The Permissibility of Faith

[spetey]

Hi folks!

In my experience, when debating with those who believe in God, my interlocutors will inevitably appeal to faith as their justification for belief. (Some don't call it "faith"--some call it "intuition", or "trust" or some such.) I'm very wary of such appeals, because I hear it as "I will continue to believe despite lack of evidence or argument for my position (at least, of the kind that I can share with anyone who disagrees)." I think such behavior is impermissible. Faith to me is just dogmatism, and to me, dogmatism of any kind is very dangerous.

For comparison: imagine, for example, that you met a rabid racist. You give a carefully reasoned argument to the effect that skin color doesn't matter to who a person is or what rights they have, etc. The racist responds: "Although I have no answer to your argument, or arguments that I can share with you for my own position, I just believe; I have faith that my race is superior." You would be at an impasse, right? Should you come to disagree over some important social policy measure, there is no way to reason out your disagreement. Instead you have to see who has more money for PR, or who has more tanks, or what have you. I assume that in these cases we all agree that "faith" is in an important sense impermissible. We think the racist is being dogmatic, and we think that it's destructive not to be open to reasoning.

So why might appeal to faith be permissible when it comes to discussions of religion? Or have I somehow misconstrued what it is to appeal to faith?


spetey

[spetey]

Hello again harvey1! Let me again stop and say that I'm learning a lot in these debates, though I regret that these threads seem to peter out to just you and me. And I don't know about you, but I do think we're making slow but steady progress, coming to consensus here and there.

Okay, does it depend on the person's rationality (being open to publically available reasons), or does it depend on the person's initial "intuitive" standpoint?

Your question presents a false dichotomy. The bedrock of rationality is parsimony, however *even* parsimony has quantitative and qualitative attributes. Aesthetic premises are embedded in the qualitative attributes of parsimony.

Actually I'm willing to grant simplicity ( ~ parsimony?) as at least a foundational bedrock of reasoning, and perhaps the one. If you can show that belief in the Abrahamic God is overall simpler, in a certain sense, that would carry weight with me. Myself I think parsimony demands we eliminate the supernatural; I don't think God exists for the same reason I don't think unicorns and undetectable pixies exist. They could exist, I suppose, but they are not needed to explain things; they are not part of the simplest theory available to me, and basically for that reason I don't believe in them.

Look at from a different angle. If it were true that everyone rational should be able to come to the same criteria of parsimony (i.e., qualitative criterias were mute or non-existent), then conversely, everyone of a rational mind should believe the same thing about every subject.

Shouldn't they? Given certain kinds of ideal circumstances like rationality and ideal information, shouldn't they eventually converge on believing the truth? Sure of course some truths might in principle not be knowable by us. But those things that we can know--take the truths of arithmetic as a simple example--shouldn't any rational creature come to believe these truths after enough reasoning and information?

And note this actually happens, a lot, especially in the sciences. Everyone rational and informed believes that 2+2=4, the earth goes around the sun, and so on. Sure, there are also lots of places where people disagree. But to suppose there is a truth to the matter roughly is to suppose (especially given your pragmatic viewpoint) that rational investigators would converge on that one answer. Or no? How do you see things?

My contention is that aesthetic principles still work, and many of those aesthetic principles are metaphysical based.

You'll have to be more clear about what you mean by aesthetic principles (how they differ from regular-old principles, or just beliefs) and what it is for them to be "metaphysically based". I recognize that I may have presented you with a false dichotomy, but it's still not clear to me, and I'd like to understand what that tertium that you're proposing is.

Perhaps it might help if you give your view on how you think rationality evolved in humans and why it is that rational people do not agree on many issues...

I think rationality evolved (in humans) in order to give its bearers competitive selective advantage, especially over similar hominids... probably much as you believe. But I don't see how that relates to what is rational.

Huh? You assumed that if I believe in Zeus I believe in "theistic evolution"? I don't see how this follows,

Okay, then you believe in Greek creation myths (i.e., no biological evolution).

Also a false dichotomy. Let's suppose that I think the Titans created the world and natural selection took over from there. That does not mean I grant the "theistic evolution of ideas". Biological, natural selection is very different from your "theistic evolution of ideas"--for one thing because it's about genotypes rather than memes, and their behavior and selection pressures are different; for another, because one is directed by a deity and the other is not. Let's say I grant the truth of biological evolution, but I don't think Zeus directly influences people's beliefs systems much. He's too busy seducing mortals and hurling lightning.

'Ideas' are better in the same sense that some 'biological structures' are better. That is, they are better at <something> which makes them more fit for the environment. Similarly, Christianity is better at <something>, and as a result it has survived for 2,000 years in very competitive and ruthless environments.

Oh, I grant that--I just don't grant that what it's better at is getting truth. Christianity is very good at getting people to believe it--it's an infectious meme, in Dawkinspeak. But that's easily explained: people really want to believe it, and people tend to be pathological wishful thinkers. Astrology is also "better at <something>"; it's been around at least as long as Christianity. But I don't think that's any evidence of its truth.

Evolutionary development is evidence for truth because falsehoods tend to produce errors that make a particular 'species' of belief less effective at competing in a wide-open religious landscape, and being less effective tends to move such errant views toward demise.

Your response here sounds to me like this: "evolution leads to truth, because falsehoods don't compete well." That sounds like begging the question. Clearly there are many other "selection pressures" for belief other than truth, right? Or do you claim that I have at least the reason to believe astrology as I do for Christianity, since it's been around at least as long and with at least as varied a past?

You want to say that astrology is a kind of "mistake"--it succeeded in the "evolution of ideas" for non-truth-directed reasons. By contrast, you presumably want to say that Christianity can survive the test of giving truth-directed reasons. Well good, so give me those reasons! Just referring to "the evolution of ideas" isn't enough! Now is the time to see if Christianity can compete under the "selection pressure" of rationality. I claim it can't.

Put it this way: atheism, too, is a popular meme. You may not know how popular it is if you live in certain parts of the US, but it's big and growing fast. And atheists have access to more of the past ideas than any other time in history. Most of us grew up with the ideas of Christianity or some such and rejected them on rationality grounds. Can I simply refer to this fact in order to convince you of atheism? Of course not. You want to say that atheism is an idea-evolutionary mistake, like astrology--spreading not because of its truth. I want to say the same of theism. And the way to settle the matter is to refer to synchronic reasons to believe in one or the other, not to say "but my idea has an evolutionary history". All ideas do! And being newer or older or whatever is not in any way obvious signs of an ideas' truth, any more than being a newer or older species is a sign of its better fitness.


spetey

[harvey1]

Okay, does it depend on the person's rationality (being open to publically available reasons), or does it depend on the person's initial "intuitive" standpoint?

Your question presents a false dichotomy. The bedrock of rationality is parsimony, however *even* parsimony has quantitative and qualitative attributes. Aesthetic premises are embedded in the qualitative attributes of parsimony.

Actually I'm willing to grant simplicity ( ~ parsimony?) as at least a foundational bedrock of reasoning, and perhaps the one. If you can show that belief in the Abrahamic God is overall simpler, in a certain sense, that would carry weight with me. Myself I think parsimony demands we eliminate the supernatural; I don't think God exists for the same reason I don't think unicorns and undetectable pixies exist. They could exist, I suppose, but they are not needed to explain things; they are not part of the simplest theory available to me, and basically for that reason I don't believe in them.

My point is that parsimony requires qualitative consideration that prevents the construction of a rational canon strictly in quantitative terms. That is, you cannot demand that rational people will agree on all the criteria of rationality, even something as straightforward as identifying the 'simplest theory' and even determining what that means exactly. This puts our differing viewpoints on aesthetic criteria (or as it is called in the philosophy of science, an aesthetic canon).

Look at from a different angle. If it were true that everyone rational should be able to come to the same criteria of parsimony (i.e., qualitative criterias were mute or non-existent), then conversely, everyone of a rational mind should believe the same thing about every subject.

Shouldn't they? Given certain kinds of ideal circumstances like rationality and ideal information, shouldn't they eventually converge on believing the truth? Sure of course some truths might in principle not be knowable by us. But those things that we can know--take the truths of arithmetic as a simple example--shouldn't any rational creature come to believe these truths after enough reasoning and information?

Our interaction with the world is not deduction as a formal system. Our interaction with the world is inductive, and induction - even in ideal circumstances - will not produce agreement since even a slightly differing view as to the inductive criteria used will significantly alter one's perspective of what is true.

And note this actually happens, a lot, especially in the sciences. Everyone rational and informed believes that 2+2=4, the earth goes around the sun, and so on. Sure, there are also lots of places where people disagree. But to suppose there is a truth to the matter roughly is to suppose (especially given your pragmatic viewpoint) that rational investigators would converge on that one answer. Or no? How do you see things?

There are successes on the route to unification, however the universe seems to be constructed in a manner that surprises disrupt that unification and the process must begin again. For example, 19th century mechanical/analytical views of physics/math appeared to be winding up the investigation of the world, and then relativity, quantum mechanics, Gödel, Russell, etc. That's okay because this is a mechanism that drives our evolution forward.

My contention is that aesthetic principles still work, and many of those aesthetic principles are metaphysical based.

You'll have to be more clear about what you mean by aesthetic principles (how they differ from regular-old principles, or just beliefs) and what it is for them to be "metaphysically based". I recognize that I may have presented you with a false dichotomy, but it's still not clear to me, and I'd like to understand what that tertium that you're proposing is.

Aesthetic principles are those principles which are used as cues as to what is 'beautiful' in a belief under the assumption that "beauty is the splendor of truth". We look for 'simplicity' under the assumption that "simplicity is the emblem of truth". So, for example, a beautiful theory might attract because its truth unifies in a spectacular fashion (e.g., Maxwell's electromagnetic theory that unified optics and electricity). Simple theories attract, for example, because their simplicity seems too coincidental not to be true.

Metaphysical aspects of an aesthetic canon is a unification of the physical theory with some underlying ontology. For example, atomism is a metaphysical view that 'atoms' are the fundamental objects to the world. Everything is explained in those terms. During the 19th century when mechanical physics was at its heyday, there were many beautiful theories that used atomism as its basis. As you can imagine, the discovery of the atom only excited those who held to that metaphysical program. Then came the bad news...

Perhaps it might help if you give your view on how you think rationality evolved in humans and why it is that rational people do not agree on many issues...

I think rationality evolved (in humans) in order to give its bearers competitive selective advantage, especially over similar hominids... probably much as you believe. But I don't see how that relates to what is rational.

It relates to what is rational because we came to these conclusions inductively, and, in fact, there is no general consensus as to what is rational. We have somewhat vague concepts of rationality. Of course, some people who have their own metaphysical agenda would like everyone else to believe such criteria exists, but that's just not the case.

Huh? You assumed that if I believe in Zeus I believe in "theistic evolution"? I don't see how this follows,

Okay, then you believe in Greek creation myths (i.e., no biological evolution).

Also a false dichotomy. Let's suppose that I think the Titans created the world and natural selection took over from there. That does not mean I grant the "theistic evolution of ideas". Biological, natural selection is very different from your "theistic evolution of ideas"--for one thing because it's about genotypes rather than memes, and their behavior and selection pressures are different; for another, because one is directed by a deity and the other is not. Let's say I grant the truth of biological evolution, but I don't think Zeus directly influences people's beliefs systems much. He's too busy seducing mortals and hurling lightning.

My response up to this point is based on 'biological evolution' as theistically-driven is a 'given for sake of argument in that thread'. As I said, I don't mind arguing this premise in another thread of your choice. Also, if God is Zeus, then it must have been God's intent to get humans to believe in the Zeus religion by evolutionary means. Saying it was coincidence that humans worshipped the 'right' god (i.e., Zeus) is not reasonable. It seems some kind of evolutionary theism of ideas is needed in that assumption.

Although, I only used the theistic evolution premise as a negative criteria of truth. That is, if a species or idea goes extinct, then we can safely say that it wasn't selected by a God (e.g., Zeus) for a future. Of course, there's any number of ways to get around this (e.g., God made a mistake and will correct it, or God will restart the evolution again of that species or idea from some other source, etc), however be that as it may, it is clear that had the species or idea been desirable to God, the most reasonable path is that it wouldn't have gone extinct in the first place. It's not an infallible reason by any means, but it is reasonable enough to discount any past religion (or made up religion) as truth.

'Ideas' are better in the same sense that some 'biological structures' are better. That is, they are better at <something> which makes them more fit for the environment. Similarly, Christianity is better at <something>, and as a result it has survived for 2,000 years in very competitive and ruthless environments.

Oh, I grant that--I just don't grant that what it's better at is getting truth. Christianity is very good at getting people to believe it--it's an infectious meme, in Dawkinspeak. But that's easily explained: people really want to believe it, and people tend to be pathological wishful thinkers. Astrology is also "better at <something>"; it's been around at least as long as Christianity. But I don't think that's any evidence of its truth.

Evolutionary development is evidence for truth because falsehoods tend to produce errors that make a particular 'species' of belief less effective at competing in a wide-open religious landscape, and being less effective tends to move such errant views toward demise.

Your response here sounds to me like this: "evolution leads to truth, because falsehoods don't compete well." That sounds like begging the question. Clearly there are many other "selection pressures" for belief other than truth, right? Or do you claim that I have at least the reason to believe astrology as I do for Christianity, since it's been around at least as long and with at least as varied a past?

There most surely are other selection pressures for belief. However, there is a tendency in evolution to produce beliefs that are truth since this is the only way to explain that our view of rationality is true versus a fashion. If evolutionary selection just goes with the latest fashion, then we have no basis to say that rationality is based on truth - to some reasonable degree. However, if evolutionary pressures tend to produce explanations that are true (to some extent), then this evolutionary tendency is what I say is at work in religious explanations. If we look at the evolutionary pressures that led to rational thought, these are the same evolutionary pressues that led to religious thought. In fact, you cannot separate the two for most of the last 200,000 years since ancient people did not know to separate thoughts solely about religion from thoughts solely about what is 'rational'.

You want to say that astrology is a kind of "mistake"--it succeeded in the "evolution of ideas" for non-truth-directed reasons. By contrast, you presumably want to say that Christianity can survive the test of giving truth-directed reasons. Well good, so give me those reasons! Just referring to "the evolution of ideas" isn't enough! Now is the time to see if Christianity can compete under the "selection pressure" of rationality. I claim it can't.

Astrology failed to meet the evolutionary conditions that I mentioned. It was largely a competitor to religion, and religion won out. Astrology just never experienced the kind of persecution and persistence that you see in the Hebrew and Christian religion.

Put it this way: atheism, too, is a popular meme. You may not know how popular it is if you live in certain parts of the US, but it's big and growing fast. And atheists have access to more of the past ideas than any other time in history. Most of us grew up with the ideas of Christianity or some such and rejected them on rationality grounds. Can I simply refer to this fact in order to convince you of atheism? Of course not. You want to say that atheism is an idea-evolutionary mistake, like astrology--spreading not because of its truth. I want to say the same of theism. And the way to settle the matter is to refer to synchronic reasons to believe in one or the other, not to say "but my idea has an evolutionary history". All ideas do! And being newer or older or whatever is not in any way obvious signs of an ideas' truth, any more than being a newer or older species is a sign of its better fitness.

That's actually not correct. I don't look upon atheism as a mistake. I see it quite the opposite. It is an alternative belief that competes for minds, and as it does so, it too reaches for any aesthetic principle that it can grab and use to further its development. The mistake that atheists make, and its probably no fault to their own, is that it promotes a meaningless (i.e., ugly) world that most people will simply reject. In order for atheism to succeed, it must come up with a metaphysics and then find something beautiful about the theories it produces as a result such that people will overlook the ugliness of atheism. This, of course, is the fatal dilemma for atheists. They cannot produce anything positive and enduring. It captures people's attention by the failure of its competitors, not the success of its own principles.

I personally think atheism, agnosticism, secularism, has some hidden advantages. They shake people out of their slumber and get them to re-look at their religious beliefs and seek out more meaning in the world, further developing religion into a richer and more beautiful belief system (i.e., more true).

[spetey]

Hello harvey1!

Again, cutting to some chase:

It sounds like the middle ground you're proposing between "Christianity has reasons for belief that (given patience etc) could convince a rational atheist" and "Christianity appeals at bottom to non-shareable intuitions" is that "Christianity relies on a notion of rationality that can be non-shareable." Your "aesthetic premises", as I hear them, are what are sometimes called the "theoretical virtues"--reasons to pick one theory over another based on what I guess you might call "aesthetic" concerns, or values--like simplicity.

But I don't agree--I think even rationality can be discussed and debated and agreed upon. People do it for a living (they're called "philosophers"). And as it happens, we ourselves are an example of agreeing about rationality! We both agree that simplicity is a crucial, if not the only, "aesthetic premise". Myself, I construe this as an example of "inference to the best explanation"--we infer to the simpler explanation. (I'm also likely to agree that the other "theoretical virtues", such as consilience, conservatism, etc. are mere notational variations on the main theme of simplicity.)

So! That's enormous progress. Let's start from there. I've suggested briefly why I think atheism is the simpler premise. I do not believe in God for the same reason I do not believe in unicorns or undetectable pixies--they're not needed to explain the world, and when something is not needed to explain things in any way, I assume it doesn't exist.

Our interaction with the world is not deduction as a formal system. Our interaction with the world is inductive, and induction - even in ideal circumstances - will not produce agreement since even a slightly differing view as to the inductive criteria used will significantly alter one's perspective of what is true.

But surely you must agree that in the vast majority of scientific beliefs (ones we usually take for granted), we have come to agreement, even though they are "inductions" (or "abductions" or "inferences to the best explanation" or as you like). We agree the earth goes around the sun, and so on... I think it's curious that we can't do that in the religious case, and I'd like it explained to me.

Also, if God is Zeus, then it must have been God's intent to get humans to believe in the Zeus religion by evolutionary means.

This doesn't follow at all--as I've said, I reject the conclusion. I think Zeus doesn't care what people believe. (And careful with the equivocation again--I'm not saying (the Abrahamic) God is Zeus. I'm saying God doesn't exist and Zeus does, just as the Greeks thought, or would have thought if they'd met the Jews. Let's please use the capital-G God just for the Abrahamic one.)

There most surely are other selection pressures for belief. However, there is a tendency in evolution to produce beliefs that are truth since this is the only way to explain that our view of rationality is true versus a fashion. If evolutionary selection just goes with the latest fashion, then we have no basis to say that rationality is based on truth - to some reasonable degree.

You are conflating "rationality" with "what's believed (in your evolution of ideas)", and I've rejected that conflation. I like rationality as (roughly) "inference to the simpler theory" instead.

However, if evolutionary pressures tend to produce explanations that are true (to some extent), then this evolutionary tendency is what I say is at work in religious explanations. If we look at the evolutionary pressures that led to rational thought, these are the same evolutionary pressues that led to religious thought.

I disagree. I think the "pressures" that brought about the sciences include empirical work, inferring to the simpler theory, subjecting one's work to disagreeing peers, and so on. I think the "pressures" selecting for religious thought include persecution, bullying, wishful thinking...

In fact, you cannot separate the two for most of the last 200,000 years since ancient people did not know to separate thoughts solely about religion from thoughts solely about what is 'rational'.

Sure they did. I was just watching a History Channel thing on Heraclitus, and how he scorned the Pythagoreans for their mystical thinking hundreds of years BCE. He wanted his theories bound by rationality. And he isn't the only such historical figure. Of course the religious couldn't distinguish it clearly--that's how we got the Dark Ages!

Astrology failed to meet the evolutionary conditions that I mentioned. It was largely a competitor to religion, and religion won out.

On what grounds do you say religion "won out"?! Astrology is at least as popular as Christianity--and anyway you presumably don't think the right belief is the one the majority believe. Astrology is still around and doing quite nicely, thank you. You want to say religion "won" because you antecedently have the view that it's true, while astrology isn't. But as a bystander to whom they are both in the same basket, I want to know why you think this.

Astrology just never experienced the kind of persecution and persistence that you see in the Hebrew and Christian religion.

Not at all--it probably suffered much more. Poor gypsies. It's still suffering today. They don't get tax-exempt status, for example, those sad fortune-tellers.

Anyway, are you ready to claim that it's suffering and persecution that lead to the right ideas? So that if I find, in the long and varied history of the globe, a religion that has suffered or been persecuted more than Christianity, you will abandon Christianity for it as the more reasonable one? If you think you can point to certain historical "processes" that are more apt to bring about truth, then give them now, up front--so that you don't have a chance to appeal to ad hoc historical differences between Christianity and whatever idea system I find that also matches your criteria. If you can't give them up front, then that's frankly a bit suspicious, isn't it?

That's actually not correct. I don't look upon atheism as a mistake.

Here you're equivocating on 'mistake'. You say that your "evolution of ideas" leads to truth, and that's why we should believe Christianity. I say that one of the many current competing pinnacles of the "evolution of ideas" is atheism, and ask if that is therefore evidence of its truth on the same (or better) grounds. You say that atheism is not a "mistake" in that it's a falsehood that despite itself drives people to a true belief in God. I want to know: is atheism a mistake in the sense that it's false? Is it a mistake like astrology is a mistake? If so, on what grounds do you say so? The "evolution of ideas" seems as much in its favor, and astrology's, as in any other current idea system's, if not more so.

The mistake that atheists make, and its probably no fault to their own, is that it promotes a meaningless (i.e., ugly) world that most people will simply reject.

I have two important, different responses to this claim.

1. The world is not meaningless or ugly without belief in a God, as (having been on both sides of the fence) I can testify; it's just as beautiful, if not more so, and I think a great deal more meaningful too--for roughly the same reasons I think a life lived on your own is more meaningful than a life spent staying with your mother.
2. I agree that people reject atheism, and accept Christianity, because it seems to them that life is more meaningful with Christianity. But you see, even if the existence of a God would somehow make life more meaningful, that's not at all a truth-related reason to start believing Christianity. It's the same kind of reason people accept astrology--they want to think they can see the future, will meet a tall dark stranger, and so on. Why is it okay to believe in something just because you hope it's true in the case of Christianity, but not in the case of astrology?

In order for atheism to succeed, it must come up with a metaphysics and then find something beautiful about the theories it produces as a result such that people will overlook the ugliness of atheism.

I think the beauty of atheism is, among other things, in its simplicity--in its great partaking of the "aesthetic premises" you and I share.


spetey

[harvey1]

But I don't agree--I think even rationality can be discussed and debated and agreed upon. People do it for a living (they're called "philosophers"). And as it happens, we ourselves are an example of agreeing about rationality! We both agree that simplicity is a crucial, if not the only, "aesthetic premise". Myself, I construe this as an example of "inference to the best explanation"--we infer to the simpler explanation. (I'm also likely to agree that the other "theoretical virtues", such as consilience, conservatism, etc. are mere notational variations on the main theme of simplicity.)

Well, since you refer to philosohers, the philosophers of science who study the meaning of 'simplist theory', are in no agreement about which kind of simplicity or even if such a term has any meaning at all. A number of them deny it completely.

Our interaction with the world is not deduction as a formal system. Our interaction with the world is inductive, and induction - even in ideal circumstances - will not produce agreement since even a slightly differing view as to the inductive criteria used will significantly alter one's perspective of what is true.

But surely you must agree that in the vast majority of scientific beliefs (ones we usually take for granted), we have come to agreement, even though they are "inductions" (or "abductions" or "inferences to the best explanation" or as you like). We agree the earth goes around the sun, and so on... I think it's curious that we can't do that in the religious case, and I'd like it explained to me.

Strong comparisons abound between the major religions:

<A HREF="http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books ... HSBKS">Tao of Jesus</A>

<A HREF="http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books ... 692">Jesus and Buddha</A>

<A HREF="http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books ... 16">Christ the Yogi</A>

<A HREF="http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books ... 032">Jesus and Moses</A>

<A HREF="http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books ... 261">Jesus and Muhammad</A>

Religion, as these references to common sayings (etc) demonstrate, is not as far apart as 200,000 years of isolated evolution should suggest, so many might disagree with the methods of religion, but if you look at the situation over a spans of hundreds and thousands of years, religion is progressing and moving to more unification. Not as fast as science, but science is newbie on this planet. Humans will need to see where science is after it has its time in the sun. Soon the experiments of physics will be very difficult and expensive (we've already cancelled a particle accelerator that was supposed to be built in Texas), and if physics is not so lucky, it will find itself going generation upon generation barely obtaining new physics. After physics, soon other fields of study will start to tail off in their progress as well. If such occurs, and I can't think of a reason why it won't (assuming we are still here...), then the gap between the progress of science and religion won't be as stark as it is today.

Also, if God is Zeus, then it must have been God's intent to get humans to believe in the Zeus religion by evolutionary means.

This doesn't follow at all--as I've said, I reject the conclusion. I think Zeus doesn't care what people believe. (And careful with the equivocation again--I'm not saying (the Abrahamic) God is Zeus. I'm saying God doesn't exist and Zeus does, just as the Greeks thought, or would have thought if they'd met the Jews. Let's please use the capital-G God just for the Abrahamic one.)

When I say 'God', I generally mean the God of the philosophers. Such as this instance. For now on, when I mean the Hebrew/Christian God, I'll refer to specifically to as Yahweh.

There most surely are other selection pressures for belief. However, there is a tendency in evolution to produce beliefs that are truth since this is the only way to explain that our view of rationality is true versus a fashion. If evolutionary selection just goes with the latest fashion, then we have no basis to say that rationality is based on truth - to some reasonable degree.

You are conflating "rationality" with "what's believed (in your evolution of ideas)", and I've rejected that conflation. I like rationality as (roughly) "inference to the simpler theory" instead.

'Inference to the simpler theory' is an aesthetic evaluation. You might as well say 'inference to the beautiful theory', or 'inference to the most metaphysically appealing theory'. Says who? We come to agreement not because of 'simple', 'beautiful', 'metaphysically appealing', etc. We come to agreement because people bet on those who predict and collect the big winnings as a result. This is a pragmatic approach to how theories are accepted. In order to keep the progress going at a good speed, we look for aesthetic principles which shortcut the inductive approach to theory selection. It's 'rational' to do so, but it does not define rationality. Scientists look for aesthetics of simplicity and beauty and metaphysical appealing features to their theory. But, aesthetic canons do change, and they can push out old orthodox scientists out of the mainstream and push young unorthodox scientists into the mainstream. Simplicity may not have changed in its overall appeal, but the type of simplicity does change. Also, beauty of a theory sometimes takes over a higher priority, and for sure the metaphysical appeal often dominates theory selection.

However, if evolutionary pressures tend to produce explanations that are true (to some extent), then this evolutionary tendency is what I say is at work in religious explanations. If we look at the evolutionary pressures that led to rational thought, these are the same evolutionary pressues that led to religious thought.

I disagree. I think the "pressures" that brought about the sciences include empirical work, inferring to the simpler theory, subjecting one's work to disagreeing peers, and so on. I think the "pressures" selecting for religious thought include persecution, bullying, wishful thinking...

If humanity had never discovered science, religion would continue to advance. It is only because science has come upon our world so suddenly that it has given a false impression that there is not only another approach to knowledge, it has given some the impression that it is the only path to knowledge. That is almost certainly true in terms of scientific knowledge, humans could never evolve scientific knowledge without science, but it is not true in terms of the selection of better aesthetic principles. Prior to 20th century physics there was a great appreciation of symmetry. There was an interest in simplicity (e.g., Ockham). A great appreciation for the beauty in mathematics had existed. I have no doubt that progress was being made and would have continued to be made, and actually, will be made because of the evolution of ideas.

Science is a special case of the evolution of ideas. The 'testing' appears to be neat and orderly, but there's many instances in science where discoveries are made purely by accident. There is collaboration with peers and peer criticism, but there are many instances where scientists didn't listen to rational criticism and went on to make a famous theory anyway.

Religion, on the other hand, relies on the intuitive nature of the mind to develop its theories, and those theories are only heard when they are needed. So, many theories go by without ever being heard. This happens in science too, but in the case of religion, it always is the case. Once the situation changes such that people are willing to listen to a Jeremiah, then religion will listen to knew ideas. However, in most cases, people are more content to stay within their familiar settings.

In fact, you cannot separate the two for most of the last 200,000 years since ancient people did not know to separate thoughts solely about religion from thoughts solely about what is 'rational'.

Sure they did. I was just watching a History Channel thing on Heraclitus, and how he scorned the Pythagoreans for their mystical thinking hundreds of years BCE. He wanted his theories bound by rationality. And he isn't the only such historical figure. Of course the religious couldn't distinguish it clearly--that's how we got the Dark Ages!

I'm talking about the period when humans evolved rational thought, which is much earlier than Heraclitus.

Astrology failed to meet the evolutionary conditions that I mentioned. It was largely a competitor to religion, and religion won out.

On what grounds do you say religion "won out"?! Astrology is at least as popular as Christianity--and anyway you presumably don't think the right belief is the one the majority believe. Astrology is still around and doing quite nicely, thank you. You want to say religion "won" because you antecedently have the view that it's true, while astrology isn't. But as a bystander to whom they are both in the same basket, I want to know why you think this.

Astrology was combined with astronomy up until the medieval periods, so right away it suggests to me that astrology had a free ride off of a discipline that does produce a lot of truths. When astrologers made predictions, the predictions they inevitably got right were planetary predictions, which promoted the astrologers into fame. Nonetheless, beyond astronomy, they never evolved their views all that much and to my knowledge there wasn't a religion of astrology which had moral laws of conduct, saints, etc. It was more of a practice than a religion.

When astronomy did break off from astrology, astrology diminished greatly. Astronomy went on to great success, while astrology never formed churches or scriptures, or anything of the sort. Today astrology is about as popular as horse racing, which just puts it as a very minor influence in the world. Of course, it has an impact, but the trend of evolution has not been favorable to it.

Astrology just never experienced the kind of persecution and persistence that you see in the Hebrew and Christian religion.

Not at all--it probably suffered much more. Poor gypsies. It's still suffering today. They don't get tax-exempt status, for example, those sad fortune-tellers.

Fortune telling is different than astrology.

Anyway, are you ready to claim that it's suffering and persecution that lead to the right ideas? So that if I find, in the long and varied history of the globe, a religion that has suffered or been persecuted more than Christianity, you will abandon Christianity for it as the more reasonable one? If you think you can point to certain historical "processes" that are more apt to bring about truth, then give them now, up front--so that you don't have a chance to appeal to ad hoc historical differences between Christianity and whatever idea system I find that also matches your criteria. If you can't give them up front, then that's frankly a bit suspicious, isn't it?

Evolutionary 'pressures' is what you need to evolve beliefs. Give me all the evolutionary pressures for a species, and if you miss any, would you say that this disproves evolutionary theory if later you realized you forgot a potential 'pressure point'? However, I can give you the most obvious ones:

• captivity
  return from captivity
  cultural assimilation
  occupation by a foreign power
  unification of scriptures
  unification of peoples
  unification of culture
  war
  heresy
  schism
  persecution
  worldwide diaspora
  plague or major disease
  economic hardship
  famine
  exposure to new cultures
  reformation
  scientific progress
  technological progress
  death of a powerful leader
  rise of a new powerful leader
  earthquakes
  tsunamis
  missionaries sent-out and return
  missionaries from other religions
  miracle-like events
  prophets that were proven right
  etc, etc.

That's actually not correct. I don't look upon atheism as a mistake.

Here you're equivocating on 'mistake'. You say that your "evolution of ideas" leads to truth, and that's why we should believe Christianity. I say that one of the many current competing pinnacles of the "evolution of ideas" is atheism, and ask if that is therefore evidence of its truth on the same (or better) grounds. You say that atheism is not a "mistake" in that it's a falsehood that despite itself drives people to a true belief in God. I want to know: is atheism a mistake in the sense that it's false?

Not completely. It's entirely possible to view the world from an atheists perspective and be correct. For example, perhaps if an atheist was like Elijah and went looking for God in the places where he expected to find him, then Elijah would indeed have to return to his home as an atheist. God is the 'small wind' that many religious people prefer not to consider.

Is it a mistake like astrology is a mistake? If so, on what grounds do you say so? The "evolution of ideas" seems as much in its favor, and astrology's, as in any other current idea system's, if not more so.

I never said astrology has no truths to it. For the most part, it is not a truth generating method. I think there are solar influences, for example, that might affect humans. There might be influences in terms of 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' that we don't know about. Catastrophe theory might connect larger systems together to cause alignment with astronomical phenomena, etc. I state its falsehood based on its predictions. Although, I'm quite confident that had astronomy broken off earlier, then astrology might have had less fuel to go on. Their false predictions would have been more easy to spot, and they would have been discredited.

The mistake that atheists make, and its probably no fault to their own, is that it promotes a meaningless (i.e., ugly) world that most people will simply reject.

I have two important, different responses to this claim.

1. The world is not meaningless or ugly without belief in a God, as (having been on both sides of the fence) I can testify; it's just as beautiful, if not more so, and I think a great deal more meaningful too--for roughly the same reasons I think a life lived on your own is more meaningful than a life spent staying with your mother.

You've probably had a relatively good life, it's easy for you to say atheism is beautiful when you have satin sheets to lie on. The majority of people in the world are not so fortunate.

[*]I agree that people reject atheism, and accept Christianity, because it seems to them that life is more meaningful with Christianity. But you see, even if the existence of a God would somehow make life more meaningful, that's not at all a truth-related reason to start believing Christianity. It's the same kind of reason people accept astrology--they want to think they can see the future, will meet a tall dark stranger, and so on. Why is it okay to believe in something just because you hope it's true in the case of Christianity, but not in the case of astrology?

If astrology made their life meaningful, I would certainly encourage them to pursue it as long as it didn't make them miserable in some way that they might not be aware. In that case, I would encourage them to find other avenues of meaning such as Christianity.

In order for atheism to succeed, it must come up with a metaphysics and then find something beautiful about the theories it produces as a result such that people will overlook the ugliness of atheism.

I think the beauty of atheism is, among other things, in its simplicity--in its great partaking of the "aesthetic premises" you and I share.

Well, that's a different thread, but in terms of this thread, this goes to show why the concept of simplicity is aesthetically interpreted by an individual. I see the opposite situation. Unlike atheism, it is a negative belief. That is, I may not believe in astrology, but I won't disbelieve in astrology. That is, I am not sure enough to say that astrology is altogether false. I am agnostic with regard to astrology, but skeptical because I have no experience of them being right. Although, I've never been to an astrologer... So, I keep an open mind to some extent.

In the case of an atheist, they certainly lack ontological knowledge of the world (as I), however, they are disbelieving in a particular ontological view of the world which has a reasonable degree of being right. Maybe, from the atheist it is not probable, but that does not remove it from being reasonable. Since atheists insist they have enough knowledge to reject an ontological view on something, it seems to me that they violated the simplicity criteria since they are actually claiming knowledge of ontology to the degree where they can reject the existence of a philosophical God (no IPU's please, I'm talking about a simple notion that the world was caused...). For me, atheism claims too much knowledge of the world, far more than I. All I claim is to have reason to believe in something meaningful (i.e., pragmatic) and a lack of reasons to disbelieve it. That is far more of a parsimonious belief in my view.

[bernee51]

You two guys seem to be having a wonderful time...hope you don't mind me butting in

The mistake that atheists make, and its probably no fault to their own, is that it promotes a meaningless (i.e., ugly) world that most people will simply reject.

How do atheists promote a meaningless world? All an atheist does is deny belief in god - nothing more nothing less. Some atheists may have additional thoughts on 'the meaning of life" but to do so is not a prerequiisite of atheism.

Why do you equate 'meaningless' with 'ugly'?

In order for atheism to succeed, it must come up with a metaphysics and then find something beautiful about the theories it produces...

What theories does atheism produce...none that I know of. And why a need for a theory of metahysics? To answer what question common to atheism?

such that people will overlook the ugliness of atheism.

why is atheism ugly?

This, of course, is the fatal dilemma for atheists. They cannot produce anything positive and enduring.

So these people have produced nothing positive or enduring. There are many famous philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, and more who are/have been atheists.

It captures people's attention by the failure of its competitors, not the success of its own principles.

What 'principles', other than a common non belief in a deity, do you ascribe to atheists?

I personally think atheism, agnosticism, secularism, has some hidden advantages.

From what you have written I am not sure you know what atheism is.

They shake people out of their slumber and get them to re-look at their religious beliefs and seek out more meaning in the world, further developing religion into a richer and more beautiful belief system (i.e., more true).

Can you justify your impied assertation that atheists have less meaning in their lives than the religious. And whic religion dot you refer to in your closing statement, and how is it more true than any other?

[harvey1]

But I don't agree--I think even rationality can be discussed and debated and agreed upon. People do it for a living (they're called "philosophers"). And as it happens, we ourselves are an example of agreeing about rationality! We both agree that simplicity is a crucial, if not the only, "aesthetic premise". Myself, I construe this as an example of "inference to the best explanation"--we infer to the simpler explanation. (I'm also likely to agree that the other "theoretical virtues", such as consilience, conservatism, etc. are mere notational variations on the main theme of simplicity.)

Well, since you refer to philosohers, the philosophers of science who study the meaning of 'simplist theory', are in no agreement about which kind of simplicity or even if such a term has any meaning at all. A number of them deny it completely.

Our interaction with the world is not deduction as a formal system. Our interaction with the world is inductive, and induction - even in ideal circumstances - will not produce agreement since even a slightly differing view as to the inductive criteria used will significantly alter one's perspective of what is true.

But surely you must agree that in the vast majority of scientific beliefs (ones we usually take for granted), we have come to agreement, even though they are "inductions" (or "abductions" or "inferences to the best explanation" or as you like). We agree the earth goes around the sun, and so on... I think it's curious that we can't do that in the religious case, and I'd like it explained to me.

Strong comparisons abound between the major religions:

<A HREF="http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books ... HSBKS">Tao of Jesus</A>

<A HREF="http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books ... 692">Jesus and Buddha</A>

<A HREF="http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books ... 16">Christ the Yogi</A>

<A HREF="http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books ... 032">Jesus and Moses</A>

<A HREF="http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books ... 261">Jesus and Muhammad</A>

Religion, as these references to common sayings (etc) demonstrate, is not as far apart as 200,000 years of isolated evolution should suggest, so many might disagree with the methods of religion, but if you look at the situation over a spans of hundreds and thousands of years, religion is progressing and moving to more unification. Not as fast as science, but science is newbie on this planet. Humans will need to see where science is after it has its time in the sun. Soon the experiments of physics will be very difficult and expensive (we've already cancelled a particle accelerator that was supposed to be built in Texas), and if physics is not so lucky, it will find itself going generation upon generation barely obtaining new physics. After physics, soon other fields of study will start to tail off in their progress as well. If such occurs, and I can't think of a reason why it won't (assuming we are still here...), then the gap between the progress of science and religion won't be as stark as it is today.

Also, if God is Zeus, then it must have been God's intent to get humans to believe in the Zeus religion by evolutionary means.

This doesn't follow at all--as I've said, I reject the conclusion. I think Zeus doesn't care what people believe. (And careful with the equivocation again--I'm not saying (the Abrahamic) God is Zeus. I'm saying God doesn't exist and Zeus does, just as the Greeks thought, or would have thought if they'd met the Jews. Let's please use the capital-G God just for the Abrahamic one.)

When I say 'God', I generally mean the God of the philosophers. Such as this instance. For now on, when I mean the Hebrew/Christian God, I'll refer to specifically to as Yahweh.

There most surely are other selection pressures for belief. However, there is a tendency in evolution to produce beliefs that are truth since this is the only way to explain that our view of rationality is true versus a fashion. If evolutionary selection just goes with the latest fashion, then we have no basis to say that rationality is based on truth - to some reasonable degree.

You are conflating "rationality" with "what's believed (in your evolution of ideas)", and I've rejected that conflation. I like rationality as (roughly) "inference to the simpler theory" instead.

'Inference to the simpler theory' is an aesthetic evaluation. You might as well say 'inference to the beautiful theory', or 'inference to the most metaphysically appealing theory'. Says who? We come to agreement not because of 'simple', 'beautiful', 'metaphysically appealing', etc. We come to agreement because people bet on those who predict and collect the big winnings as a result. This is a pragmatic approach to how theories are accepted. In order to keep the progress going at a good speed, we look for aesthetic principles which shortcut the inductive approach to theory selection. It's 'rational' to do so, but it does not define rationality. Scientists look for aesthetics of simplicity and beauty and metaphysical appealing features to their theory. But, aesthetic canons do change, and they can push out old orthodox scientists out of the mainstream and push young unorthodox scientists into the mainstream. Simplicity may not have changed in its overall appeal, but the type of simplicity does change. Also, beauty of a theory sometimes takes over a higher priority, and for sure the metaphysical appeal often dominates theory selection.

However, if evolutionary pressures tend to produce explanations that are true (to some extent), then this evolutionary tendency is what I say is at work in religious explanations. If we look at the evolutionary pressures that led to rational thought, these are the same evolutionary pressues that led to religious thought.

I disagree. I think the "pressures" that brought about the sciences include empirical work, inferring to the simpler theory, subjecting one's work to disagreeing peers, and so on. I think the "pressures" selecting for religious thought include persecution, bullying, wishful thinking...

If humanity had never discovered science, religion would continue to advance. It is only because science has come upon our world so suddenly that it has given a false impression that there is not only another approach to knowledge, it has given some the impression that it is the only path to knowledge. That is almost certainly true in terms of scientific knowledge, humans could never evolve scientific knowledge without science, but it is not true in terms of the selection of better aesthetic principles. Prior to 20th century physics there was a great appreciation of symmetry. There was an interest in simplicity (e.g., Ockham). A great appreciation for the beauty in mathematics had existed. I have no doubt that progress was being made and would have continued to be made, and actually, will be made because of the evolution of ideas.

Science is a special case of the evolution of ideas. The 'testing' appears to be neat and orderly, but there's many instances in science where discoveries are made purely by accident. There is collaboration with peers and peer criticism, but there are many instances where scientists didn't listen to rational criticism and went on to make a famous theory anyway.

Religion, on the other hand, relies on the intuitive nature of the mind to develop its theories, and those theories are only heard when they are needed. So, many theories go by without ever being heard. This happens in science too, but in the case of religion, it always is the case. Once the situation changes such that people are willing to listen to a Jeremiah, then religion will listen to knew ideas. However, in most cases, people are more content to stay within their familiar settings.

In fact, you cannot separate the two for most of the last 200,000 years since ancient people did not know to separate thoughts solely about religion from thoughts solely about what is 'rational'.

Sure they did. I was just watching a History Channel thing on Heraclitus, and how he scorned the Pythagoreans for their mystical thinking hundreds of years BCE. He wanted his theories bound by rationality. And he isn't the only such historical figure. Of course the religious couldn't distinguish it clearly--that's how we got the Dark Ages!

I'm talking about the period when humans evolved rational thought, which is much earlier than Heraclitus.

Astrology failed to meet the evolutionary conditions that I mentioned. It was largely a competitor to religion, and religion won out.

On what grounds do you say religion "won out"?! Astrology is at least as popular as Christianity--and anyway you presumably don't think the right belief is the one the majority believe. Astrology is still around and doing quite nicely, thank you. You want to say religion "won" because you antecedently have the view that it's true, while astrology isn't. But as a bystander to whom they are both in the same basket, I want to know why you think this.

Astrology was combined with astronomy up until the medieval periods, so right away it suggests to me that astrology had a free ride off of a discipline that does produce a lot of truths. When astrologers made predictions, the predictions they inevitably got right were planetary predictions, which promoted the astrologers into fame. Nonetheless, beyond astronomy, they never evolved their views all that much and to my knowledge there wasn't a religion of astrology which had moral laws of conduct, saints, etc. It was more of a practice than a religion.

When astronomy did break off from astrology, astrology diminished greatly. Astronomy went on to great success, while astrology never formed churches or scriptures, or anything of the sort. Today astrology is about as popular as horse racing, which just puts it as a very minor influence in the world. Of course, it has an impact, but the trend of evolution has not been favorable to it.

Astrology just never experienced the kind of persecution and persistence that you see in the Hebrew and Christian religion.

Not at all--it probably suffered much more. Poor gypsies. It's still suffering today. They don't get tax-exempt status, for example, those sad fortune-tellers.

Fortune telling is different than astrology.

Anyway, are you ready to claim that it's suffering and persecution that lead to the right ideas? So that if I find, in the long and varied history of the globe, a religion that has suffered or been persecuted more than Christianity, you will abandon Christianity for it as the more reasonable one? If you think you can point to certain historical "processes" that are more apt to bring about truth, then give them now, up front--so that you don't have a chance to appeal to ad hoc historical differences between Christianity and whatever idea system I find that also matches your criteria. If you can't give them up front, then that's frankly a bit suspicious, isn't it?

Evolutionary 'pressures' is what you need to evolve beliefs. Give me all the evolutionary pressures for a species, and if you miss any, would you say that this disproves evolutionary theory if later you realized you forgot a potential 'pressure point'? However, I can give you the most obvious ones:

• captivity
  return from captivity
  cultural assimilation
  occupation by a foreign power
  unification of scriptures
  unification of peoples
  unification of culture
  war
  heresy
  schism
  persecution
  worldwide diaspora
  plague or major disease
  economic hardship
  famine
  exposure to new cultures
  reformation
  scientific progress
  technological progress
  death of a powerful leader
  rise of a new powerful leader
  earthquakes
  tsunamis
  missionaries sent-out and return
  missionaries from other religions
  miracle-like events
  prophets that were proven right
  communication difficulties (e.g., abstract reasoning, language, etc)
  etc, etc.

That's actually not correct. I don't look upon atheism as a mistake.

Here you're equivocating on 'mistake'. You say that your "evolution of ideas" leads to truth, and that's why we should believe Christianity. I say that one of the many current competing pinnacles of the "evolution of ideas" is atheism, and ask if that is therefore evidence of its truth on the same (or better) grounds. You say that atheism is not a "mistake" in that it's a falsehood that despite itself drives people to a true belief in God. I want to know: is atheism a mistake in the sense that it's false?

Not completely. It's entirely possible to view the world from an atheists perspective and be correct. For example, perhaps if an atheist was like Elijah and went looking for God in the places where he expected to find him, then Elijah would indeed have to return to his home as an atheist. God is the 'small wind' that many religious people prefer not to consider.

Is it a mistake like astrology is a mistake? If so, on what grounds do you say so? The "evolution of ideas" seems as much in its favor, and astrology's, as in any other current idea system's, if not more so.

I never said astrology has no truths to it. For the most part, it is not a truth generating method. I think there are solar-related influences (e.g., lunar), for example, that might affect humans. There might be influences in terms of 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' that we don't know about. Catastrophe theory might connect larger systems together to cause alignment with astronomical phenomena, etc. I state its falsehood based on its predictions. Although, I'm quite confident that had astronomy broken off earlier, then astrology might have had less fuel to go on. Their false predictions would have been more easy to spot, and they would have been discredited.

The mistake that atheists make, and its probably no fault to their own, is that it promotes a meaningless (i.e., ugly) world that most people will simply reject.

I have two important, different responses to this claim.

1. The world is not meaningless or ugly without belief in a God, as (having been on both sides of the fence) I can testify; it's just as beautiful, if not more so, and I think a great deal more meaningful too--for roughly the same reasons I think a life lived on your own is more meaningful than a life spent staying with your mother.

You've probably had a relatively good life, it's easy for you to say atheism is beautiful when you have satin sheets to lie on. The majority of people in the world are not so fortunate.

[*]I agree that people reject atheism, and accept Christianity, because it seems to them that life is more meaningful with Christianity. But you see, even if the existence of a God would somehow make life more meaningful, that's not at all a truth-related reason to start believing Christianity. It's the same kind of reason people accept astrology--they want to think they can see the future, will meet a tall dark stranger, and so on. Why is it okay to believe in something just because you hope it's true in the case of Christianity, but not in the case of astrology?

If astrology made their life meaningful, I would certainly encourage them to pursue it as long as it didn't make them miserable in some way that they might not be aware. In that case, I would encourage them to find other avenues of meaning such as Christianity.

In order for atheism to succeed, it must come up with a metaphysics and then find something beautiful about the theories it produces as a result such that people will overlook the ugliness of atheism.

I think the beauty of atheism is, among other things, in its simplicity--in its great partaking of the "aesthetic premises" you and I share.

Well, that's a different thread, but in terms of this thread, this goes to show why the concept of simplicity is aesthetically interpreted by an individual. I see the opposite situation. Unlike atheism, it is a negative belief. That is, I may not believe in astrology, but I won't disbelieve in astrology. That is, I am not sure enough to say that astrology is altogether false. I am agnostic with regard to astrology, but skeptical because I have no experience of them being right. Although, I've never been to an astrologer... So, I keep an open mind to some extent.

In the case of an atheist, they certainly lack ontological knowledge of the world (as I), however, they are disbelieving in a particular ontological view of the world which has a reasonable degree of being right. Maybe, from the atheist perspective it is not probable, but that does not remove it from being reasonable. Since atheists insist they have enough knowledge to reject an ontological view on something, it seems to me that they violated the simplicity criteria since they are actually claiming knowledge of ontology to the degree where they can reject the existence of a philosophical God (no IPU's please, I'm talking about a simple notion that the world was caused...). For me, atheism claims too much knowledge of the world, far more than I. All I claim is to have reason to believe in something meaningful (i.e., pragmatic) and a lack of reasons to disbelieve it. That is far more of a parsimonious belief in my view.

[harvey1]

But I don't agree--I think even rationality can be discussed and debated and agreed upon. People do it for a living (they're called "philosophers"). And as it happens, we ourselves are an example of agreeing about rationality! We both agree that simplicity is a crucial, if not the only, "aesthetic premise". Myself, I construe this as an example of "inference to the best explanation"--we infer to the simpler explanation. (I'm also likely to agree that the other "theoretical virtues", such as consilience, conservatism, etc. are mere notational variations on the main theme of simplicity.)

Well, since you refer to philosohers, the philosophers of science who study the meaning of 'simplist theory', are in no agreement about which kind of simplicity or even if such a term has any meaning at all. A number of them deny it completely.

Our interaction with the world is not deduction as a formal system. Our interaction with the world is inductive, and induction - even in ideal circumstances - will not produce agreement since even a slightly differing view as to the inductive criteria used will significantly alter one's perspective of what is true.

But surely you must agree that in the vast majority of scientific beliefs (ones we usually take for granted), we have come to agreement, even though they are "inductions" (or "abductions" or "inferences to the best explanation" or as you like). We agree the earth goes around the sun, and so on... I think it's curious that we can't do that in the religious case, and I'd like it explained to me.

Strong comparisons abound between the major religions:

<A HREF="http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books ... HSBKS">Tao of Jesus</A>

<A HREF="http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books ... 692">Jesus and Buddha</A>

<A HREF="http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books ... 16">Christ the Yogi</A>

<A HREF="http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books ... 032">Jesus and Moses</A>

<A HREF="http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books ... 261">Jesus and Muhammad</A>

Religion, as these references to common sayings (etc) demonstrate, is not as far apart as 200,000 years of isolated evolution should suggest, so many might disagree with the methods of religion, but if you look at the situation over a spans of hundreds and thousands of years, religion is progressing and moving to more unification. Not as fast as science, but science is newbie on this planet. Humans will need to see where science is after it has its time in the sun. Soon the experiments of physics will be very difficult and expensive (we've already cancelled a particle accelerator that was supposed to be built in Texas), and if physics is not so lucky, it will find itself going generation upon generation barely obtaining new physics. After physics, soon other fields of study will start to tail off in their progress as well. If such occurs, and I can't think of a reason why it won't (assuming we are still here...), then the gap between the progress of science and religion won't be as stark as it is today.

Also, if God is Zeus, then it must have been God's intent to get humans to believe in the Zeus religion by evolutionary means.

This doesn't follow at all--as I've said, I reject the conclusion. I think Zeus doesn't care what people believe. (And careful with the equivocation again--I'm not saying (the Abrahamic) God is Zeus. I'm saying God doesn't exist and Zeus does, just as the Greeks thought, or would have thought if they'd met the Jews. Let's please use the capital-G God just for the Abrahamic one.)

When I say 'God', I generally mean the God of the philosophers. Such as this instance. For now on, when I mean the Hebrew/Christian God, I'll refer to specifically to as Yahweh.

There most surely are other selection pressures for belief. However, there is a tendency in evolution to produce beliefs that are truth since this is the only way to explain that our view of rationality is true versus a fashion. If evolutionary selection just goes with the latest fashion, then we have no basis to say that rationality is based on truth - to some reasonable degree.

You are conflating "rationality" with "what's believed (in your evolution of ideas)", and I've rejected that conflation. I like rationality as (roughly) "inference to the simpler theory" instead.

'Inference to the simpler theory' is an aesthetic evaluation. You might as well say 'inference to the beautiful theory', or 'inference to the most metaphysically appealing theory'. Says who? We come to agreement not because of 'simple', 'beautiful', 'metaphysically appealing', etc. We come to agreement because people bet on those who predict and collect the big winnings as a result. This is a pragmatic approach to how theories are accepted. In order to keep the progress going at a good speed, we look for aesthetic principles which shortcut the inductive approach to theory selection. It's 'rational' to do so, but it does not define rationality. Scientists look for aesthetics of simplicity and beauty and metaphysical appealing features to their theory. But, aesthetic canons do change, and they can push out old orthodox scientists out of the mainstream and push young unorthodox scientists into the mainstream. Simplicity may not have changed in its overall appeal, but the type of simplicity does change. Also, beauty of a theory sometimes takes over a higher priority, and for sure the metaphysical appeal often dominates theory selection.

However, if evolutionary pressures tend to produce explanations that are true (to some extent), then this evolutionary tendency is what I say is at work in religious explanations. If we look at the evolutionary pressures that led to rational thought, these are the same evolutionary pressues that led to religious thought.

I disagree. I think the "pressures" that brought about the sciences include empirical work, inferring to the simpler theory, subjecting one's work to disagreeing peers, and so on. I think the "pressures" selecting for religious thought include persecution, bullying, wishful thinking...

If humanity had never discovered science, religion would continue to advance. It is only because science has come upon our world so suddenly that it has given a false impression that there is not only another approach to knowledge, it has given some the impression that it is the only path to knowledge. That is almost certainly true in terms of scientific knowledge, humans could never evolve scientific knowledge without science, but it is not true in terms of the selection of better aesthetic principles. Prior to 20th century physics there was a great appreciation of symmetry. There was an interest in simplicity (e.g., Ockham). A great appreciation for the beauty in mathematics had existed. I have no doubt that progress was being made and would have continued to be made, and actually, will be made because of the evolution of ideas.

Science is a special case of the evolution of ideas. The 'testing' appears to be neat and orderly, but there's many instances in science where discoveries are made purely by accident. There is collaboration with peers and peer criticism, but there are many instances where scientists didn't listen to rational criticism and went on to make a famous theory anyway.

Religion, on the other hand, relies on the intuitive nature of the mind to develop its theories, and those theories are only heard when they are needed. So, many theories go by without ever being heard. This happens in science too, but in the case of religion, it always is the case. Once the situation changes such that people are willing to listen to a Jeremiah, then religion will listen to new ideas. However, in most cases, people are more content to stay within their familiar settings.

In fact, you cannot separate the two for most of the last 200,000 years since ancient people did not know to separate thoughts solely about religion from thoughts solely about what is 'rational'.

Sure they did. I was just watching a History Channel thing on Heraclitus, and how he scorned the Pythagoreans for their mystical thinking hundreds of years BCE. He wanted his theories bound by rationality. And he isn't the only such historical figure. Of course the religious couldn't distinguish it clearly--that's how we got the Dark Ages!

I'm talking about the period when humans evolved rational thought, which is much earlier than Heraclitus.

Astrology failed to meet the evolutionary conditions that I mentioned. It was largely a competitor to religion, and religion won out.

On what grounds do you say religion "won out"?! Astrology is at least as popular as Christianity--and anyway you presumably don't think the right belief is the one the majority believe. Astrology is still around and doing quite nicely, thank you. You want to say religion "won" because you antecedently have the view that it's true, while astrology isn't. But as a bystander to whom they are both in the same basket, I want to know why you think this.

Astrology was combined with astronomy up until the medieval periods, so right away it suggests to me that astrology had a free ride off of a discipline that does produce a lot of truths. When astrologers made predictions, the predictions they inevitably got right were planetary predictions, which promoted the astrologers into fame. Nonetheless, beyond astronomy, they never evolved their views all that much and to my knowledge there wasn't a religion of astrology which had moral laws of conduct, saints, etc. It was more of a practice than a religion.

When astronomy did break off from astrology, astrology diminished greatly. Astronomy went on to great success, while astrology never formed churches or scriptures, or anything of the sort. Today astrology is about as popular as horse racing, which just puts it as a very minor influence in the world. Of course, it has an impact, but the trend of evolution has not been favorable to it.

Astrology just never experienced the kind of persecution and persistence that you see in the Hebrew and Christian religion.

Not at all--it probably suffered much more. Poor gypsies. It's still suffering today. They don't get tax-exempt status, for example, those sad fortune-tellers.

Fortune telling is different than astrology.

Anyway, are you ready to claim that it's suffering and persecution that lead to the right ideas? So that if I find, in the long and varied history of the globe, a religion that has suffered or been persecuted more than Christianity, you will abandon Christianity for it as the more reasonable one? If you think you can point to certain historical "processes" that are more apt to bring about truth, then give them now, up front--so that you don't have a chance to appeal to ad hoc historical differences between Christianity and whatever idea system I find that also matches your criteria. If you can't give them up front, then that's frankly a bit suspicious, isn't it?

Evolutionary 'pressures' is what you need to evolve beliefs. Give me all the evolutionary pressures for a species, and if you miss any, would you say that this disproves evolutionary theory if later you realized you forgot a potential 'pressure point'? However, I can give you the most obvious ones:

• captivity
  return from captivity
  cultural assimilation
  occupation by a foreign power
  unification of scriptures
  unification of peoples
  unification of culture
  war
  heresy
  schism
  persecution
  worldwide diaspora
  plague or major disease
  economic hardship
  famine
  exposure to new cultures
  reformation
  scientific progress
  technological progress
  death of a powerful leader
  rise of a new powerful leader
  earthquakes
  tsunamis
  missionaries sent-out and return
  missionaries from other religions
  miracle-like events
  prophets that were proven right
  communication difficulties (e.g., abstract reasoning, language, etc)
  etc, etc.

That's actually not correct. I don't look upon atheism as a mistake.

Here you're equivocating on 'mistake'. You say that your "evolution of ideas" leads to truth, and that's why we should believe Christianity. I say that one of the many current competing pinnacles of the "evolution of ideas" is atheism, and ask if that is therefore evidence of its truth on the same (or better) grounds. You say that atheism is not a "mistake" in that it's a falsehood that despite itself drives people to a true belief in God. I want to know: is atheism a mistake in the sense that it's false?

Not completely. It's entirely possible to view the world from an atheists perspective and be correct. For example, perhaps if an atheist was like Elijah and went looking for God in the places where he expected to find him, then Elijah would indeed have to return to his home as an atheist. God is the 'small wind' that many religious people prefer not to consider.

Is it a mistake like astrology is a mistake? If so, on what grounds do you say so? The "evolution of ideas" seems as much in its favor, and astrology's, as in any other current idea system's, if not more so.

I never said astrology has no truths to it. For the most part, it is not a truth generating method. I think there are solar-related influences (e.g., lunar), for example, that might affect humans. There might be influences in terms of 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' that we don't know about. Catastrophe theory might connect larger systems together to cause alignment with astronomical phenomena, etc. I state its falsehood based on its predictions. Although, I'm quite confident that had astronomy broken off earlier, then astrology might have had less fuel to go on. Their false predictions would have been more easy to spot, and they would have been discredited.

The mistake that atheists make, and its probably no fault to their own, is that it promotes a meaningless (i.e., ugly) world that most people will simply reject.

I have two important, different responses to this claim.

1. The world is not meaningless or ugly without belief in a God, as (having been on both sides of the fence) I can testify; it's just as beautiful, if not more so, and I think a great deal more meaningful too--for roughly the same reasons I think a life lived on your own is more meaningful than a life spent staying with your mother.

You've probably had a relatively good life, it's easy for you to say atheism is beautiful when you have satin sheets to lie on. The majority of people in the world are not so fortunate.

[*]I agree that people reject atheism, and accept Christianity, because it seems to them that life is more meaningful with Christianity. But you see, even if the existence of a God would somehow make life more meaningful, that's not at all a truth-related reason to start believing Christianity. It's the same kind of reason people accept astrology--they want to think they can see the future, will meet a tall dark stranger, and so on. Why is it okay to believe in something just because you hope it's true in the case of Christianity, but not in the case of astrology?

If astrology made their life meaningful, I would certainly encourage them to pursue it as long as it didn't make them miserable in some way that they might not be aware. In that case, I would encourage them to find other avenues of meaning such as Christianity.

In order for atheism to succeed, it must come up with a metaphysics and then find something beautiful about the theories it produces as a result such that people will overlook the ugliness of atheism.

I think the beauty of atheism is, among other things, in its simplicity--in its great partaking of the "aesthetic premises" you and I share.

Well, that's a different thread, but in terms of this thread, this goes to show why the concept of simplicity is aesthetically interpreted by an individual. I see the opposite situation. Unlike atheism, it is a negative belief. That is, I may not believe in astrology, but I won't disbelieve in astrology. That is, I am not sure enough to say that astrology is altogether false. I am agnostic with regard to astrology, but skeptical because I have no experience of them being right. Although, I've never been to an astrologer... So, I keep an open mind to some extent.

In the case of an atheist, they certainly lack ontological knowledge of the world (as I), however, they are disbelieving in a particular ontological view of the world which has a reasonable degree of being right. Maybe, from the atheist perspective it is not probable, but that does not remove it from being reasonable. Since atheists insist they have enough knowledge to reject an ontological view on something, it seems to me that they violated the simplicity criteria since they are actually claiming knowledge of ontology to the degree where they can reject the existence of a philosophical God (no IPU's please, I'm talking about a simple notion that the world was caused...). For me, atheism claims too much knowledge of the world, far more than I. All I claim is to have reason to believe in something meaningful (i.e., pragmatic) and a lack of reasons to disbelieve it. That is far more of a parsimonious belief in my view.

[spetey]

Back again!

Well, since you refer to philosohers, the philosophers of science who study the meaning of 'simplist theory', are in no agreement about which kind of simplicity or even if such a term has any meaning at all. A number of them deny it completely.

I don't know any philosophers of science who think 'simplicity' has no meaning... whom do you have in mind, here?

Anyway we needn't worry about them--lucky for us, we agree on this criterion of rationality. So let's get down to it! It looks to me like you don't want to be pinned down to rationality criteria. (Why, I can't help wondering, might that be?) Of course there will be room to discuss what makes one theory simpler than another. That can be quite a complicated matter, I grant!

Strong comparisons abound between the major religions: ...

That a few people make very stretched comparisons among religions out there is nothing like the universal agreement on the earth going around the sun. When it's convenient for you, you like to emphasize how some religions are sorta similar. But in doing so you pass over huge, fundamental discrepancies among them. If you really thought they were all the same, you should be perfectly indifferent about whether you worship Vishnu, or Zoroaster, or a supernatural Buddha, or Yahweh... (You would also have trouble keeping Kosher and following Hindu dietary laws and Muslim laws and ...)

When I say 'God', I generally mean the God of the philosophers.

I have no idea who the God of philosophers is. I know a lot of professional philosophers. Most are atheist and don't believe in any God. Many believe in the Abrahamic God (I'm happy to settle on 'Yahweh; when we mean this god), some believe in some other gods like Vishnu ...

If humanity had never discovered science, religion would continue to advance.

This begs the question--I don't think (supernatural) religion can "advance" any more than astrology can. From my perspective, it's a dead research program, like phlogiston.

There is collaboration with peers and peer criticism, but there are many instances where scientists didn't listen to rational criticism and went on to make a famous theory anyway.

They didn't have peer acceptance at first. But it wouldn't be a famous scientific theory if others weren't eventually convinced of its rationality. How do we go about doing the same kind of thing when it comes to religion? You have proposed simplicity as a criterion, and I have accepted. There are details to be worked out, to be sure, but let's get to it.

Nonetheless, beyond astronomy, they never evolved their views all that much and to my knowledge there wasn't a religion of astrology which had moral laws of conduct, saints, etc. It was more of a practice than a religion.

I don't claim it's a religion; it's just an example of a theory (or whatever you want to call it) that is still believed by many many people but that is obviously false. This to me is as clear a counterexample to your confidence in the "evolution of ideas" toward truth as could be asked for.

When astronomy did break off from astrology, astrology diminished greatly. Astronomy went on to great success, while astrology never formed churches or scriptures, or anything of the sort. Today astrology is about as popular as horse racing, which just puts it as a very minor influence in the world. Of course, it has an impact, but the trend of evolution has not been favorable to it.

So the criterion of success is to form a "church" and "scriptures"? Fortune-telling boutiques and horoscopes in every paper don't count? In that case it again sounds like begging the question: your "evolution of ideas" has to result in the Christian church to be right!

And astrology is a huge industry. I can't find data comparing it to the religion industry, but I would estimate it's comparable, anyway. It is way more popular than horse racing, much as you might think of them as on equal footing. (Put it this way: count newspapers that have horoscopes and then newspapers that have racing forms.) So again I ask, in what way has "the trend of evolution" not been favorable to astrology?

Here's an exercise. Some sets of belief we've discussed on our threads:

1. Christianity
2. Hinduism
3. Greek godism
4. atheism
5. astrology
6. evolution (natural, biological, on genotypes)
7. string theory

Now, do you believe some of these theories are more (approximately?) true than others? If so, which? Try to rank-order them. Do you hold this rank-ordering, ultimately, because of how those ideas came about in your "evolution of ideas"? (Do you deny that the "genetic fallacy" is indeed a fallacy?) Or do you think so because of our shared "aesthetic premise" of inference to the simpler explanation?

I'll tell you my (unsurprising) view: I believe (d) and (f), and lend fair credence to (g). In all three cases my degree of belief varies with my confidence that those beliefs provide the simplest explanation for a vast number of related beliefs. On the same grounds I reject the supernatural elements of (a)-(c) and (e).

Fortune telling is different than astrology.

They're not coextensive maybe, but there's surely a great deal of overlap?! Anyway how does this answer the point at hand? Astrology is widely believed, went through lots of persecution and exposure to other cultures through the gypsies and the like, is much older than any of your favored religions, and thus seems on all grounds to have fared very well in being selected for <something> on your "evolution of ideas". But, I think we both agree, the idea that the day of the year on which we were born determines day-to-day predictable events and set personality types is outright false, no?

Evolutionary 'pressures' is what you need to evolve beliefs. Give me all the evolutionary pressures for a species, and if you miss any, would you say that this disproves evolutionary theory if later you realized you forgot a potential 'pressure point'?

I was probably unfair to ask you to list all the traits up front. But this is the point I was making: of course evolutionary "pressures" bring about evolution (in something). Evolution just means, basically, "change in a direction", right? The main question is: in what direction? My claim is that ideas do not always change toward truth. They can be "selected for" on a vast array of qualities that appeal to humans other than truth.

However, I can give you the most obvious ones: ...

Good! I admire your willingness to rise to this challenge. But except for the last two, which of course beg the question (which were the genuine miracles? which prophets were "proven right"?), I can pretty confidently say that any major religion of today has all these characteristics. Not, of course, in exactly the way it happened in Christianity--but surely the requirement for evolution toward truth can't be "have a history exactly like Christianity's"?

Though I must say it's hard to see why the presence of earthquakes or plagues brings people closer to the truth! Is it important it's an earthquake and a plague, not the hurricaine or tidal wave that some cultures might experience instead?

Not completely. It's entirely possible to view the world from an atheists perspective and be correct.

Oh good! So we're done then, and we agree?

Or wait--are you somehow equivocating on "correct" or "possible", magically trying to have things both ways again? I don't want to know if atheism is "useful" or part of your "theistic evolution of ideas". I want to know if it's true. Let me say it again in bold and italics: true. (Or, if you insist, approximately true, more approximately true than theism, whatever...) If you agree it's true, we're done. If you don't, we should discuss why. Evolution of ideas won't seem to help you, since probably I have the same cultural history you do, and inherited the same idea-set from the same earthquake-ridden cultures, and yet the idea I've come up with is atheism.

For example, perhaps if an atheist was like Elijah and went looking for God in the places where he expected to find him, then Elijah would indeed have to return to his home as an atheist.

Yes, sure, it's possible that anyone could have been an atheist instead. I don't care about that. I want to know: would Elijah have been right to be an atheist, in the sense that he would be believing a better theory in some sense?

You've probably had a relatively good life, it's easy for you to say atheism is beautiful when you have satin sheets to lie on. The majority of people in the world are not so fortunate.

This ad hominem appeal is all the uglier given that (a) you presumably don't know anything about me, and (b) it has nothing to do with the point at hand. I'm saying life can be meaningful for you without God, no matter how miserable you are now. In fact I think religion is an opiate of the masses, keeping people miserable because after all things will, in an amazing coincidence of dreams and theory, be magically ideal once we die.

If astrology made their life meaningful, I would certainly encourage them to pursue it as long as it didn't make them miserable in some way that they might not be aware. In that case, I would encourage them to find other avenues of meaning such as Christianity.

So if people could find just as much (or more) meaning in non-supernatural ways--through art, moral reflection, community, and so on--their atheist beliefs would be just as good in every sense? If so, then again we're done (with this thread anyway); you're not concerned with truth, you're concerned with happiness a theory brings you. (Myself, I'm also ultimately concerned about happiness, but I think true-believing and happiness correlate much more tightly than you do.) It would be for another thread to discuss which brings more happiness, but meanwhile I would be happy if you were just to concede that Christianity is not a better theory on truth grounds.

Well, that's a different thread, but in terms of this thread, this goes to show why the concept of simplicity is aesthetically interpreted by an individual. I see the opposite situation. Unlike atheism, it is a negative belief. That is, I may not believe in astrology, but I won't disbelieve in astrology. That is, I am not sure enough to say that astrology is altogether false. I am agnostic with regard to astrology, but skeptical because I have no experience of them being right. Although, I've never been to an astrologer... So, I keep an open mind to some extent.

This sounds like more of that popular Christian stuff to the effect that "it might be right because it hasn't been proven wrong" (at least close to the appeal to ignorance fallacy). But this principle does not seem to be consistently applied by Christians. Look, undetectable pixies could exist too. So do you believe in them? Of course not. You don't think it's "simpler" to believe that there are pixies just because there might be. You have good reason not to believe in the pixies--based on simplicity grounds. Of course I concede it is possible that some kind of God exists, just as I concede it's possible that there are undectable pixies all around me. But I don't believe in either, for almost exactly the same reason.

Again, if you think astrology or the view that there are undetectable pixies is just as good a theory as any of the other theories we've discussed, then we're done--you're not in the business of comparing beliefs to see which is better, and to me, that's what rationality is all about.


spetey

[spetey]

You two guys seem to be having a wonderful time...hope you don't mind me butting in

I don't mind at all! I haven't responded only because I think I agree with just about all you said. (I do think harvey1 knows what atheism is, though. I think he's just referring to the "principle" that we think there is no God.)


spetey

[harvey1]

Well, since you refer to philosohers, the philosophers of science who study the meaning of 'simplist theory', are in no agreement about which kind of simplicity or even if such a term has any meaning at all. A number of them deny it completely.

I don't know any philosophers of science who think 'simplicity' has no meaning... whom do you have in mind, here?

Rom Harré ("An Introduction to the Logic of the Sciences", 2nd ed. 1983):

"In many cases when a theory is judged to be simple attention is not being drawn to the paucity of concepts employed in its consideration or to the simplicity of its structure but to the fact that the model which it is based upon is one which either the author of the theory or preferably everone, is quite familiar" (p.143)

Graham Priest ("Gruesome Simplicity" Philosophy of Science 43:432-437), makes a similar claim about simplicity.

W.H. Newton-Smith ("The Rationality of Science", 1981) says this:

"There is no reason to see greater relative simplicity [...] as an indicator of greater versimiltude" for a theory.

Mario Bunge ("The Myth of Simplicity: Problems of Scientific Philosophy", 1963) echos the same reasoning Newton-Smith.

Of course, these are just the authors who have written about the subject, it does not include the many others who agree in private.

Anyway we needn't worry about them--lucky for us, we agree on this criterion of rationality. So let's get down to it! It looks to me like you don't want to be pinned down to rationality criteria. (Why, I can't help wondering, might that be?) Of course there will be room to discuss what makes one theory simpler than another. That can be quite a complicated matter, I grant!

This is a significant comment by you, and I want to draw attention to it. How does your view of simplicity differ from the racist who feels their race is superior?

"my interlocutors will inevitably appeal to faith as their justification for belief. (Some don't call it "faith"--some call it "intuition", or "trust" or some such.) I'm very wary of such appeals, because I hear it as "I will continue to believe despite lack of evidence or argument for my position (at least, of the kind that I can share with anyone who disagrees)." I think such behavior is impermissible. Faith to me is just dogmatism, and to me, dogmatism of any kind is very dangerous... For comparison: imagine, for example, that you met a rabid racist. You give a carefully reasoned argument to the effect that skin color doesn't matter to who a person is or what rights they have, etc. The racist responds: "Although I have no answer to your argument, or arguments that I can share with you for my own position, I just believe; I have faith that my race is superior." You would be at an impasse, right? Should you come to disagree over some important social policy measure, there is no way to reason out your disagreement. Instead you have to see who has more money for PR, or [i}who has more tanks[/i], or what have you. I assume that in these cases we all agree that "faith" is in an important sense impermissible. We think the racist is being dogmatic, and we think that it's destructive not to be open to reasoning. So why might appeal to faith be permissible when it comes to discussions of religion? Or have I somehow misconstrued what it is to appeal to faith?

Notice that your viewpoint on simplicity puts you in a very similar situation as the very topic of your starting post to this thread. Therefore, isn't this discussion a foregone conclusion at this point that you can have an aesthetic canon that does escape the means to an effective agreement with another rational person?

However, in regards to my concept of rationality, our criterias for rationality agree on simplicity, but our criterias are vastly different. My view includes a metaphysical aesthetics which is quite opposed, I'm sure, to whatever metaphysical criteria that you hold dear.

Strong comparisons abound between the major religions: ...

That a few people make very stretched comparisons among religions out there is nothing like the universal agreement on the earth going around the sun. When it's convenient for you, you like to emphasize how some religions are sorta similar. But in doing so you pass over huge, fundamental discrepancies among them. If you really thought they were all the same, you should be perfectly indifferent about whether you worship Vishnu, or Zoroaster, or a supernatural Buddha, or Yahweh... (You would also have trouble keeping Kosher and following Hindu dietary laws and Muslim laws and ...)

Different methods produce different acceptable levels of agreement and disagreement. In a mathematician's world, the agreements in science are trivial and the disagreements are unbelievably intolerable. Can you imagine a mathematician saying to another "we agree on algebraic geometry but unfortunately I cannot accept all the theorems of topology because some of your key theorems contradicts axioms of algebraic geometry"? Something is terribly amiss in mathematics if this kind of permissibility is allowed. However, this is the very thing that general relativists must say to quantum theorists. Likewise, religious methods to knowledge are not as exact as scientific methods.

As far as your claim that religions do not possess the kind of widespread agreement that science shares, I think this is false. There are many widespread views which all major religions agree upon. For example, the Golden Rule would probably not be opposed by any major religion. Although, there are certainly many people who see it as situational at best, so it is not a trivial situation that the major religions would agree to it.

If humanity had never discovered science, religion would continue to advance.

This begs the question--I don't think (supernatural) religion can "advance" any more than astrology can. From my perspective, it's a dead research program, like phlogiston.

Well, that's just part of your metaphsical predisposition. In my view, it is obvious that religion today is far advanced over the primitive religions of humans over 200,000 years ago. The Golden Rule is just one example of this kind of advancement.

There is collaboration with peers and peer criticism, but there are many instances where scientists didn't listen to rational criticism and went on to make a famous theory anyway.

They didn't have peer acceptance at first. But it wouldn't be a famous scientific theory if others weren't eventually convinced of its rationality.

The removal of animism has been 'peer accepted' by the major religions. In addition, there are a number of major disagreements in science that go back to the time of Newon and Liebniz, even much earlier.

Nonetheless, beyond astronomy, they never evolved their views all that much and to my knowledge there wasn't a religion of astrology which had moral laws of conduct, saints, etc. It was more of a practice than a religion.

I don't claim it's a religion; it's just an example of a theory (or whatever you want to call it) that is still believed by many many people but that is obviously false. This to me is as clear a counterexample to your confidence in the "evolution of ideas" toward truth as could be asked for.

Let me provide a few quotes which account for this counterexample:

"Copernicus himself did not cast horoscopes, and after him Galileo rejected astrology; otherwise the two subjects [astronomy & astrology] closely united until the mid-seventeenth century" ("The Copernican Revolution", J.R. Ravetz, Companion to the History of Modern Science, p.205)

"By the middle of the seventeenth century (...) [a]strology was in rapid decline by this time, in spite of there being no demonstration of its falsity" (ibid, p. 213).

"Astrology was widely considered to be a science because it had a mathematical articulation, a textbook tradition going back to Claudius Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos and a long traditional linkage with medicine and with the practitioners of the other mathematical-based sciences". (ibid, p.226)

So, what this demonstrates, I think, is the very outcome that you would expect with an evolutionary notion of ideas. If an idea can piggyback on legitimate sciences, then it might take time for it to sort itself out. In that sense, Christianity did science a favor because it was Christians who did not want astrology to be included in the curriculum of the university (only astronomy) that started around 1200, which is a major factor in what led to the significant decline in astrology.

So, contrary to your argument, it was actually the evolution of ideas (specifically, Christianity) which ridded universities of astrology and led to an era of astronomical science.

Of course astrology continues to this day, but its influence has significantly declined and the events which led to that decline happened only a few hundred years ago. That's not enough time for evolution to either wipe it out (or, as is always possible, find something else within its memes that might be true).

When astronomy did break off from astrology, astrology diminished greatly. Astronomy went on to great success, while astrology never formed churches or scriptures, or anything of the sort. Today astrology is about as popular as horse racing, which just puts it as a very minor influence in the world. Of course, it has an impact, but the trend of evolution has not been favorable to it.

So the criterion of success is to form a "church" and "scriptures"? Fortune-telling boutiques and horoscopes in every paper don't count? In that case it again sounds like begging the question: your "evolution of ideas" has to result in the Christian church to be right!

No, but it is very difficult to disassociate astrology with entertainment at this point. If it had a legitimate movement that encompassed going to a church or temple, or going to a seminary school, etc, then it would be a legitimate belief system of wide-scale proportions. The astrology of "what's your sign?" is hardly astrology like astrologers conceive of the movement. It is entertainment. I think even many astrologers would tell you so. An evolutionary concept can have popular appeal, but that of itself means little. When I refer to the evolution of ideas, I'm talking about concepts that are 'tested' and found in need of improvement, etc. That's what drives the evolution forward. A popular concept is not harshly 'tested'. Usually, if it is, it quickly disappears.

And astrology is a huge industry. I can't find data comparing it to the religion industry, but I would estimate it's comparable, anyway. It is way more popular than horse racing, much as you might think of them as on equal footing. (Put it this way: count newspapers that have horoscopes and then newspapers that have racing forms.) So again I ask, in what way has "the trend of evolution" not been favorable to astrology?

No, compare the amount of people who attend horseraces with the amount of people who attend 'classes' in astrology to create astrological charts. That's the comparison you have to make. If all you want to do is appeal to a fad, then I'm afraid you are missing my argument completely.

Here's an exercise. Some sets of belief we've discussed on our threads:

1. Christianity
2. Hinduism
3. Greek godism
4. atheism
5. astrology
6. evolution (natural, biological, on genotypes)
7. string theory

Now, do you believe some of these theories are more (approximately?) true than others? If so, which? Try to rank-order them. Do you hold this rank-ordering, ultimately, because of how those ideas came about in your "evolution of ideas"? (Do you deny that the "genetic fallacy" is indeed a fallacy?) Or do you think so because of our shared "aesthetic premise" of inference to the simpler explanation?

Here's another exercise. Think of three people in your life that have loved you the most. If possible, think of situations where you felt that love at the height of your relationship. Now, rank all of these experiences in terms of their approximately truth (i.e., which situation qualifies the most as 'that proposition is true'). Where does string theory rank in that list? I think if you answered honestly, you would see that the idea of ranking truth is a lot like ranking which city is furthest east of New York.

Evolutionary theory is not more or less true than quantum mechanics, which is not more or less true than Regge calculus, which is not more or less true than Shakespeare. Kuhn's term, incommensurability, comes to mind...

I'll tell you my (unsurprising) view: I believe (d) and (f), and lend fair credence to (g). In all three cases my degree of belief varies with my confidence that those beliefs provide the simplest explanation for a vast number of related beliefs. On the same grounds I reject the supernatural elements of (a)-(c) and (e).

You've simply replaced one aesthetic view of the world for another. I'm not saying it is rational to believe whatever the heck you want, I'm saying that rationality is a pragmatic term that is based on what the society around you believes, and that's how we determine who is rational and who is not. Obviously, if you are in a scientific community, the criteria for rationality is much more strict than if you belonged to the Psychic Society. My stance is a pragmatism leads to approximate truth, so I have respect for your views only to a point. In my view, you can be rational and believe ridiculous beliefs as long as behave rationally. This might include shutting your mouth on certain views when speaking in front of nobel laurettes, or it might mean foregoing certain kind of research until you get a nobel prize and retire (i.e., assuming you want to keep your job in science), etc... [Coincidentally, this is often when scientists begin speaking their mind]. However, in the end, it is not simplicity, it is not rationality, it is not one's metaphysical view of the world that determines if you have achieved approximate truth. In my view, that which determines the approximate truth value can be generally summed up as the longterm effects of the theory on a particular community and adhering to the methods of a particular community (or larger community).

Fortune telling is different than astrology.

They're not coextensive maybe, but there's surely a great deal of overlap?! Anyway how does this answer the point at hand? Astrology is widely believed, went through lots of persecution and exposure to other cultures through the gypsies and the like, is much older than any of your favored religions, and thus seems on all grounds to have fared very well in being selected for <something> on your "evolution of ideas". But, I think we both agree, the idea that the day of the year on which we were born determines day-to-day predictable events and set personality types is outright false, no?

I won't say false because I don't know if is false. I'm agnostic on astrology, remember? I only say that the benefits are such that they cannot be realized in any consistent manner that most of us experience.

Evolutionary 'pressures' is what you need to evolve beliefs. Give me all the evolutionary pressures for a species, and if you miss any, would you say that this disproves evolutionary theory if later you realized you forgot a potential 'pressure point'?

I was probably unfair to ask you to list all the traits up front. But this is the point I was making: of course evolutionary "pressures" bring about evolution (in something). Evolution just means, basically, "change in a direction", right? The main question is: in what direction? My claim is that ideas do not always change toward truth. They can be "selected for" on a vast array of qualities that appeal to humans other than truth.

I'm sorry, I just don't see any difference with that of philosophy or science. There are always going to be ideas that are 'selected for' on a vast array of qualities that appeal to humans other than truth. We've already talked about how simplicity can refer to multiple qualities and that anyone of them could cause a theory to be selected for something other than truth. There's a ton of other traits that a theory could be 'selected for' which certainly don't reflect truth.

However, I can give you the most obvious ones: ...

Good! I admire your willingness to rise to this challenge. But except for the last two, which of course beg the question (which were the genuine miracles? which prophets were "proven right"?), I can pretty confidently say that any major religion of today has all these characteristics. Not, of course, in exactly the way it happened in Christianity--but surely the requirement for evolution toward truth can't be "have a history exactly like Christianity's"?

Of course, intensity of the situation is far more important than the pressure being present. Every idea undergoes some pressure. But, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking severity. If a religion underwent pressures that you generally see today in the United States with respect to Christianity, then obviously these kind of pressures do not reflect the truth generating circumstances that I am referring. Intense pressures I have in mind are like these Roman emperors provided to Christianity, which includes Nero, Domitian, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, Maximus Thrax, Decius, Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius, Severus, and Maximinus Daia. That's intense, and I dare say, no other religion in the world faced this kind of persecution for this long of a duration, with the kind of intensity that was displayed, and yet became the empires religion!

Though I must say it's hard to see why the presence of earthquakes or plagues brings people closer to the truth! Is it important it's an earthquake and a plague, not the hurricaine or tidal wave that some cultures might experience instead?

Periodic events is excluded for the same reason that periodic events probably don't drive speciation. The species has already evolved to adjust to the periodic conditions (otherwise they wouldn't have survived). In the case of extraordinary events, such as severe earthquakes, whatever is happening at the time would likely be considered a 'sign' by that culture that something needs to change, hence new intuitive ideas become more likely to have an impact on the society.

Not completely. It's entirely possible to view the world from an atheists perspective and be correct.

Oh good! So we're done then, and we agree?

If your philosophical perspective of the universe was like someone who viewed the behind of an elephant, you might think the universe is a pretty stinky and meaningless place...

Or wait--are you somehow equivocating on "correct" or "possible", magically trying to have things both ways again? I don't want to know if atheism is "useful" or part of your "theistic evolution of ideas". I want to know if it's true. Let me say it again in bold and italics: true. (Or, if you insist, approximately true, more approximately true than theism, whatever...) If you agree it's true, we're done. If you don't, we should discuss why. Evolution of ideas won't seem to help you, since probably I have the same cultural history you do, and inherited the same idea-set from the same earthquake-ridden cultures, and yet the idea I've come up with is atheism.

When talking about evolution, you generally aren't referring to individuals, but the species. When talking about ideas, I'm mainly referring to traits. Every idea has a number of traits, some having a deep-seated truth, while others possessing a kernal of truth, while others just wrong (just as an illustration). Atheism has some truth, some traits of truth, and some traits that are just wrong. What we are discussing here on this forum is the wrong traits, but occasionally the traits of truth and traits of kernals of truth will come up in conversation. Atheism survives because of its kernals of truth. If it had no kernals, probably very few people would be atheists.

For example, perhaps if an atheist was like Elijah and went looking for God in the places where he expected to find him, then Elijah would indeed have to return to his home as an atheist.

Yes, sure, it's possible that anyone could have been an atheist instead. I don't care about that. I want to know: would Elijah have been right to be an atheist, in the sense that he would be believing a better theory in some sense?

The better question is, would Elijah had been right to accept some kernals of atheism while rejecting the wrong tenets of atheism? And, the answer is 'yes' and that's what the story illustrated. God was not to be found in the dramatic but in the sublimely illusive. An atheist tenet that rejects God in the dramatic is right, but an atheist tenet that rejects God in the sublimely illusive is wrong.

You've probably had a relatively good life, it's easy for you to say atheism is beautiful when you have satin sheets to lie on. The majority of people in the world are not so fortunate.

This ad hominem appeal is all the uglier given that (a) you presumably don't know anything about me, and (b) it has nothing to do with the point at hand. I'm saying life can be meaningful for you without God, no matter how miserable you are now. In fact I think religion is an opiate of the masses, keeping people miserable because after all things will, in an amazing coincidence of dreams and theory, be magically ideal once we die.

Spetey, I know that you are well-educated, I know that you live in an upper middle class community in Michigan, I know that you have access to the Internet, etc. You are not like many of the people I visited in India, or China, or Indonesia, etc. They were poor and religion made them very happy people. Now, maybe you think meaning is obtainable by a secular society, but with secularism comes increasing disarray in society. Let me recommend that we focus on the topic of this thread.

If astrology made their life meaningful, I would certainly encourage them to pursue it as long as it didn't make them miserable in some way that they might not be aware. In that case, I would encourage them to find other avenues of meaning such as Christianity.

So if people could find just as much (or more) meaning in non-supernatural ways--through art, moral reflection, community, and so on--their atheist beliefs would be just as good in every sense? If so, then again we're done (with this thread anyway); you're not concerned with truth, you're concerned with happiness a theory brings you. (Myself, I'm also ultimately concerned about happiness, but I think true-believing and happiness correlate much more tightly than you do.) It would be for another thread to discuss which brings more happiness, but meanwhile I would be happy if you were just to concede that Christianity is not a better theory on truth grounds.

If someone were happier as an atheist, then by all means I would encourage them to be an atheist. However, I too am interested in other things besides temporary happiness. I'm convinced that atheism has a shortterm negative effect on society (e.g., Soviet Union, East Germany, etc which were all failed experiments for atheism). But, that is on a societal level. On a personal level, I'm more concerned about the person.

Well, that's a different thread, but in terms of this thread, this goes to show why the concept of simplicity is aesthetically interpreted by an individual. I see the opposite situation. Unlike atheism, it is a negative belief. That is, I may not believe in astrology, but I won't disbelieve in astrology. That is, I am not sure enough to say that astrology is altogether false. I am agnostic with regard to astrology, but skeptical because I have no experience of them being right. Although, I've never been to an astrologer... So, I keep an open mind to some extent.

This sounds like more of that popular Christian stuff to the effect that "it might be right because it hasn't been proven wrong" (at least close to the appeal to ignorance fallacy). But this principle does not seem to be consistently applied by Christians. Look, undetectable pixies could exist too. So do you believe in them? Of course not. You don't think it's "simpler" to believe that there are pixies just because there might be. You have good reason not to believe in the pixies--based on simplicity grounds. Of course I concede it is possible that some kind of God exists, just as I concede it's possible that there are undectable pixies all around me. But I don't believe in either, for almost exactly the same reason.

That analogy does not apply. When speaking about a philosophical God, or the metaphysics of astrology, there are very few primitives that are needed for a metaphysical belief to be true. And, we need some primitives no matter which ideology we choose. What I'm saying is that I do not know the real primitives that are true. I only have my firmly held beliefs as to what those primitives are, and from those primitives I can construct a reality which would be sensible if those primitives are correct.

In the case of atheism, this is not the case. It is more than constructing primitives that are held correct and then all else follows. It is actually saying some primitives cannot be true (or cannot be true more than any other ridiculous belief can be true). This is folly.

For example, I believe that God exists, but I cannot rule out in a reasonable manner that God doesn't exist. This is the difference between theism and atheism. Theists can believe in a God if there isn't extraordinary evidence to support such a God, but that doesn't make it an unreasonable belief. However, to say that God's existence is unreasonable even though it is based on a few primitives, in my mind, is taking an unwarranted position. This is why I cannot reject astrology as 'false'. In my view, astrology only takes a few metaphysical primitives for it to be true, and there are multiple situations. I think the primitives are not convincing in themselves, so I refrain from belief, but not so much as me to label it as equal to undetectable pixies. This just shows metaphysical knowledge that I don't think humans can know.

Again, if you think astrology or the view that there are undetectable pixies is just as good a theory as any of the other theories we've discussed, then we're done--you're not in the business of comparing beliefs to see which is better, and to me, that's what rationality is all about.

The notion of commensurability of ideas (or theories) is an incorrect assumption. I don't know if I'd call such an assumption as irrational, but it could definitely lead you to irrational beliefs (or beliefs that have traits of irrationality in them).