It goes both ways. Thought experiment. You might say " All things have natural causes. " I, being an open-minded skeptic, say I don't believe you. I can even demand more proof. But there are events that science makes claims about which do not prove that all things have natural causes. That has been assumed; The fellow who made the video is perfectly rational in his arguments, but one easily takes away that he has assumed that all things have natural causes. He cannot demonstrate nor prove that all things have natural causes any more than I can demonstrate or prove that God exists. Its easy to see why. Keep asking "why did that happen" long enough and you'll get to things that you can't demonstrate to have happened because they happened in your past. At that point the extrapolation goes ultimately to the ultimate question: Why is there anything rather than nothing?
Do we agree that we have mostly the same data and we interpret it differently? That we address this greatest question with a different answers based on our personal experiences, and the objects of our faith?
My perspective and the perspective of the guy who made the video (very likely) is not that "all things have natural causes" - in my cosmology it is not even clear what that sentence means, after all. What he is saying is that there is not sufficient evidence (operational definition of claims + experiments which confirm operational definition is good) to believe any particular supernatural hypothesis. The fact that we cannot explain everything in the universe is not really a problem because from my point of view there is absolutely no reason I would be able to do so.
The difference between the rationalist worldview and the theistic one is that the theist believes it is somehow sensible to begin reasoning from the point of view that God exists. It isn't even clear if rationalists "have faith" in any particular reality. The perspective is more subtle than your suggestion that "faith" and "operational assumptions" amount to the same basic thing can bear. Faith implies an emotional commitment to a particular belief in the active absence of evidence while an operational assumption is made expressly for the purpose of extending our ability to reason about a system and with the tacit understanding that if a preponderance of evidence or logical incompatibility renders the assumption less useful than another, we will stop using it.
It may be that I depend in quantum mechanics as a theory to make sure that the computer systems controlling a nuclear reactor do not fail. I do not, however, have "faith" in quantum mechanics exactly because if a new, better theory, were to arrive I would immediately dispense with QM in favor of the new thing.
In other words, rationalists view ideas as just any other kind of tool. You use them while the work, and you throw them away when they no longer do.
First of all, you should really use the preview option instead of posting and deleting and reposting. That is only my preference and you'll do as you see fit.
Second, if we stick to a definition of faith as "confidence or trust in a person or thing" {as given as the first of several definitions on dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith)}, which i think is an adequate definition, you and everyone else on the planet exercises faith of some kind. You have faith in people: for example, the food you ate today you did not grow; you trust that it is real food that is not poisoned without any test or question. (even if you did grow it, you might still test it...) You have faith in objects. At times in your life you've sat in chairs you've never sat in before. I doubt you sat in them thinking all the while that this was a test or experiment. You trusted that the chair would hold you with no reason to trust or not trust the chair.
I know that this same fellow made video addressing just this question. All he says in that video is that the object of his faith is a testable science. He obviously believes things he has never tested. Part of that kind of faith is dispensing with faith when knowledge is achieved. (of course that can apply to all 'faith') If I gain the knowledge that Jesus is not the son of God, then I can't have faith that he is without actively deluding myself.
If your perspective is not that 'all things have natural causes' then you must think that some things have unnatural causes-- either subnatural or supernatural. There is no other option is there?
P.S. I really don't understand what all the verbal posturing is about. You complain about the mystery of God-- that Christians are content to say God is mysterious; then your favorite conversation ender is "I don't know/ Its not clear what that means!". "that" being whatever i'm asking you to think about. Of course you know what it means for all things to have natural causes. You might even correct me and say " after the big bang all things had natural causes"; you might say that you don't think all things have natural causes. But you come off as if admitting anything is some kind of defeat. I suppose complaining that you are a contrarian is like complaining that you have curly hair. I'm just trying to find a real Vincent in there somewhere. If you can't discern the meaning of a simple statement like "all things have natural causes" then i grossly overestimated you. But that's not it. You're not an imbecile. You're just making our argument more difficult by obscuring the conversation rather than clarifying. Why you are doing this I cannot say.
4 comments:
It goes both ways. Thought experiment. You might say " All things have natural causes. " I, being an open-minded skeptic, say I don't believe you. I can even demand more proof. But there are events that science makes claims about which do not prove that all things have natural causes. That has been assumed; The fellow who made the video is perfectly rational in his arguments, but one easily takes away that he has assumed that all things have natural causes. He cannot demonstrate nor prove that all things have natural causes any more than I can demonstrate or prove that God exists. Its easy to see why. Keep asking "why did that happen" long enough and you'll get to things that you can't demonstrate to have happened because they happened in your past. At that point the extrapolation goes ultimately to the ultimate question: Why is there anything rather than nothing?
Do we agree that we have mostly the same data and we interpret it differently? That we address this greatest question with a different answers based on our personal experiences, and the objects of our faith?
My perspective and the perspective of the guy who made the video (very likely) is not that "all things have natural causes" - in my cosmology it is not even clear what that sentence means, after all. What he is saying is that there is not sufficient evidence (operational definition of claims + experiments which confirm operational definition is good) to believe any particular supernatural hypothesis. The fact that we cannot explain everything in the universe is not really a problem because from my point of view there is absolutely no reason I would be able to do so.
The difference between the rationalist worldview and the theistic one is that the theist believes it is somehow sensible to begin reasoning from the point of view that God exists. It isn't even clear if rationalists "have faith" in any particular reality. The perspective is more subtle than your suggestion that "faith" and "operational assumptions" amount to the same basic thing can bear. Faith implies an emotional commitment to a particular belief in the active absence of evidence while an operational assumption is made expressly for the purpose of extending our ability to reason about a system and with the tacit understanding that if a preponderance of evidence or logical incompatibility renders the assumption less useful than another, we will stop using it.
It may be that I depend in quantum mechanics as a theory to make sure that the computer systems controlling a nuclear reactor do not fail. I do not, however, have "faith" in quantum mechanics exactly because if a new, better theory, were to arrive I would immediately dispense with QM in favor of the new thing.
In other words, rationalists view ideas as just any other kind of tool. You use them while the work, and you throw them away when they no longer do.
First of all, you should really use the preview option instead of posting and deleting and reposting. That is only my preference and you'll do as you see fit.
Second, if we stick to a definition of faith as "confidence or trust in a person or thing" {as given as the first of several definitions on dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith)}, which i think is an adequate definition, you and everyone else on the planet exercises faith of some kind.
You have faith in people:
for example, the food you ate today you did not grow; you trust that it is real food that is not poisoned without any test or question. (even if you did grow it, you might still test it...) You have faith in objects. At times in your life you've sat in chairs you've never sat in before. I doubt you sat in them thinking all the while that this was a test or experiment. You trusted that the chair would hold you with no reason to trust or not trust the chair.
I know that this same fellow made video addressing just this question. All he says in that video is that the object of his faith is a testable science. He obviously believes things he has never tested. Part of that kind of faith is dispensing with faith when knowledge is achieved. (of course that can apply to all 'faith') If I gain the knowledge that Jesus is not the son of God, then I can't have faith that he is without actively deluding myself.
If your perspective is not that 'all things have natural causes' then you must think that some things have unnatural causes-- either subnatural or supernatural. There is no other option is there?
P.S.
I really don't understand what all the verbal posturing is about. You complain about the mystery of God-- that Christians are content to say God is mysterious; then your favorite conversation ender is "I don't know/ Its not clear what that means!". "that" being whatever i'm asking you to think about. Of course you know what it means for all things to have natural causes. You might even correct me and say " after the big bang all things had natural causes"; you might say that you don't think all things have natural causes. But you come off as if admitting anything is some kind of defeat. I suppose complaining that you are a contrarian is like complaining that you have curly hair. I'm just trying to find a real Vincent in there somewhere. If you can't discern the meaning of a simple statement like "all things have natural causes" then i grossly overestimated you. But that's not it. You're not an imbecile. You're just making our argument more difficult by obscuring the conversation rather than clarifying. Why you are doing this I cannot say.
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