But PZ makes an interesting comment, buried in the middle of his rant (and it is a rant). PZ says,
“That's one of the fundamental principles of science, that you can't just get by on assertions — you have to be able to explain how you know something, and homeopaths can't.”And of course, neither can Philosophical Materialists and Atheists.
Most of PZ’s “award winning science blog” has no science at all – today’s posts are Atheist and activist oriented, with the exception of a picture of a flower and his enraged attack on homeopathy, which has very little science in it. Tomorrow he will find and post a photo of a squid or octopus, and that will be it.
So most of PZ’s blog activities involve violations of his own science dictum: Atheist ‘ejaculations’, assertions with no explanation of how he knows that there is no deity… scientifically of course.
50 comments:
"Most of PZ’s “award winning science blog” has no science at all"
I actually agree. I scan my RSS reader for his creationism category and skip all the rest; I think it's the only part these days with value.
A question: what is it that Atheists need to be able to explain that they "know"?
I've never once heard an Atheist say they "know" there's no God.
That kind of certainty is generally restricted to homeopaths and other religious believers.
At least, in this regard, PZ admits to being a faithfilled and faithful faithbased atheist.
Anybody making a knowledge claim has the burden of proof. Theists have a burden of proof. Atheists have a burden of proof.
A person "lacking belief or knowledge of gods" is a not anything because they are not making a knowledge claim. The (recent?) attempts of people of this ilk to define atheism as "anyone who lacks belief in gods" is a way of claiming the title without having to come up with arguments or burden of proof. By this definition, a baby is an atheist. The end result of this is the utter meaninglessness of the term.
Here is a good blog post discussing this issue.
Martin, you're correct that anybody making a knowledge claim has the burden of proof. Atheists make no knowledge claims, and so do not have a burden of proof.
You're also right about babies, though. All babies are atheists.
Atheists most certainly do make knowledge claims, whether they deny it or not. Thinking that we will be fooled by claiming "no God theory" is naive.
If you have heard of the possibility of a deity, either:
1. You accept it. (Deist/Theist)
2. You reject it. (Atheist)
3. You decide that there is not enough evidence. (Agnostic)
4. You blow it off: no God theory (Pagan).
The claim that Atheism "has no God theory" is not just false, it is intentionally false. This claim is a recent ploy invented to try to avoid the burden of proof, which Atheists cannot provide, pure and simple. The burden of proof is intellectually fatal to Atheism.
It is a transparent, purposeful falsehood, and it certainly brings intellectual honesty into the fore.
Matt,
You didn't actually read a thing I said, did you? Or the blog post I linked to?
Stan,
Sorry, but I must disagree.
I know it's convenient to characterise atheists as having a stated belief in no-God (particularly if you want to link Philosophical Materialism to Atheism, as I know you like to do) but it's simply not the case.
Even arch-atheist Richard Dawkins, in his book The God Delusion, merely states that the existence of a God is extremely unlikely.
Martin, I read and understood every single word.
Would you care to point out which part of what I said made you think I didn't?
The link wasn't particularly enlightening, to be honest. The entire argument seemed to be cbased on the idea that some people wouldn't appreciate being called atheists. Just because the word has negative connotations in some societies though, that doesn't change its definition.
I stand by my statement that atheism is merely the rejection of belief in God. It is not the positive assertion that there is no God.
Sorry for hijacking the thread, but getting back to the original post ...
I'm interested in your views on homeopathy, Stan.
To me, the rejection of homeopathy and the rejection of an interventionist God are very much based on the same kind of reasoning.
I'd be interested to know where you make a distinction between these two things.
Matt-
I agree that the term 'atheist' includes (by definition) those who don't believe in a god, and that this is a statement of fact (I don't believe) as opposed to a knowledge statement about the whole of reality (there is no).
You should agree that the term atheist includes those who are making a knowledge statement-ie. there is no god. (And certainly such people exist)
My question to you is this-
If a person says they are an atheist and I want to know which type they are,would the way they respond to the statement, "I believe in God," be a reasonable means of determination?
Probably not, because I think both types would say "no".
What you could do is ask that question, and then see how they respond to the question "are you 100% positive that there is no God?".
Matt,
All right then, drop all terminology.
Does God exist? In answer to that question, there are three main answers (ignoring for now answers such as "I don't care" "what is God" etc):
1. Yes (with varying levels of justification)
2. No (with varying levels of justification)
3. I don't know
The first two positions both have a burden of proof, as they are knowledge claims. The third does not.
Which one are you?
The answer is 3, but that question address my agnosticism, not my atheism.
My atheism is shown by answering a firm "no" to the question "do you believe in God?"
Don't use terminology. You're a 3. You say this makes you a not-1, right? But it also makes you a not-2 equally, no?
Yes, I'm a 3.
But you're as much a not-2 as you are a not-1, right?
I assume you're asking if I think that the answer "Yes" is just as likely as the answer "No"?
If that's the case then no, I am much more of a not-1 than I am a not-2. Significantly more. My not-2ness is very close to zero.
Why? Because the evidence for 1 is so incredibly weak. And based on the length time people have had to produce evidence of 1 and failed to do so, I have to conclude that that's not going to change anytime soon.
Option 2 seems to me so much more likely.
Your dependence on other people to produce evidence for you, evidence that cannot be material or sensory in the first place, places you squarely in the Philosophical Materialist camp. Blaming "people" for not producing evidence that only you can provide for yourself, in other words.
I think that you know this, but that you don't want to acknowledge that the evidence for existence or non-existence of a deity is not dependent upon empirical data, because...(fill in your reason here; possibly protection of a cherished worldview). Whatever your reason, it is effective in locking out any possible contact with anything other than sensory input.
Also it requires an approval of non-rational thinking in the case of mind and reality spaces.
Stan-
as a means to end an earlier discussion-
I agree that scientists will look for material causes. (String theory is an attempt to bring back material determinism, for example).
But I hope you will agree that it is not a demand of science that there be one.
(the copenhagen interpretation is subjective- science has continued anyway)
Sonic said,
"But I hope you will agree that it is not a demand of science that there be one."
I agree, a general expectation, not a demand, as I said earlier, description of phenomena is also science, is that your point?
(sorry if the thread was hijacked; just talk around us :) )
Matt,
So, by saying you're more of a not-1 than a not-2,, and that in fact your not-2ness is basically zero, you are in effect saying that you are really a 2, not a 3 after all. Notice the crucial point I added to each: "with varying levels of justification". In other words, the positions themselves are not "strong" or "weak." Only the justification for them.
So if you're really a 2 (with weak justification), then you are back to making a knowledge claim and thus acquiring a burden of proof. You can't get around it. You must make a case. You can't be a 2 by default because the 1s failed to make their case, because this would be argument from fallacy, which is a logical fallacy.
No, sorry Martin. I'm not a 2 for the very reasons you describe.
I can't prove there's no God so I know I can't make that claim.
I'm a 3. But being a 3 doesn't mean I have to consider 1 and 2 to be equally unlikely.
And Stan, why can the evidence for God not be material or sensory?
If you're claiming it can't be, then you must reject all material 'miracle' claims out of hand.
Do you do that?
If you don't, then you must admit such evidence is possible. And if it's possible, it's subject to material investigation.
My claim is that such investigations have never yielded anything convincing.
Oh, and because we're talking in terms of logical fallacies and such, saying that God claims are exempt from material analysis is called "special pleading".
Matt said,
"And Stan, why can the evidence for God not be material or sensory?
If you're claiming it can't be, then you must reject all material 'miracle' claims out of hand.
Do you do that?
If you don't, then you must admit such evidence is possible. And if it's possible, it's subject to material investigation."
Miracles are, indeed, subject to material investigation; material investigation has material limits: read on.
Many so-called miracles are nothing of the sort, as you suspect. It is just as possible to find a potato that looks like Nixon as it is to find an imprint of Mary on a tortilla.
But the defining nature of miracles is this: it is a temporary release from, or reversal of, known natural laws. (Usually).
Let's take two cases: Lourdes, and the parting of the Red Sea.
The miracle at Lourdes involved a vision accompanied by a spring of water spurting forth from a rock cliff where no spring had ever been before. The evidence is this: the word of the girl who saw the vision, and the word of villagers who made the claim about the non-existence of the spring.
How would you empirically investigate this evidence? How would you prove, experimentally, replicably, falsifiably, that it did not occur?
The parting of the Red Sea involves the written claims contained in an ancient document. The waters parted, then closed.
How would you empirically investigate this claim?
You can certainly claim not to believe it. Can you absolutely, empirically, prove it false, that it did not occur? If so, how? No one else has done so, you might be the first.
Now for your claim of "special pleading". This claim fails because it is a category error: you can not find a non-material entity in a material category. Simple boolean set theory: A is !B.
This is specifically a Philosophical Materialist approach: deny the category first, then claim fallacy. But as has been shown, denying the category is non-empirical, placing it into a blind faith mode: Philosophical Materialism. Being without valid evidence, it becomes a proposition without a valid premise: logically false.
Matt,
So if you think 2 is more likely than 1, then you must have a reason for that. Again I point out to you that I emphasize "varying levels of justification." You don't have to PROVE God does not exist, but still must justify your weak position 2 with evidence. I.e, WHY do you think 2 is more likely than 1? You can't just say that 1 has failed to make a case, therefore 2 is more likely by default. This would be the aforementioned argument from fallacy. 1s may make a terrible case in your opinion, but 1 may still be correct despite that.
Martin, yes, I may still be correct. I acknowledge that. But the fact that 1's have tried repeatedly, for millennia, to make their case and failed to do so has to count as a weakening of the likelihood of 1, does it not?
And any weakening of 1 is a strengthening of 2.
As a thought exercise, replace "God" in your 1-2-3 list with the "Norse God Thor".
Where would you put yourself? I'd still be a 3. I make no distinction between Thor and any of the Gods currectly woshipped.
And Stan, no, I cannot empirically prove those things false. They could, however, be empirically proven true, but have not been.
For example we could (in theory) have multiple documents describing the red sea incident from different viewpoints, instead of one document of questionable origin and veracity. We could have fossil evidence. We have none of these things. Why not?
They recently found an Egyptian chariot at the bottom of the Red Sea at the approximate location of the alleged incident. Regardless of what that proves or doesn't prove, your position is that "absence of evidence" is "evidence of absence" which only serves as logic if one chooses to "believe" it. In the case of scientism with respect to the mind, you choose to elect the opposite for your position: that lack of proof doesn't mean that proof won't be found.
Philosophical Materialism is prone to such internal contradictions, including the blind acceptance of abiogenesis, because they have defined the entire existence of life to be without external influence. So blatantly absurd
improbabilities are accepted as possible, without any evidence, fossil or otherwise.
This sort of selectivity in defense of an agenda, coupled with a defense of a fallacy, puts the Philosophical Materialist case into some pretty tacky quicksand.
The main point here is that you cannot prove, empirically, that it did not occur. So you are asserting something you cannot prove. That is a characteristic of faith, not science.
And, the issue of category error still stands.
A "belief" in scientism isn't quite the same as a belief in miracles. Science has a documented and validated history of showing things to be natural that were previously thought to be supernatural. It's not unreasonable to believe that will continue.
I also wouldn't characterise my position as asserting something I cannot prove. Remember, I'm a 3 (in Martin's list), not a 2.
I'm actually just rejecting something that's being asserted without evidence. And I don't need evidence to do that. If it's being asserted without evidence I can reject it without evidence.
Of course, you can reject anything you want, first by demanding material evidence that is impossible to provide, and second by refusing to admit to the category error of doing so.
These are the fundamental fallacies of Philosophical Materialism, which you are adhering to, while apparently claiming category 3 (unable to decide due to insufficient evidence: "I don't know"). Your outright rejection undercuts your claim of "3".
Had you said, "I can't know because there is no material evidence and I require material evidence; even though the alleged event was both transitory and violated common laws of science, it still left no material trace to investigate", that would be consistent with "3". (a materialist "3")
Your position of outright rejection is consistent with a "2", not a "3".
Presuming that material evidence makes the difference for you, what about Lourdes then, and the new spring erupting from a rock cliff, a spring that is still flowing? In order to reject this, you must reject the testimony of an entire French village. We can disregard the girl's vision if you wish.
Stan-
sorry to be a pain on this but,
I would suggest that modern physics teaches us that there is no material/mechanistic explanation of all phenomena. Feynman even argued against looking for one-
"Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, "But how can it be like that?"
because you will get "down the drain," into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that."
On the apparent absurdities of Quantum behavior, in The Character of Physical Law (1965)
Another way to say that might be, "It is unscientific to demand that all explanations of nature will be materialistic and/or mechanistic."
My point is that it is possible to have a scientific universe that includes-
free will, luck, purpose, and God.
I'm confused, Stan.
First you say material evidence is impossible, and then you cite material evidence for me to consider.
So is such evidence possible or not?
Sonic, Your comments are always welcome – no need to make apologies.
I have to take the position (for practical reasons) that there are two levels of existence here, let’s call them the macro and the micro. We exist in the macro realm for all intents and purposes, even though we consist, with attendent probability, of particles in the micro realm. So in discussing things like singularities in the macro realm, i.e. miracles, it seems to me to be necessary to remain with the laws of the macro universe, even though they are approximations of the full laws defined by the micro universe.
This is because arguments of evidence are couched in macro terms. Even though the more complete argument might be a Feynman argument, it is difficult to apply that to singularities that are observed in the macro world in a convincing manner. There are other arguments to be applied there.
Now, I agree totally with Feynman. That does not help with the arguments to be made against Atheist certainties that certain singularities did not occur. The quantum argument goes to the mechanism by which such occurrences might have happened, but that is a point to be made further along.
This separation dichotomy does not reflect my view of existence; I feel that it is a necessity for explanatory purposes.
I’m not at all sure this is clear, if not I’ll try again.
Matt,
The physical evidence I have cited is circumstantial. The event itself is not experimentally producible, replicable, falsifiable, or otherwise empirically testable. As with all such singular events, it is testimony that is the remaining evidence.
With Lourdes, no one can "prove" whether the spring did or did not exist prior to the alleged event. The spring exists. That's all that can be said about it. The remaining question is whether you can absolutely prove the villagers' account of the event is empirically false. If you cannot, then your denial is a faith statement, not a statement of empirical fact.
And don't forget to address the issue of Category Error...
I don't see why the evidence would necessarily be circumstantial, unless God is being deliberately evasive for some reason?
If such a miracle happened today and we had prior geological surveys confirm no spring, and footage from multiple camera-angles because eveyone whipped out their camera phones, would you still consider that circumstantial?
To repeat what I said before, if it's asserted without evidence I can reject it without evidence.
Regarding the Category Error, I would argue that the Category itself was invented for the express purpose of 'special pleading'. Apart from supporting the argument as to why there's a lack of evidence, it has no other reason to exist.
Matt, I can give you a teensy bit of food for thought about the non-material aspect, although I'm sure Stan will chime in with more ideas later.
One proposition (that I myself as an agnostic find at least partially convincing) is that the physical universe plus time itself began at the moment of the Big Bang. Whatever caused the universe brought into existence the laws of nature, time, matter, etc, and so therefore must be outside these things itself. I.e., this cause must be non-physical, timeless, spaceless, etc. So looking at matter, time, space, natural laws and so on for this cause that is external to them is, indeed, a category error.
I would agree with that, Martin. That's a genuine categorical distinction.
However, the category error that Stan's talking about is an (I think) completely artificial distinction between supernatural causes and effects, and our ability to examine such things scientifically.
Propping up this position requires weak arguments like the claim that evidence for miracles must necessarily be circumstantial.
Of course this point is addressed much more eloquently in the excellent Richard Carrier article you linked to.
Matt said,
"To repeat what I said before, if it's asserted without evidence I can reject it without evidence."
Only if you're certain that lack of evidence fully equates with evidence of lack.
"Regarding the Category Error, I would argue that the Category itself was invented for the express purpose of 'special pleading'. Apart from supporting the argument as to why there's a lack of evidence, it has no other reason to exist."
And your evidence for the invention of the category is...? If your position is valid, then I can reject it based on lack of evidence to support it. It is a natural self-refutation.
I forgot to address this from Matt:
Matt said:
"If such a miracle happened today and we had prior geological surveys confirm no spring, and footage from multiple camera-angles because eveyone whipped out their camera phones, would you still consider that circumstantial?"
Of course not; but that is not the case, certainly not in the case of Lourdes, which you have not fully addressed so far. Do you reject the testimony of the entire village? If so on what basis?
Again Matt said,
"Propping up this position requires weak arguments like the claim that evidence for miracles must necessarily be circumstantial."
Of course that is not what I said, nor is it what I meant. Here's what I said:
"The physical evidence I have cited is circumstantial. The event itself is not experimentally producible, replicable, falsifiable, or otherwise empirically testable. As with all such singular events, it is testimony that is the remaining evidence."
If that is not clear, let's try to clear it up. For historical claims of singularities such as the spring at Lourdes and the parting of the Red Sea, there were no cameras, no instrumentation or other techniques to record the event. What remains is human testimony. Even if cameras caught the event it would be deniable as photoshopped, just as the moonlanding is deniable as a Hollywood production in some minds. Even in science, it is papers that are relied on to relate phenomena seen in experimentation. Most science is not replicated by every scientist; they rely on testimony of other scientists to relate their observations.
Denial of testimony is a dicey thing, especially without empirical backup. Denial just to deny, or denial out of a worldview are not valid denials.
When scientists deny a previous scientific theory, they do it after careful empirical attempts to replicate it have failed, and generally with an accompanying new theory that has been replicated successfully. Cold fusion has failed in at least 17 attempted replications that I am aware of, yet it is not denied. Rather it is placed in the agnostic (don't know) category.
It is clearly outside of the purvue of science to try to replicate the sudden, coincidental emergence of the spring at Lourdes, or the parting of the Red Sea. So the denial of these cannot based on empirical findings.
So I repeat, on what basis do you deny these alleged events?
I deny them because the evidence is unreliable. For a start, eyewitness testimony is inherently unreliable.
To go further, the Red Sea event is part of a larger mythology, most of the details of which (e.g. that the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt at the time implied by the Old Testament) are not supported by other historical evidence.
Regarding Lourdes, you have a group of people primed to believe in miracles, a town council keen on the inevitable tourism, and a story that gets better and better each time it's told.
That may be speculation, but it's more plausible than the equally speculative 'miracle' is it not?
I'll agree that a miracle is possible in the case of Lourdes, but it's by no means the best explanation.
Stan, if you're not saying that evidence for miracles is necessarily circumstantial, then how do you explain the apparent drop-off in miracles since ancient times?
I can explain it by observing that the advent of increased surveillance allows quick and easy debunking of miraculous claims (a recent example: the 'wormhole' seen in Norway a few months ago). In times past such things would have entered lore as mirculous events.
But what's your explanation?
I'll let Stan answer, but another tidbit just for fun: miracles in ancient times are far apart in time; Moses and the burning bush may have been around 2500 BC, and the parting of the Red Sea soon after, but then quiet for thousands of years, until the Resurrection in 33 AD. Then quiet again for 2000 years. So one interpretation is that miracles have not stopped; we just don't easily comprehend the long spans of time between them.
Matt said,
"Stan, if you're not saying that evidence for miracles is necessarily circumstantial, then how do you explain the apparent drop-off in miracles since ancient times?"
What does the mean time between miracles have to do with circumstantial evidence? What we are discussing is whether you have empirical evidence to refute the parting of the Red Sea, or the Spring at Lourdes.
Your answer is a Poisoning the Well Fallacy; you impute characteristics to a population that you know nothing about, as a means of attempting to create a distrust where none is warranted by empirical data. This is closely related to an Ad Hominem, in that it attacks the opposition and not the subject. Again the subject is whether you have empirical information that falsifies the events.
Again, not looking for "plausible" just-so-stories. Looking for empirical validation that these events did not occur.
So Stan, in the absence of good evidence either way, do you consider the 'miraculous' explanation just as plausible, with a 50-50 probability, as the more prosaic explanation?
To my mind, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
And Martin, there are a lot more miracles recounted in the bible than just those. Between The Red Sea parting and Jesus' resurrection we had the Ark of the Covenant doing all sort of strange things, numerous miraculous battles including the fall of Jericho, Daniel in the Lion's den, the writing on the wall (for King Nebechadnezzar, I think?), the ingestion and regurgitation of Jonah, the ascenscion of Elijah ... the list goes on and on.
In more recent times the middle ages were replete with visions of the Virgin and various miraculous acts attributed to saints.
The entire point of this excercise is that the outright denial of those things for which there is no falsifying evidence is both logically and empirically incorrect: the only rationally supportable answer is "don't know, not enough evidence".
If you wish to assign probabilities, there again you must show your work: on what basis are numerical probabilities assigned? Are they what "seems" to be right, in someone's estimation? Or are they based on some empirical data? If so, what data? If not, well, then it is just opinion.
As for the lack of recent "miracles", a check with the Catholic Church would likely turn up some recent ones, and, I suspect, show some consistency historically. However, the Protestant answer to that would more likely have to do with the Second Covenant. I am not an apologist for either segment, and more information like this could be found on apologetics sites.
That's the thing, Stan. I'm not denying it outright. I don't have this black-and-white worldview that you seem to keep assuming I have. I'm not a Philosophical Materialist. I'd be happy to believe in Jesus if someone gave me a convincing argument as to why it would be a rational choice.
My position is most definitely "don't know, not enough evidence".
The assignment of probabilities, in the case of miracles, is based on the observation that many things (I would even say most things) thought to be miraculous have turned out not to be. In fact, we have precisely zero objectively verified miracles. You've agreed that objective evidence for miracles is obtainable, so why haven't we had any?
There are traces left over of some events, I'm sure, just like at Lourdes. But as you demonstrated, it is easy to assert a denial based on "needing more" than just that, and "suspecting" the devious or delusional nature of the witnesses.
PZ once said that if God destroyed a city on his (PZ's) command right in front of him, he still would only consider that to be evidence for scientific perusal, not of a miracle or supernatural event. So you see, pure contrariness can be a factor in denial without evidence to support it. The search for truth, if one is interested in such a thing, can't get past contrariness.
The objective evidence of the miracles we discussed was obtained by witnesses who were there; their records persist. Did you witness any atomic bomb test blasts? I did, as a child living in Nevada where my parents were school teachers. The resulting evidence could have been faked, the glassy holes, the radiation, the destroyed buildings, the films and photos.
The actual events on Frenchman's Flats won't be reproduced, so you'll have to depend on witness testimony that they were not faked.
But of course it would be easy to deny that they occured because the events themselves are not available to be seen as replicated realities.
It's the same with the denial of the moon landing, of the nature of Kennedy's assassination, of the mountains of bodies at the Auschwitz furnaces, and so on. Denial is easy. Proving that the denial is false is not only not easy, it is not possible, at least to the ornery satisfaction of the deniers.
The probabilities of such events at Auschwitz are so low that the mere idea of such a thing, taken beforehand, would be approximately zero. But do you deny them based on that probability? Maybe so, I don't know.
I recently posted the results of a study that showed that prayer had positive results on animals recovering from surgery. I'm sure that this would be denied under some excuse, because such things just can't happen in a purely material universe. The same thing goes for out of body experiences, documented in Lancet by multiple physicians. So it is not that the evidence does not exist, it does. What happens is that it is denied, and that the denials, which have no empirical standing, stick, because of the Philosophical Materialist presuppostion places a false demand on the perceived probability.
I do not suggest that these examples should be believed; what I suggest is that they cannot be rejected unless the rejection carries some empirical weight with it, beyond the typical PZ rejoinder, "We just don't see that in nature".
The King of Persia thought kindly toward European guests until they insisted that water turned hard in the winter; he then knew they were frauds because his experience of more than 60 years denied that probability completely.
(Possibly just a legend, but I like it).
Stan, interesting story about Persia.
While I agree that philosophical materialism does play a role, I think sometimes it's like Richard Carrier said: pragmatic naturalism. While it can always be the case that a perpetual motion machine may be invented at some point, a scientist who does not take seriously such claims is not doing so because it's outside his experience per se, but because such a thing breaks all the rules we know (so far) about physics. I.e., it's not worth the time and money to seriously consider, even though there may be a probability that it's true.
I'm bipolar on singularities (miracles): I like to argue them with Atheists because of the obvious logical error of their denial; on the other hand, they have no value as truth statements, so they are not useful in any pursuit of intellectual truth.
Matt,
I have seen far too many atheists claim on blogs that they KNOW there is no God, no afterlife, no nothing except the material universe. Hmm ... funny how they "know" things that would make them as omniscient as any god. :)
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