Resurrection Evidence

[muichimotsu]

So if you admit that science does not grasp objective truth, and you don't believe in true truth, yet, you continue the pursuit of truth (what kind?)--what methods do you use or what motions are you open to?

I believe in truth; true truth, as I pointed out, is superfluous and unnecessary, because we cannot grasp absolute objective truth due to essential limits in our perception

I seek conclusive truth that's verifiable and falsifiable: scientific methods in particular work well, but if we're talking more abstract concepts, skepticism and related principles of verifying the truth and coherency of the idea apply well.

Openness to an idea would require demonstrating the idea's benefits in as neutral a fashion as possible. Prayer is not really something I find convincing, for instance, because it's open to subjective interpretation that justifies any "answer" as from God even if it cannot be attributed reasonably otherwise

 

[muichimotsu]

Yeah, I would say that imagination plays a very large role in doing science, as well.

Innovation and imagination are not quite the same, since one takes prior knowledge, the other can concoct fantasies and such to fill in gaps of knowledge

 

[muichimotsu]

I notice you usually respond as if I'd written different things than I have in these posts.

I say explore and test. Objective stuff. Repeated testing. Comparing.

You talk about credulity. The opposite of what I suggest.

Who's really teaching their beliefs, conclusions in a credulous way here? ...

Often people need to begin to do what they are preaching. What if you got more objective, and stopped assuming you already know what you haven't found out.

By all means explain the "testability" of your supernatural claims in a way that doesn't engage in confirmation bias to explain any outcome as fitting the preconception that God answers prayer (it just won't always be how we expect, because we're mere humans)

If you'd explain in a cogent fashion, it might help, rather than being obtuse or expecting someone to take claims seriously that have been found wanting, particularly in their own supposed objectivity

 

[Halbhh]

By all means explain the "testability" of your supernatural claims in a way that doesn't engage in confirmation bias to explain any outcome as fitting the preconception that God answers prayer (it just won't always be how we expect, because we're mere humans)

If you'd explain in a cogent fashion, it might help, rather than being obtuse or expecting someone to take claims seriously that have been found wanting, particularly in their own supposed objectivity

In a way your post is encouraging in my view. You are correctly emphasizing we want to avoid confirmation bias.

Winner! That's exactly what I've been trying to communicate in this thread, in different wording, but the same thing.

You do what He says and find out what happens. But what is below might surprise you, it appears.

My approach, as a non-believer was to apply a standard scientific process: test in order to try to disprove. Did you get that?

The hypothesis is useful if it an be tested in a way that allows for falsification (Karl Popper's good standard of what constitutes first rate science)

(remember? not everyone has learned that detail of the scientific method. the testing is to see if the hypothesis predicts correctly -- so....the method is to try to find a failure, a disproof of the hypothesis -- to thus find out if the hypothesis can correctly predict consistently what is observed.
So we are looking to see if we can find the hypothesis failing. It's the exact opposite of confirmation bias. For those already knowing all of this, this refresher was just to be sure we all are thinking about the same meaning here of "testing".)

What is "testing"? It's actually putting the hypothesis to a rigorous test, in order to see if it can be shot down.

Notice though that what is being tested here is not do what some church or preacher says. Not at all.
Instead the testing is to do the specific, precise things Christ says. (this is pretty crucial. I'm never believed in preachers much by the way, just a comment).

I started with the most obvious, central thing, from the emphasis Jesus himself gave to it: the 2nd "great" commandment (that's His wording, not mine): "Love your neighbor as yourself."

To get exactly what I tested first (the first of many tests), see more above in post #55 and especially #73.

 

[muichimotsu]

In a way your post is encouraging in my view. You are correctly emphasizing we want to avoid confirmation bias.

Winner! That's exactly what I've been trying to communicate in this thread, in different wording, but the same thing.

You do what He says and find out what happens. But what is below might surprise you, it appears.


My approach, as a non-believer was to apply a standard scientific process: test in order to try to disprove. Did you get that?

The hypothesis is useful if it an be tested in a way that allows for falsification (Karl Popper's good standard of what constitutes first rate science)

(remember? not everyone has learned that detail of the scientific method. the testing is to see if the hypothesis predicts correctly -- so....the method is to try to find a failure, a disproof of the hypothesis -- to thus find out if the hypothesis can correctly predict consistently what is observed.
So we are looking to see if we can find the hypothesis failing. It's the exact opposite of confirmation bias. For those already knowing all of this, this refresher was just to be sure we all are thinking about the same meaning here of "testing".)

What is "testing"? It's actually putting the hypothesis to a rigorous test, in order to see if it can be shot down.

Notice though that what is being tested here is not do what some church or preacher says. Not at all.
Instead the testing is to do the specific, precise things Christ says. (this is pretty crucial. I'm never believed in preachers much by the way, just a comment).

I started with the most obvious, central thing, from the emphasis Jesus himself gave to it: the 2nd "great" commandment (that's His wording, not mine): "Love your neighbor as yourself."

To get exactly what I tested first (the first of many tests), see more above in post #55 and especially #73.

Doing what Jesus says and it working out doesn't mean all Jesus' claims are true, that's compositional fallacy to a tee, you're generalizing the whole of his message because certain things can turn out correctly.

Except if you can scientifically test things that are meant to be rooted in faith, aren't you applying a category error, since faith is rooted in the spiritual, not something you can test with reliability like physical laws? God can do something you don't expect and the testing becomes vacuous

How can you falsify that which is meant to be beyond human understanding? You can think you've falsified it in some selective manner, that doesn't demonstrate the truth of everything Jesus claimed, such as God existing or the like, you're still fallaciously correlating the causation of something to what is enumerated in one particular worldview that happens to have particular things that might be reliable as a principle (compassion or such, for instance)

You not trusting preachers doesn't make you more reliable, the test stands on its own merits, including the methodology and particular conclusions rather than sweeping generalizations that Jesus must be right because the tests I personally put forth bore fruit.

 

[muichimotsu]

For us the real world test of "Love your neighbor as yourself" (we are New Testament testing, the instructions from the Christ, yes?, if not, then I have the wrong topic here. ;-)

Would be of the actual alternatives people use, and the best ones available.

To me, at that time, some 25 years ago, these looked like so:

A) Mostly ignore neighbors in all ways possible, but be polite if one speaks to you (yikes! they are speaking to me), and then act casual, and then quickly exit as soon as you can without it being too obvious.

B) Be casually friendly to neighbors in a very standard way, such as having brief 1 minute or less conversations at random, but not too often (not more than say once every few months).

C) Pick out a likely looking nearby neighbor if possible to partially befriend, and then pay attention to that neighbor, and ignore the rest, and eventually invite them for a cookout, or a beer, etc. Make casual conversation about something like music or sports, etc.

D) Love your neighbor as yourself (note this one is really pretty difficult to get over your own resistance to try out and do for many people I think, because it feels....it just feels risky to totally love the particular neighbor that is immediately next door on each side, regardless of how they appear and their manner of life and culture)

Of course, with choices like these, most people have already been doing one, or even 2 of them, and it's not hard to try the other two within a month or 3 timewise, though it can take...something, like emotional courage, or risk taking, or a death wish for your ego, to do the last, D).

But if you are the kind willing to test things, then you can.

This mistakenly assumes Jesus was talking in such a particular fashion of the alternatives being this way, because there could probably be even more iterations than you put forward here. But just because loving your neighbor as yourself per the golden rule (which Jesus didn't invent, btw) is a good thing doesn't mean Jesus is God or that any other claims he made are true (that the kingdom of heaven was upon them)

 

[muichimotsu]

That's what a scientist avoids by testing.

Literally. Literally put the things to test, each one, one at a time. And repeatedly.

Example:
Test different ways to relate to next door neighbors.

Establish 3 ways, precise details.

A)

B)

C)

Then test each one, and see which works best. Then do so again. Then do so again.

And the false trilemma rears its head: science doesn't work on assuming particular ways must be the only option, it considers multiple options as possible, but weeds out the unlikely ones as they come forth. It's not assuming particular explanations, it's weeding out the bad ones

 

[Halbhh]

Doing what Jesus says and it working out doesn't mean all Jesus' claims are true

You should stop right there at the correct, excellent statement, and not continue with the rest (which is just guessing that happens to be all incorrect).

That bit, alone, would be identical to where I was all those years ago. I needed to see something work repetitively, in a variety of instance in different places and time, to gain any confidence in it at all, instead of none.


How do you test a proposition about how to live?

It's very easy to figure out if you are wanting to put it to the test: you compare the outcome to other competing instructions/ways, over and over and over.

In a large variety of ways. Trying to slowly see which way works better than the others.

It's work.

When I did the first testing, and what Jesus said worked far better than anything I'd done, and ever imagined possible in terms of good outcomes, then....

at first, I didn't believe it meant anything at all in terms of being conclusive, but instead it meant the proposition was worth further testing.

I wonder if you can hear that. ( you might not at first! It's not what you are guessing)

I'll just assume you can get what I'm saying, and continue.

It takes plenty of testing before one should think an idea/theory has some merit. It needs to prove itself effectively predicting the real outcome over and over. Not just once or twice or just 3 times.

It's like how we tested General Relativity over time -- a variety of tests, many, all attempting to find a point of failure.

You perhaps won't tolerate this information, and will try with confirmation bias of your own to assert it's false or imagined, etc. Your own self-harming confirmation bias. That's what I'm hoping you can get out of, and perhaps you can.

 

[muichimotsu]

You should stop right there at the correct, excellent statement, and not continue with the rest (which is just guessing that happens to be all incorrect).

That bit, alone, would be identical to where I was all those years ago. I needed to see something work repetitively, in a variety of instance in different places and time, to gain any confidence in it at all, instead of none.


How do you test a proposition about how to live?

It's very easy to figure out if you are wanting to put it to the test: you compare the outcome to other competing instructions/ways, over and over and over.

In a large variety of ways. Trying to slowly see which way works better than the others.

It's work.

When I did the first testing, and what Jesus said worked far better than anything I'd done, and ever imagined possible in terms of good outcomes, then....

at first, I didn't believe it meant anything at all in terms of being conclusive, but instead it meant the proposition was worth further testing.

I wonder if you can hear that. ( you might not at first! It's not what you are guessing)

I'll just assume you can get what I'm saying, and continue.

It takes plenty of testing before one should think an idea/theory has some merit. It needs to prove itself effectively predicting the real outcome over and over. Not just once or twice or just 3 times.

It's like how we tested General Relativity over time -- a variety of tests, many, all attempting to find a point of failure.

You perhaps won't tolerate this information, and will try with confirmation bias of your own to assert it's false or imagined, etc. Your own self-harming confirmation bias. That's what I'm hoping you can get out of, and perhaps you can.

If you see something work repetitively as you erroneously interpret it, that's not the same as others reaching the same conclusion with stringent standards and restrictions on the experiment. Confirmation bias yet again: you can think prayers are answered or that love always wins out, that doesn't mean your foundations of interpreting that are necessarily valid

Your credulity in thinking that nothing else could possibly work is a fallacious appeal to ignorance, as if no other worldview could possibly compete, which is intellectually lazy as well.

The proposition in terms of one specific aspect of Jesus is not indicative of the general truth of his claims, you've failed to show how you can remotely demonstrate the claims of exclusive truth (when the golden rule principle you bring up is NOT unique to Jesus as I and others can easily point out)

The "real" outcome is much more vague when it comes to social sciences and the experiments of a similar nature you're engaging in here. What do you mean by the "outcome" Jesus promised? Didn't he also say people would persecute his followers? How does that factor into the "love always winning" hypothesis?

And now you're equivocating two fundamentally different sciences to suggest testing JEsus's principle (which, I'll remind you, isn't that unique) is the same as testing general relativity, a physical property of the universe

If you can't even look at your words after the fact when someone points out problems in it and admit it's possible you're wrong, methinks the one stuck in cognitive bias is you far more than me. We're both potentially guilty, but acknowledging it is the first step

 

[Halbhh]

It's hard to accept, but the person Jesus is wiser

If you see something work repetitively as you erroneously interpret it

Wonder if you yourself can see the assumption or belief you have there in this sentence fragment I highlighted?

You appear to have an assumption/belief that it's impossible that Jesus could be correct. If someone gets some kind of testing that makes it appear Jesus got something right, then the person must be mistaken, with erroneous interpretation.

Can you see that? It's implied in your wording. (or you are making another kind of error; see last 2 paragraphs below)

A conviction Jesus could not possibly be correct, that it would be impossible, is itself a belief. In that it's a conclusion without sufficient proof.

The simple superiority of a scientific method is it doesn't rely on a ideology or a system of thought, but instead disbelieves everything -- disbelieves both sides -- in ideal form, and tests, over and over, gradually becoming more confident only in those very few hypotheses/theories that survive the testing -- that they must be at least in some part aligned to reality.

It's just superior to a philosophical approach for anything that can be tested in some way.

 

[muichimotsu]

It's hard to accept, but the person Jesus is wiser

Wonder if you yourself can see the assumption or belief you have there in this sentence fragment I highlighted?

You appear to have an assumption/belief that it's impossible that Jesus could be correct. If someone gets some kind of testing that makes it appear Jesus got something right, then the person must be mistaken, with erroneous interpretation.

Can you see that? It's implied in your wording.

That's a belief. In that it's a conclusion without sufficient proof.

The simple superiority of a scientific method is it doesn't rely on a ideology or a system of thought, but instead disbelieves, in ideal form, and tests, over and over, gradually becoming more confident only in those few hypotheses/theories that survive the testing must be at least in some part aligned to reality.

You know just asserting someone's authority isn't sufficient, right?

~~~~

I'm not saying I can't erroneously misinterpret something in terms of patterns, I just don't attribute agency to it, that's borderline paranoid

~~~

No, quite the contrary, Jesus can be correct about certain things, that's not the same as him being correct overall (I was pretty clear in enumerating that, you apparently just ignored that statement), you're erroneously generalizing because I criticize the methodology you're apparently using to ascertain Jesus' authority by testing things you mistakenly attribute to him exclusively

~~~~

Science is not starting with disbelief, it starts with skepticism, withholding judgment. But, again you're generalizing between the reliability of certain things Jesus said and the reliability of all things he said. Have you tested anything else or is that the only thing that managed to convince you? Because that's pretty weak justification

 

[Tone]

Innovation and imagination are not quite the same, since one takes prior knowledge, the other can concoct fantasies and such to fill in gaps of knowledge

Albert Einstein is quoted as saying:

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."
Talk:Albert Einstein quote - Wikiversity

 

[muichimotsu]

Albert Einstein is quoted as saying:

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."
Talk:Albert Einstein quote - Wikiversity

And his use of imagination could be roughly synonymous with innovation, but even imagination should not be relied on entirely to the exclusion of having discipline and constraints, especially in science.

Writers who just write whatever would have more problems being taken seriously versus having something to keep them in check, particularly in terms of poetry, but free verse is not invalid either

 

[Tone]

And his use of imagination could be roughly synonymous with innovation, but even imagination should not be relied on entirely to the exclusion of having discipline and constraints, especially in science.

Writers who just write whatever would have more problems being taken seriously versus having something to keep them in check, particularly in terms of poetry, but free verse is not invalid either

I am a multifaceted creature and, as I was created to do, I embrace truth most reliably when I do so as a whole person: intellect, emotions, will, existence, imagination, etc...I never said that I rely on feelings alone.

I agree.

 

[muichimotsu]

Not relying on feelings alone doesn't mean you aren't possibly giving more leeway to interpreting feelings in a way that isn't being objective. Being as balanced as possible and not taking your own understanding of something as remotely conclusive is valuable in considering anything worth seeking the truth on. Feeling that something must be one way is limiting your perspective

 

[Tone]

Not relying on feelings alone doesn't mean you aren't possibly giving more leeway to interpreting feelings in a way that isn't being objective. Being as balanced as possible and not taking your own understanding of something as remotely conclusive is valuable in considering anything worth seeking the truth on. Feeling that something must be one way is limiting your perspective

Another quote:

“I live in a thought world which is filled with creativity; inside my head there is creative imagination. Why? Because God, who is the Creator, has made me in His own image, I can go out in imagination beyond the stars. This is true not only for the Christian, but for every man. Every man is made in the image of God; therefore, no man in his imagination is confined to his own body.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent

We can also say, "Thinking that something must be one way is limiting your perspective."

 

[muichimotsu]

I may have spoken in a vein that suggests I'm super logical, but honestly, my endeavors are creative in nature, even if the majority of my work (trying to be self employed and provide content for people) is critiquing films. That's not to say I don't enjoy the stories I watch (and read, I really enjoy manga, though I want to try and finish at least one comic series I started years ago that's been concluded for...at least 4 years now?). But there's a balance to be struck, that's what I want to emphasize, the Middle Way advocated by Buddha (and Greek philosophy to an extent as well with the golden mean)

 

[Tone]

I may have spoken in a vein that suggests I'm super logical, but honestly, my endeavors are creative in nature, even if the majority of my work (trying to be self employed and provide content for people) is critiquing films. That's not to say I don't enjoy the stories I watch (and read, I really enjoy manga, though I want to try and finish at least one comic series I started years ago that's been concluded for...at least 4 years now?). But there's a balance to be struck, that's what I want to emphasize, the Middle Way advocated by Buddha (and Greek philosophy to an extent as well with the golden mean)

I just recently read Blue Exorcist - Wikipedia (only up to 7)...good stuff! I'm all for the holistic person as well.

 

[muichimotsu]

You can subscribe on Viz's Shonen Jump vault to catch up, only $2 a month. Forget if you can read Blue Exorcist through their mobile app (on tablets too), but it's not THAT adult like some other stuff that the app stores wouldn't allow because of age restrictions on such software

 

[Halbhh]

You know just asserting someone's authority isn't sufficient, right?

~~~~

I'm not saying I can't erroneously misinterpret something in terms of patterns, I just don't attribute agency to it, that's borderline paranoid

~~~

No, quite the contrary, Jesus can be correct about certain things, that's not the same as him being correct overall (I was pretty clear in enumerating that, you apparently just ignored that statement), you're erroneously generalizing because I criticize the methodology you're apparently using to ascertain Jesus' authority by testing things you mistakenly attribute to him exclusively

~~~~

Science is not starting with disbelief, it starts with skepticism, withholding judgment. But, again you're generalizing between the reliability of certain things Jesus said and the reliability of all things he said. Have you tested anything else or is that the only thing that managed to convince you? Because that's pretty weak justification

You know nothing about various propositions until you test them.

It's up to you.