I am not making the claim that something is or is not naturally explicable in some "Truth(TM)" sense. All sorts of things could be "True(TM)". But, to me, something only has truth value if we can actually know it. For example, I could be a brain in a vat, but that has no truth value for me, since there is no way for me to know it. So, I instead seek truths which I can know given what I have to work with.

I am concerned with how we would know an event has no natural explanation.

How do you reach the conclusion that something is not naturally explicable without inadvertently using an argument from ignorance?

Think about the man who used to believe that lightning was created by God. How did we come to know that lightning is created by charged particles in the atmosphere rather than directly willed into existence by God? We used a method. Specifically, the scientific method to determine that lightning occurs as a result of charged particles in the atmosphere.

Absolutely not. Go back to the criteria I listed for the rational basis for believing miracles. It can't be just any man walking on the river.

Can you point to which post you refer to?

Sensus divinitatis is a sense as described in the model. It occasions belief about God and not feelings.

Why is this sense so inconsistent?

When any person uses their senses to identify a butterfly by looking or a rose by smelling, there is a consistency in identification from person to person. If you give 100 people a bunch of different photos, they will all be able to quickly identify a photo of a butterfly among all the different photos. If you give 100 people a bunch of scents, they will all be able to rather quickly identify the smell of a rose.

But with this "sensus divinitatis", no one (even theists!) seems to be able to identify when or where the divine will be sensed, nor the properties or qualities of the divine in itself. It seems entirely subjective in the sense that no one can agree on what the divine even is. You have 100 Christians in a church all listening to the same worship music and 50 will feel ("sense") the divine in that moment and 50 will hate the music and be wishing the sermon would start. It is entirely subjective based on subjective preferences and emotions. It is a feeling. Not a sense.

Sense: everyone looks and sees a butterfly. Everyone agrees the butterfly can be seen visually.

Feeling: Some will say the butterfly is beautiful, others will say it is ugly.

In the case of worship music, everyone in the church hears the music with their ears (sense) but each individual makes a subjective judgement about the quality of music. Those that enjoy the music feel the divine. Those that do not enjoy the music do not feel the divine. It is a subjective emotion.

 

[ExodusMe]

Oy...

I am not making the claim that something is or is not naturally explicable in some "Truth(TM)" sense. All sorts of things could be "True(TM)". But, to me, something only has truth value if we can actually know it. For example, I could be a brain in a vat, but that has no truth value for me, since there is no way for me to know it. So, I instead seek truths which I can know given what I have to work with.

I am concerned with how we would know an event has no natural explanation.

How do you reach the conclusion that something is not naturally explicable without inadvertently using an argument from ignorance?

Think about the man who used to believe that lightning was created by God. How did we come to know that lightning is created by charged particles in the atmosphere rather than directly willed into existence by God? We used a method. Specifically, the scientific method to determine that lightning occurs as a result of charged particles in the atmosphere.

A miracle is an event that has no natural cause. That means that lightning can be a miracle (for instance, God generates energy to charge particles and produce lightning - the energy would originate from 'nowhere').

The criteria I posted was that a person is rational in believing a miracle has occurred if...
1) the event occurs in a significant religious context (i.e. you are praying for a root beer and open your eyes and a root beer floats in front of you face and lands in your lap)
2) the person has done their due diligence in determining that it is unlikely the cause of the event was natural (i.e. they then move their arms around the root beer making sure there are no strings and go into their brothers room to make sure he is there not pulling a prank - they don't just go "it's a mrrrrricle!" contrary to popular belief).

I described this criteria, because it doesn't seem like it is beneficial for you or me to dispute with someone else whether an event was a miracle if the person came to believe it was a miracle on the criteria above. How could I know it wasn't a miracle? Agnosticism would only be rational in this case if you had assumptions that did not allow for miracles to exist (atheism) or you were just a random bystander who believes in God, but maybe you don't really know this person and think this guy might be crazy or he could be totally right. In this case I would just remain agnostic or I would ask him more questions about the event to come to believe it was a miracle myself, but it probably wouldn't have the same warrant as the original witness.

Why is this sense so inconsistent?

When any person uses their senses to identify a butterfly by looking or a rose by smelling, there is a consistency in identification from person to person. If you give 100 people a bunch of different photos, they will all be able to quickly identify a photo of a butterfly among all the different photos. If you give 100 people a bunch of scents, they will all be able to rather quickly identify the smell of a rose.

But with this "sensus divinitatis", no one (even theists!) seems to be able to identify when or where the divine will be sensed, nor the properties or qualities of the divine in itself. It seems entirely subjective in the sense that no one can agree on what the divine even is. You have 100 Christians in a church all listening to the same worship music and 50 will feel ("sense") the divine in that moment and 50 will hate the music and be wishing the sermon would start. It is entirely subjective based on subjective preferences and emotions. It is a feeling. Not a sense.

Sense: everyone looks and sees a butterfly. Everyone agrees the butterfly can be seen visually.

Feeling: Some will say the butterfly is beautiful, others will say it is ugly.

In the case of worship music, everyone in the church hears the music with their ears (sense) but each individual makes a subjective judgement about the quality of music. Those that enjoy the music feel the divine. Those that do not enjoy the music do not feel the divine. It is a subjective emotion.

It is inconsistent because the sensus divinitatis has been damaged by sin. You are so callous and hard hearted toward God now and you have erroneously convinced yourself that God did not create the world or anything within it.

Other senses can be damaged as well that distorts their capacity to produce true beliefs. For instance, your eyesight can be damaged and lead you to believe objects right in front of you do not exist. Likewise, the obviousness of God's existence has been clouded in your heart and mind. I was once like this also. Jesus can regenerate you if you pray to him.

 

[PhantomGaze]

Except that it is....

Let's go to an easy to understand example...
There is this rock and it has a sharp edge. A cat uses the sharp edge to scratch itself in places it can reach on its own.

1. Is the rock sharp so that the cat can scratch itself?
2. Or is the cat merely taking advantage of this rock, which happens to have a sharp edge, to scratch itself?

The teleological answer is the first option.
This example is actually a psychology test for children.

Up until a certain age, toddlers will consider 1 to be correct. As they get older, they understand why that is incorrect.

Yes, that is a natural part of development. Contrarily, in autistic or schizophrenic children, and those who lack what is called a "Theory of Mind", (sometimes called "mind-blindness") and are higher on the autism spectrum, children believe things like "houses grow naturally", and have difficulty recognizing design.

Why?

Because a certain hand is targeted.

It is equally important to understand the difference between contextual functionality and sheer probability.

The "functionality" of the royal flush is something that we impose on it. It is not inherent to the cards, nore does that imposed "value" have any relevance to its probabilities.

You're missing the point. Imagine it was any particular hand, let's say it wasn't very stellar, but you were dealt it 10 times in a row. Whether it is a high performing hand or not, a rational person would suspect (and rightly so) someone was intentionally influencing the way the cards are dealt.

The problem with your rationale is that you fail to understand that imposed value, is not the same as inherent value.

It's not about "value", it's about rigging the game for a certain outcome.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Yes, that is a natural part of development. Contrarily, in autistic or schizophrenic children, and those who lack what is called a "Theory of Mind", (sometimes called "mind-blindness") and are higher on the autism spectrum, children believe things like "houses grow naturally", and have difficulty recognizing design.

You just agreed that teleological reasoning, doesn't lead to accurate answers....

Because a certain hand is targeted.

And that somehow affects the probability of the outcome? Really?

So if I role a dice, I have 1 chance out of 6 to get any of the 6 numbers as a result.
But somehow, when I create a game that targets 3 specifically, then rolling a three somehow no longer has a 1 in 6 chance of being the result?

Are you being serious?

You're missing the point. Imagine it was any particular hand, let's say it wasn't very stellar, but you were dealt it 10 times in a row. Whether it is a high performing hand or not, a rational person would suspect (and rightly so) someone was intentionally influencing the way the cards are dealt.

Now we are getting somewhere. First, I understand that you agree now that a royal flush has the exact same probability as any other particular hand.

Now it gets interesting....
The thing is that you are making a whole lot of assumptions with this analogy. Let's drive it home to illustrate...

- you are assuming that there was only 1 trial for the 10x in a row. If there are enough trials, this 10 times in a row thingy is not only likely, it actually becomes inevitable

- you are assuming that the deck of cards actually has 52 different cards in it. What if the 5 cards you are dealt are the only 5 cards in it? Now, getting that same hand a couple of times isn't that improbable anymore.

- you are assuming that after every deal, a shuffeling takes place

- granting that there are 52 cards in the deck and that a shuffeling takes place, you are assuming that someone is intentionally rigging the deck. What if the shuffeling machine actually isn't a shuffeling at all, but instead a thing that stacks the deck in the exact same way every single time? This would mean that you would get the same hand every single time. Such a machine would then be analogous to deterministic forces of nature.

When we apply this analogy to actual unexplained phenomena in the real world, we see how each of these assumptions are not justified. Because you are assuming things that you can't possibly know.

Such analogies are oftenly applied to things like "the fine tuning" of the universe... But the simple fact is that people have no idea if the constants of physics could even BE anything else. There's also the assumption that there is just this one universe (ie: a single trial). If a universe with these values is the only one that can exist and if it is part of some kind of multi-verse thingy, then all the other "failed" universes will not exist and it's not at all surprising that we find ourselves in the one that does exist and allows us to be here.

Just like in the analogy, if there are deterministic forces at work that stack the deck, then it is not at all surprising that you are being dealt the hand that you get. This need not be intentional.

It's not about "value", it's about rigging the game for a certain outcome.

More then anything else, it's about assuming that there could even be a different outcome in the first place.

 

[leftrightleftrightleft]

A miracle is an event that has no natural cause. That means that lightning can be a miracle (for instance, God generates energy to charge particles and produce lightning - the energy would originate from 'nowhere').

So, suppose two lightning strikes occur A and B.

How would you show that A is natural and B is originated from God?

The criteria I posted was that a person is rational in believing a miracle has occurred if...
1) the event occurs in a significant religious context (i.e. you are praying for a root beer and open your eyes and a root beer floats in front of you face and lands in your lap)

Christian religious context only? Or are you including Hindu, Muslim, Animist miracles as well?

2) the person has done their due diligence in determining that it is unlikely the cause of the event was natural (i.e. they then move their arms around the root beer making sure there are no strings and go into their brothers room to make sure he is there not pulling a prank - they don't just go "it's a mrrrrricle!" contrary to popular belief).

Argument from ignorance rears its ugly head.

And keep in mind that most miracle claims do not involve something so blatant as a floating root beer. (And if you have such an example, please provide it). Most involve things which are extraordinarily complex which we do not fully understand like the human body (re: healing), the weather (re: praying for rain), the future, etc. These all leave huge amounts of uncertainty of cause.

I described this criteria, because it doesn't seem like it is beneficial for you or me to dispute with someone else whether an event was a miracle if the person came to believe it was a miracle on the criteria above. How could I know it wasn't a miracle? Agnosticism would only be rational in this case if you had assumptions that did not allow for miracles to exist (atheism) or you were just a random bystander who believes in God, but maybe you don't really know this person and think this guy might be crazy or he could be totally right. In this case I would just remain agnostic or I would ask him more questions about the event to come to believe it was a miracle myself, but it probably wouldn't have the same warrant as the original witness.

So I take it that you believe most Hindu miracles with equal weight as Christian miracles?

Why or why not?

Is there any consistency to your method?

It is inconsistent because the sensus divinitatis has been damaged by sin. You are so callous and hard hearted toward God now and you have erroneously convinced yourself that God did not create the world or anything within it.

Other senses can be damaged as well that distorts their capacity to produce true beliefs. For instance, your eyesight can be damaged and lead you to believe objects right in front of you do not exist. Likewise, the obviousness of God's existence has been clouded in your heart and mind. I was once like this also. Jesus can regenerate you if you pray to him.

Lol. I knew you would say this.

So that's why in my reply you'll notice that I specifically referenced a situation where Christians themselves have mismatched sensus divinitatis. The example I used was 100 people in a church listening to worship music. 50 of them "sense" the divine through the music while the other 50 do not. It is completely inconsistent.

Are you suggesting that some of these Christians also have "broken" sensus divinitatis?

And if the sensus divinitatis can be so easily broken in both Christians and non-Christians, then how do you know yours is functioning correctly? Is there any objective test which can be performed which can test whether your sense is working correctly?

For example, with eyesight, we can go to the optometrist and read one of these charts and the optometrist can tell us what type of glasses we need for correction, or whether we can see at all!

 

[ExodusMe]

So, suppose two lightning strikes occur A and B.

How would you show that A is natural and B is originated from God?

Christian religious context only? Or are you including Hindu, Muslim, Animist miracles as well?

Religiously significant isn't exclusive to any religion. You could be an atheist and decide to pray one night and a miracle happens.

Argument from ignorance rears its ugly head.

And keep in mind that most miracle claims do not involve something so blatant as a floating root beer. (And if you have such an example, please provide it). Most involve things which are extraordinarily complex which we do not fully understand like the human body (re: healing), the weather (re: praying for rain), the future, etc. These all leave huge amounts of uncertainty of cause.

You are just confusing what I said. I said it is rational for someone to believe a miracle has occurred under the criteria I listed. It could be a total hoax for all I know. Many of the beliefs you hold rationally are not empirically verified. We already went over this in the other thread. You have never dissected your friend to determine whether they are a robot or not. Also, what proof can you offer that the external world exists? Can you also empirically verify your belief that every belief needs empirical verification?

If your objection is that people should not use miracles as a scientific explanation (something like "the cause of lightning is always and exclusively due to Zeus throwing lightning bolts from the sky"). I would agree to some extent. When we look for scientific explanations we are looking at the cause of repeatable events. A miracle isn't repeatable.

So I take it that you believe most Hindu miracles with equal weight as Christian miracles?

Why or why not?

Is there any consistency to your method?

Would I say that a hindu god did a miracle? Of course not. I am a Christian. If I actually came to believe a miracle claim that a hindu was making I would just come to believe it was Yahweh who did the miracle... If that doesn't answer your question, then I need more specific details...

Lol. I knew you would say this.

So that's why in my reply you'll notice that I specifically referenced a situation where Christians themselves have mismatched sensus divinitatis. The example I used was 100 people in a church listening to worship music. 50 of them "sense" the divine through the music while the other 50 do not. It is completely inconsistent.

Are you suggesting that some of these Christians also have "broken" sensus divinitatis?

And if the sensus divinitatis can be so easily broken in both Christians and non-Christians, then how do you know yours is functioning correctly? Is there any objective test which can be performed which can test whether your sense is working correctly?

For example, with eyesight, we can go to the optometrist and read one of these charts and the optometrist can tell us what type of glasses we need for correction, or whether we can see at all!

Yes, and likewise, with your eyesight, you only see things that you are cognitively recognizing. Eyesight is not imposed on you. I could look across the street at a really delicious donut shop and totally miss the fact that a pink elephant just obstructed my view - I really wanted to eat the donut! Another person could be standing right next to me and then say "did you see the pink elephant that just went by?" and I would then reply "where?". Likewise, the sensus divinitatis only occasions beliefs that we cognitively recognize. If I am in distress about my job and my sensus divinitatis occasions the belief "God can hear my prayers", but instead I decide to go on a job search, then I have dismissed the belief occasioned by the sensus divinitatis.

Here is an excerpt from WCB

(Speaking of the noetic consequences of sin...)
Furthermore, the deliverances of the sensus divinitatis, muffled as they already are, can easily be suppressed and impeded. That can happen in various ways: for example, by deliberately or semi-deliberately turning one’s attention away from them. Perhaps I am tormented by guilt before God, or perhaps by my desire to live a way of which, as I see it, God disapproves; then I may be inclined (with Paul Tillich) to think of God as an impersonal abstract object (“the ground of being”) rather than as a living person who judges me. Or I may come to think of him as unconcerned with the day-to-day behavior of his creatures. Or I may come to think of him, not as a holy God who hates sin, but more like an indulgent grandparent who smiles at the childish peccadilloes of her grandchildren. That is just one way in which sin interferes with the deliverances of the sense of divinity.
Another way in which the latter can be compromised is by way of testimony (which includes not only the case where someone rushes up and breathlessly tells me that my house is on fire but also the whole course of my upbringing and acculturation by parents and peers). Perhaps I am brought up to think there is no such person as God, that belief in God is a result of superstition, belonging to the infancy of the race. Perhaps I read Don Cupitt (after ingesting hallucinogens) and come to regard serious believers in God as objects of pity or 216 figures of fun. Perhaps I am brought up to think of serious theistic belief as the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity and begin to look upon the rest of believing mankind with a sort of amused condescension. For these reasons or others, I ignore the promptings of the sense of divinity, a little ashamed, no doubt, to note its stirring within my heart. Ordinarily there will be a complicated interplay between guilt and damage, between what is due to my own sin (in the primary sense) and what is due to the noetic effects of sin that are beyond my control.62 An analogy: Thomas Reid and others point out that the classical foundationalism is deeply mistaken, and then (perversely) leap lightly to the conclusion that really, there is no such thing as truth. (There is only my version, your version, and so on; where these differ, there is only an issue of power, not of truth.) It can happen in other ways as well. It is said that one of the most serious results of the long Communist tyranny in eastern Europe was just such a suppression of the idea of truth. The truth was officially perverted so often and so cynically (for example, the official organ of the Communist party devoted to the dissemination of this propaganda was ironically named Pravda, i.e., truth) that people came to lose the very idea of truth. They were lied to at every level in utterly shameless and blatant ways; they knew they were being lied to, knew that those who lied to them knew they were lying and that those to whom they lied knew they were being lied to, and so on; the result was that the whole idea of truth tended to evaporate. One said whatever would be of advantage; the question whether it was true no longer arose. In the same sort of way, the deliverances of the sensus divinitatis can be compromised, skewed, or even
suppressed altogether.

Christian doctrine answers your questions on why the sensus divinitatis is not 'fully restored'. Although Christian's have a regenerated sense of the divine we are not completely regenerated until God restores heaven & earth.

Not sure what you mean by 'objective test', but the answer would be the divine confirmation by the Holy Spirit who witnesses to believers the truth of Christianity.

 

[Gene Parmesan]

Not sure what you mean by 'objective test', but the answer would be the divine confirmation by the Holy Spirit who witnesses to believers the truth of Christianity.

Can you walk me through the divine confirmation by the Holy Spirit process?

 

[ExodusMe]

The primary component is faith. Faith is defined as a type of knowledge & supernatural gift from God concerning his benevolent love towards us.

The model accounts for differences in believers doctrines of God as he describes that faith provides knowledge of what believers have in common.

It begins in chapter 8 of the book. I want to read it again and give you more detail, but I am getting lazy.... 10 hour days at work. need weekend....

Beginning @ pg 260...
According to the model (as we saw in chapter 7), we human beings were created in the image of God: we were created both with appropriate affections and with knowledge of God and his greatness and glory. Because of the greatest calamity to befall the human race, however, we fell into sin, a ruinous condition from which we require rescue and redemption. God proposed and instituted a plan of salvation: the life, atoning suffering and death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the incarnate second person of the trinity. The result for us is the possibility of salvation from sin and renewed relationship with God. Now (and here we come to the specifically epistemological extension of the model) God needed a way to inform us—us human beings of many different times and places—of the scheme of salvation he has graciously made available.99 No doubt he could have done this in many different ways; in fact he chose to do so by way of a three-tiered cognitive process. First, he arranged for the production of Scripture, the Bible, a library of books or writings each of which has a human author, but each of which is also specially inspired by God in such a way that he himself is its principal author. Thus, the whole library has a single principal author: God himself. In this library, he proposes much for our belief and action, but there is a central theme and focus (and for this reason this collection of books is itself a book): the gospel, the stunning good news of the way of salvation God has graciously offered.100 Correlative with Scripture and necessary to its properly serving its purpose is the second element of this three-tiered cognitive process: the presence and action of the Holy Spirit promised by Christ himself before his death and resurrection,101 and invoked and celebrated in the epistles of 244 the apostle Paul.102 By virtue of the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those to whom faith is given, the ravages of sin (including the cognitive damage) are repaired, gradually or suddenly, to a greater or lesser extent. Furthermore, it is by virtue of the activity of the Holy Spirit that Christians come to grasp, believe, accept, endorse, and rejoice in the truth of the
great things of the gospel. It is thus by virtue of this activity that the Christian believes that
“in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting men’s sins against them”
(2 Corinthians 5:19). According to John Calvin, the principal work of the Holy Spirit is the production (in the hearts of Christian believers) of the third element of the process, faith. Like the regeneration of which it is a part, faith is a gift; it is given to anyone who is willing to accept it. Faith, says Calvin, is “a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence towards us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Institutes III, ii, 7, p. 551). Faith therefore involves an explicitly cognitive element; it is, says Calvin, knowledge—knowledge of the availability of redemption and salvation through the person and work of Jesus Christ—and it is revealed to our minds. To have faith, therefore, is to know and hence believe something or other. But (as we shall see in chapter 9) faith also involves the will: it is “sealed upon our hearts.” By virtue of this sealing, the believer not only knows about the scheme of salvation God has prepared (according to the book of James [2:19], the devils also know about that, and they shudder) but is also heartily grateful to the Lord for it, and loves him on this account. Sealing, furthermore, also involves the executive function of the will: believers accept the proffered gift and commit themselves to the Lord, to conforming their lives to his will, to living lives of gratitude.103 But isn’t all this just endorsing a wholly outmoded and discredited fundamentalism, that condition than which, according to many academics, none lesser can be conceived? I fully realize that the dreaded f-word will be trotted out to stigmatize any model of this kind. 245 Before responding, however, we must first look into the use of this term ‘fundamentalist’. On the most common contemporary academic use of the term, it is a term of abuse or disapprobation, rather like ‘son of a [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]’, more exactly ‘sonovabitch’, or perhaps still more exactly (at least according to those authorities who look to the Old West as normative on matters of pronunciation) ‘sumbitch’. When the term is used in this way, no definition of it is ordinarily given. (If you called someone a sumbitch, would you feel obliged first to define the term?) Still, there is a bit more to the meaning of ‘fundamentalist’ (in this widely current use): it isn’t simply a term of abuse. In addition to its emotive force, it does have some cognitive content, and ordinarily denotes relatively conservative theological views.
That makes it more like ‘stupid sumbitch’ (or maybe ‘fascist sumbitch’?) than ‘sumbitch’
simpliciter. It isn’t exactly like that term either, however, because its cognitive content can
expand and contract on demand; its content seems to depend on who is using it. In the
mouths of certain liberal theologians, for example, it tends to denote any who accept traditional Christianity, including Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Barth; in the mouths
of devout secularists like Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett, it tends to denote anyone
who believes there is such a person as God. The explanation is that the term has a certain
indexical element: its cognitive content is given by the phrase ‘considerably to the right,
theologically speaking, of me and my enlightened friends.’ The full meaning of the term,
therefore (in this use), can be given by something like ‘stupid sumbitch whose theological
opinions are considerably to the right of mine’. It is therefore hard to take seriously the charge that the views I’m suggesting are fundamentalist; more exactly, it is hard to take it seriously as a charge. The alleged charge means only that these views are rather more conservative than those of the objector, together with the expression of a certain distaste for the views or those who hold them. But how is that an objection to anything, and why should it warrant the contempt and contumely that goes with the term? An argument of some kind against those conservative views would be of interest, but merely pointing out that they differ from the objector’s (even with the addition of that abusive emotive force) is not. How does this model, with its excursion into theology, provide an answer to an epistemological question? How can it be a model for a way in which Christian belief has or could have justification, rationality, warrant? The answer is simplicity itself. These beliefs do not come to the Christian just by way of memory, perception, reason, testimony, the sensus divinitatis, or any other of the cognitive faculties with which we human beings were originally created; they come instead by way of the work of the Holy Spirit, who gets us to accept, causes us to believe, these great truths of the gospel. These beliefs don’t come just by way of the normal operation of our natural faculties; they are a supernatural gift. Still, the 246 Christian who has received this gift of faith will of course be justified (in the basic sense of the term) in believing as he does; there will be nothing contrary to epistemic or other duty in so believing (indeed, once he has accepted the gift, it may not be within his power to
withhold belief). Given the model, however, the beliefs in question will typically (or at least often) have the other kinds of positive epistemic status we have been considering as well. First, they will be internally rational:104 they will be an appropriate doxastic response to what is given to the believer by way of her previous belief and current experience. That is, the believer’s response is such that a properly functioning person with the same current experience and antecedent beliefs could form the same or similar beliefs, without compromising proper function. But the beliefs in question will typically also have external rationality. There need be no cognitive malfunction downstream from experience (see above, p. 110), in believers, but there need be none upstream either: all of their cognitive faculties can be functioning properly. Finally, on the model, these beliefs will also have warrant for believers: they will be produced in them by a belief-producing process105 that is functioning properly in an appropriate cognitive environment (the one for which they were designed), according to a design plan successfully aimed at the production of true beliefs.

need to edit for formatting later...

 

[Gene Parmesan]

So I read all of that. Please tell me if I oversimplify. It seems this three tiered method is:

1. The Bible
2. The Holy Spirit
3. Faith

Concluding with:
These beliefs do not come to the Christian just by way of memory, perception, reason, testimony, the sensus divinitatis, or any other of the cognitive faculties with which we human beings were originally created; they come instead by way of the work of the Holy Spirit, who gets us to accept, causes us to believe, these great truths of the gospel. These beliefs don’t come just by way of the normal operation of our natural faculties; they are a supernatural gift.

 

[ExodusMe]

I think that would summarize it, but there are many nuances not contained in the quote I provided that are a part of the model and I can discuss. I also noticed I quoted his objection to the fundamentalist critique which wasn't exactly relevant...

 

[ExodusMe]

and to clarify there is a large exposition he does in the next part that goes over what faith is. Although in modern circles faith has taken on the poor rhetoric of modern atheism faith has always been understood as a type of knowledge.

What is really involved, in a believer’s coming to accept the great things of the gospel, 250 therefore, are three things: Scripture (the divine teaching), the internal invitation or instigation of the Holy Spirit, and faith, the human belief that results. What sort of phenomenology is involved in this epistemic process: what does it seem like from the inside? In the model, the beliefs constituting faith are typically taken as basic; that is, they are not accepted by way of argument from other propositions or on the evidential basis of other propositions.
Of course they could be accepted on the basis of other propositions, and perhaps in some cases are. A believer could reason as follows: I have strong historical and archaeological evidence for the reliability of the Bible (or the church, or my parents, or some other authority); the Bible teaches the great things of the gospel; so probably these things are true. A believer could reason in this way, and perhaps some believers do in fact reason this way. But in the model it goes differently. We read Scripture, or something presenting scriptural teaching, or hear the gospel preached, or are told of it by parents, or encounter a scriptural teaching as the conclusion of an argument (or conceivably even as an object of ridicule), or in some other way encounter a proclamation of the Word. What is said simply seems right; it seems compelling; one finds oneself saying, “Yes, that’s right, that’s the truth of the matter; this is indeed the word of the
Lord.” I read, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself”; I come to think: “Right; that’s true; God really was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself!” And I may also think something a bit different, something about that proposition: that it is a divine teaching or revelation, that in Calvin’s words it is “from God.” What one hears or reads seems clearly and obviously true and (at any rate in paradigm cases) seems also to be something the Lord is intending to teach. (As Calvin says, “the Spirit . . . is the only fit corrector and approver
251 of doctrine, who seals it on our hearts, so that we may certainly know that God speaks. For while faith ought to look to God, he alone can be a witness to himself, so as to convince our hearts that what our ears receive has come from him.”) So faith may have the phenomenology that goes with suddenly seeing something to be true: “Right! Now I see that this is indeed true and what the Lord is teaching!” Or perhaps the conviction arises slowly, and only after long and hard study, thought, discussion, prayer. Or perhaps it is a matter of a belief’s having
been there all along (from childhood, perhaps), but now being transformed, renewed, intensified, made vivid and alive. This process can go on in a thousand ways; in each case there is presentation or proposal of central Christian teaching and, by way of response, the phenomenon of being convinced, coming to see, forming of a conviction. There is the reading or hearing, and then there is the belief or conviction that what one reads or hears is true and a teaching of the Lord. According to the model, this conviction comes by way of the activity of the Holy Spirit. Calvin speaks here of the internal ‘testimony’ and (more often) ‘witness’ of the Holy Spirit; Aquinas, of the divine ‘instigation’ and ‘invitation’. On the model, there is both Scripture and the divine activity leading to human belief. God himself (on the model) is the principal author of Scripture. Scripture is most importantly a message, a communication from God to humankind; Scripture is a word from the Lord.

 

[PhantomGaze]

You just agreed that teleological reasoning, doesn't lead to accurate answers....

No, I will agree that when teleological reasoning is misapplied that it can lead to inaccurate answers, but not when it is used correctly. A child of that age doesn't have the skills necessary to filter out what might be bad applications.

I also showed how failure to apply teleological reasoning leads to errors in even the most basic of our understandings. No word on that huh?

Furthermore, you failed to offer any real evidence that teleological reasoning is a "fallacy". You can't just arbitrarily attach the word "fallacy" to any type of reasoning you don't like. Especially one you utilize so much without realizing. On the other hand, I guess you can say whatever you like, rational basis or not, but people don't have to take it seriously.

And that somehow affects the probability of the outcome? Really?

So if I role a dice, I have 1 chance out of 6 to get any of the 6 numbers as a result.
But somehow, when I create a game that targets 3 specifically, then rolling a three somehow no longer has a 1 in 6 chance of being the result?

Are you being serious?

Apparently you didn't understand anything of what I said.

Now we are getting somewhere. First, I understand that you agree now that a royal flush has the exact same probability as any other particular hand.

Now it gets interesting....
The thing is that you are making a whole lot of assumptions with this analogy. Let's drive it home to illustrate...

- you are assuming that there was only 1 trial for the 10x in a row. If there are enough trials, this 10 times in a row thingy is not only likely, it actually becomes inevitable

I believe that's called the Inverse Gambler's fallacy.

The inverse gambler's fallacy, named by philosopher Ian Hacking, is a formal fallacy of Bayesian inference which is an inverse of the better known gambler's fallacy. It is the fallacy of concluding, on the basis of an unlikely outcome of a random process, that the process is likely to have occurred many times before.

Inverse gambler's fallacy - Wikipedia

In this situation especially, because a card player would have access to the information about how many games he was present for. Even in the case that you could argue there have been many such card games since the inception of cards, a player is well within his intuitive limits to suspect cheating.

- you are assuming that the deck of cards actually has 52 different cards in it. What if the 5 cards you are dealt are the only 5 cards in it? Now, getting that same hand a couple of times isn't that improbable anymore.

- you are assuming that after every deal, a shuffeling takes place

- granting that there are 52 cards in the deck and that a shuffeling takes place, you are assuming that someone is intentionally rigging the deck. What if the shuffeling machine actually isn't a shuffeling at all, but instead a thing that stacks the deck in the exact same way every single time? This would mean that you would get the same hand every single time. Such a machine would then be analogous to deterministic forces of nature.

The analogy only works if the dispersion of cards is expected to be random. That's the point of it. Introducing a deterministic force (as a sorting machine) that relies on an intrinsic setup only breaks the analogy.

Moreover I take issue with your argument on the basis that intrinsic properties, that is your deterministic forces are random with respect to functional outcomes. More below.

When we apply this analogy to actual unexplained phenomena in the real world, we see how each of these assumptions are not justified. Because you are assuming things that you can't possibly know.

Why not?

Such analogies are oftenly applied to things like "the fine tuning" of the universe... But the simple fact is that people have no idea if the constants of physics could even BE anything else. There's also the assumption that there is just this one universe (ie: a single trial). If a universe with these values is the only one that can exist and if it is part of some kind of multi-verse thingy, then all the other "failed" universes will not exist and it's not at all surprising that we find ourselves in the one that does exist and allows us to be here.

Well that sort of rationale seems like the equivalent of being pushed out of an airplane thousands of feet in the air, going hundreds of miles per hour, falling all the way, and landing in a truck carrying the softest stuff imaginable with a big "x"on the spot, going 60 miles per hour in the other direction, then getting out of that ordeal and saying "well of course I survived, if I hadn't, I would be here to see how lucky I am.". In spite of the fact that it is impossible to observe having never existed, it still should be pretty surprising to find that we are alive given the probability.

The multiverse idea is actually a pretty fun one to play with though.

How would you respond to the Boltzmann brain paradox?

The Boltzmann brains concept has been proposed as an explanation for why we observe such a large degree of organization in the Universe (a question more conventionally addressed in discussions of entropy in cosmology).

Boltzmann proposed that we and our observed low-entropy world are a random fluctuation in a higher-entropy universe. Even in a near-equilibrium state, there will be stochastic fluctuations in the level of entropy. The most common fluctuations will be relatively small, resulting in only small amounts of organization, while larger fluctuations and their resulting greater levels of organization will be comparatively more rare. Large fluctuations would be almost inconceivably rare, but are made possible by the enormous size of the Universe and by the idea that if we are the results of a fluctuation, there is a "selection bias": we observe this very unlikely Universe because the unlikely conditions are necessary for us to be here, an expression of the anthropic principle.

If our current level of organization, having many self-aware entities, is a result of a random fluctuation, it is much less likely than a level of organization which only creates stand-alone self-aware entities. For every universe with the level of organization we see, there should be an enormous number of lone Boltzmann brains floating around in unorganized environments. In an infinite universe, the number of self-aware brains that spontaneously and randomly form out of the chaos, complete with memories of a life like ours, should vastly outnumber the brains evolved from an inconceivably rare local fluctuation the size of the observable Universe.

The Boltzmann brain paradox is that any observers (self-aware brains with memories like we have, which includes our brains) are therefore far more likely to be Boltzmann brains than evolved brains. So this refutes evolution in multiverses. It also refutes the anthropic principle and even multiverses altogether: Why should we accept the anthropic principle, or indeed any argument, if it just popped up randomly into our Boltzmann brain? No argument is reliable in a Boltzmann brain universe.

Boltzmann brain - Wikipedia

 

[DogmaHunter]

No, I will agree that when teleological reasoning is misapplied that it can lead to inaccurate answers, but not when it is used correctly.

Can you give an every-day example of a correct application of teleological reasoning?

In this situation especially, because a card player would have access to the information about how many games he was present for. Even in the case that you could argue there have been many such card games since the inception of cards, a player is well within his intuitive limits to suspect cheating.

If it concerns an actual card game - sure. But you use an interesting word: suspect.
So you are fully aware that it certainly isn't impossible to be dealt the same hand 10x over.

But as you probably already noticed, I'm questioning the validity of the analogy in the first place, since it seems you need to make a whole load of unjustified assumptions.

The analogy only works if the dispersion of cards is expected to be random

Sure. But it is that "if" that is the problem. In the real world, you simply don't know this. You just assume it.

Introducing a deterministic force (as a sorting machine) that relies on an intrinsic setup only breaks the analogy.

Exactly.

Moreover I take issue with your argument on the basis that intrinsic properties, that is your deterministic forces are random with respect to functional outcomes. More below.

Not sure what your point is here. Hopefully it will become clear "below".

Why not?

The answer is right in the quote you are responding to..... Because you are assuming things that you can't possibly know.

Well that sort of rationale seems like the equivalent of being pushed out of an airplane thousands of feet in the air, going hundreds of miles per hour, falling all the way, and landing in a truck carrying the softest stuff imaginable with a big "x"on the spot, going 60 miles per hour in the other direction, then getting out of that ordeal and saying "well of course I survived, if I hadn't, I would be here to see how lucky I am.".

No. In fact, this logic is of the same calibre as your royal flush stuff.
You are again assuming to know all kinds of things.

In spite of the fact that it is impossible to observe having never existed, it still should be pretty surprising to find that we are alive given the probability.

This is the point that you don't seem to be getting:
You don't know the probability.

You can't calculate the probability because you don't have knowledge of all the required parameters to be able to make that calculation....

Any number you come up with is bound to be incorrect, because there are too many unknown variables.

The multiverse idea is actually a pretty fun one to play with though.
How would you respond to the Boltzmann brain paradox?
Boltzmann brain - Wikipedia

I don't have any particular opinion about it. It doesn't sound like you are missing out if you never heared about it.

 

[Gene Parmesan]

and to clarify there is a large exposition he does in the next part that goes over what faith is. Although in modern circles faith has taken on the poor rhetoric of modern atheism faith has always been understood as a type of knowledge.

These two passages you have shown seem to indicate that the Holy Spirit just sort of makes you know that something is true, independent of traditional human reasoning processes. Am I understanding that correctly?

 

[ExodusMe]

These two passages you have shown seem to indicate that the Holy Spirit just sort of makes you know that something is true, independent of traditional human reasoning processes. Am I understanding that correctly?

absolutely. How else would God do it? If you make it about reason that could disqualify children and handicapped people. That isn't to say you can't do it by reason as the quote suggests but tbeliefs from the Holy Spirit are not inferred from other beliefs.

 

[Gene Parmesan]

absolutely. How else would God do it? If you make it about reason that could disqualify children and handicapped people. That isn't to say you can't do it by reason as the quote suggests but tbeliefs from the Holy Spirit are not inferred from other beliefs.

I would imagine that such a direct line of knowledge to the source would lead to a more consistent understanding of scripture and the nature of God than we currently see among believers. Is there just a very small percentage of Christians actually connected to the Holy Spirit? Or is the type of information gained from such a connection incredibly vague? Like just a GOD LOVES ME feeling or what?

Thank you for entertaining my questions. You've been very respectful to me and I appreciate that.

 

[leftrightleftrightleft]

@ExodusMe can you please respond to this portion of my previous response:

So, suppose two lightning strikes occur A and B.

How would you show that A is natural and B is originated from God?

Religiously significant isn't exclusive to any religion. You could be an atheist and decide to pray one night and a miracle happens.

Could you pray to Vishnu? Or is it necessary that you pray to Yahweh specifically?

You are just confusing what I said. I said it is rational for someone to believe a miracle has occurred under the criteria I listed. It could be a total hoax for all I know.

It sounds like you are advocating for gullibility. The vast majority of miracle stories happened long ago and came to us via word of mouth. Should these be believed rationally?

Many of the beliefs you hold rationally are not empirically verified. We already went over this in the other thread. You have never dissected your friend to determine whether they are a robot or not.

Yes, we did go over this in the other thread. And the point is that there is a hypothetical way that I could go verify whether my friend belongs in the category or class "human" and not "robot". Is there even a hypothetical way you could test if something was miraculous or not? (See my above example involving two lightning strikes).

Also, what proof can you offer that the external world exists? Can you also empirically verify your belief that every belief needs empirical verification?

I'm not going down this rabbit hole again as I don't think it is relevant to the discussion of miracles and is instead a red herring or deflection.

If your objection is that people should not use miracles as a scientific explanation (something like "the cause of lightning is always and exclusively due to Zeus throwing lightning bolts from the sky"). I would agree to some extent. When we look for scientific explanations we are looking at the cause of repeatable events. A miracle isn't repeatable.

Once again: how would you determine if one event is miraculous and another is not?

Would I say that a hindu god did a miracle? Of course not. I am a Christian. If I actually came to believe a miracle claim that a hindu was making I would just come to believe it was Yahweh who did the miracle... If that doesn't answer your question, then I need more specific details...

Seems arbitrary.

Yes, and likewise, with your eyesight, you only see things that you are cognitively recognizing.

Oy. You are talking in tautologies. You are essentially saying, "You only see what you see"

Well...obviously. I thought that was implied by the fact that we were talking about our senses.

Eyesight is not imposed on you. I could look across the street at a really delicious donut shop and totally miss the fact that a pink elephant just obstructed my view - I really wanted to eat the donut! Another person could be standing right next to me and then say "did you see the pink elephant that just went by?" and I would then reply "where?". Likewise, the sensus divinitatis only occasions beliefs that we cognitively recognize. If I am in distress about my job and my sensus divinitatis occasions the belief "God can hear my prayers", but instead I decide to go on a job search, then I have dismissed the belief occasioned by the sensus divinitatis.

So, you're telling me that in a church where the express purpose is to worship God, there are a large number of the people in that congregation who just "miss" the sensus divinitatis? And these are the Christians! You know, the ones that claim to have a direct, personal relationship with God. A God who they can personally communicate with.

This is like saying to someone: "Go stand on the street and look for the pink elephant" and then the person somehow, inexplicably, fails to see it as it walks by.

Not sure what you mean by 'objective test', but the answer would be the divine confirmation by the Holy Spirit who witnesses to believers the truth of Christianity.

An objective test is one which everyone agrees works. For example, the eye test chart. Anyone who can see can easily identify the top lines. There is no disagreement. There is no inconsistency.

Oh and by the way, this whole "sensus divinitatis" thing also kind of fails because we have physical mechanisms which relay information to our other senses. We see because of light hitting our retina. We smell and taste because of chemicals hitting our olfactory nerves and tastebuds. We hear because of acoustic perturbations of the air. We feel because of pressure.

If someone came to you and claimed they had a sixth sense, would you believe them?

Because from my perspective, that is what you are claiming. You are claiming that you have a sixth sense which I do not have which allows you to somehow "sense" something else "beyond". But you can provide no test to confirm it. You can provide no consistency in the sensation. You can provide no mechanism for how the sense operates. You can provide no external verification that the sense even exists as anything more than a subjective feeling or emotion.

As I've said before, a blind person can be shown that there is some sense which he is missing because people who can see can readily identify things which the blind person has arranged. They can do this without using the other 4 senses which the blind person has. For example, the blind person could arrange a beach ball, a wooden block and a guitar in some order in a room. The blind person can identify each item using his senses (feeling, hearing, etc). Then, he can invite 1000 strangers into the room to tell him which order he placed the items from left to right. The 1000 strangers will all identify the order correctly without touching, hearing, tasting or smelling the objects. They will all agree. Every time. This is showing to the blind man that all these people have some corroborated sense which is "beyond" the blind man's four senses which allows them to "sense" the order of the items. This is not proof that light exists or that eyesight exists. All it is proving is that some sense exists which allows the seeing people to do something which the blind man cannot do.

Is there any equivalent test which can be performed to show that the sensus divinitatis exists and is not just an emotion or feeling inside one's brain?

 

[ToddNotTodd]

I'm not going down this rabbit hole again as I don't think it is relevant to the discussion of miracles and is instead a red herring or deflection.

Reverting to solipsism seems to be the new tactic in some apologetic circles. That tactic undermines any arguments that they themselves have of course, but they get around that by employing wordplay that they hope you don't see through.

 

[PhantomGaze]

Can you give an every-day example of a correct application of teleological reasoning?

We're discussing one in the card analogy.

If it concerns an actual card game - sure. But you use an interesting word: suspect.
So you are fully aware that it certainly isn't impossible to be dealt the same hand 10x over.

But as you probably already noticed, I'm questioning the validity of the analogy in the first place, since it seems you need to make a whole load of unjustified assumptions.

I think you have yet to point out an unjustified assumption. Of course it isn't *impossible* for someone to be dealt 10 royal flushes in a row. (Unless it crosses the hypothetical universal probability bound, but we won't get into that.) Within the scope, we shouldn't expect it without cheating. There is still a strong argument by inference.

Exactly.

Well actually, maybe not. I may have spoke to soon when I posted yesterday. You see, when a sorting/shuffling machine churns out the same hand, for the players in question, they wouldn't suspect design. If you had 5 guys consistently getting the same hand the deterministic aspect would be obvious over and against any suspicion of design. If however as I noted before only one of the players were getting a particular hand over and over, it might lead to suspicion. But let's eliminate the numbers and narrow it down to one person alone being dealt cards. In that situation one cannot tell if it is an intrinsic/deterministic property of the machine, or a functional outcome, because there's no reason to suspect a random assortment or anything to compare it with.

Not sure what your point is here.

Then you missed my real response.

The answer is right in the quote you are responding to..... Because you are assuming things that you can't possibly know.

Actually, I disagree with this. I think we can know with a reasonable amount of confidence.

No. In fact, this logic is of the same calibre as your royal flush stuff.
You are again assuming to know all kinds of things.

Are you kidding? You can't rationally operate the way you're describing in real life. No one wins the lottery because they celebrate later. No one survives anything by a narrow margin because they look back on it later. That's nonsense.

This is the point that you don't seem to be getting:
You don't know the probability.

You can't calculate the probability because you don't have knowledge of all the required parameters to be able to make that calculation....

Any number you come up with is bound to be incorrect, because there are too many unknown variables.

If you're so sure humanity can't know anything about this stuff, can you describe to me what's wrong with this paper?
Phys. Rev. Lett. 59, 2607 (1987) - Anthropic Bound on the Cosmological Constant

 

[PhantomGaze]

I don't have any particular opinion about it. It doesn't sound like you are missing out if you never heared about it.

Don't be sour. Just remember, if the multiverse is real... it's inevitable: