Dogmatic Skeptics

[liamconnor]

Here is a (rather lengthy) quote from G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy:

Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them. The open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder. The plain, popular course is to trust the peasant's word about the ghost exactly as far as you trust the peasant's word about the landlord. Being a peasant he will probably have a great deal of healthy agnosticism about both. Still you could fill the British Museum with evidence uttered by the peasant, and given in favour of the ghost. If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can only mean one of two things. You reject the peasant's story about the ghost either because the man is a peasant or because the story is a ghost story. That is, you either deny the main principle of democracy, or you affirm the main principle of materialism-- the abstract impossibility of miracle. You have a perfect right to do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist. It is we Christians who accept all actual evidence--it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed. But I am not constrained by any creed in the matter, and looking impartially into certain miracles of mediaeval and modern times, I have come to the conclusion that they occurred. All argument against these plain facts is always argument in a circle. If I say, "Mediaeval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest certain battles," they answer, "But mediaevals were superstitious"; if I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only ultimate answer is that they believed in the miracles. If I say "a peasant saw a ghost," I am told, "But peasants are so credulous." If I ask, "Why credulous?" the only answer is--that they see ghosts. Iceland is impossible because only stupid sailors have seen it; and the sailors are only stupid because they say they have seen Iceland. It is only fair to add that there is another argument that the unbeliever may rationally use against miracles, though he himself generally forgets to use it.

Do you agree or disagree with the thesis that Naturalists are dogmatic about their exclusion of the miraculous?

[liamconnor]

I have read through the responses.

It seems that most do not quite understand the quote in the OP; this is understandable as it comes from one of the later chapters of Chesterton's Orthodoxy.

At the same time, his argument that Atheists and Agnostics are no less dogmatic than Fundamentalists is validated by this OP.

500 Testimonies of a shooting are valuable; 500 testimonies of a dead man walking are not.

Chesterton's argument was never that atheists and agnostics were wrong; only that they are dogmatic. They have a faith in a reality that does not admit the miraculous.

Suppose several good friends of yours claimed they all witnessed another good friend of all yours stab someone at a bar...

How do you respond?

Now suppose several good friends of yours claimed they saw a man levitate; suppose they didn't believe it, but couldn't explain it, for it looked legit.

Two sincere testimonies.

Is the first MORE WORTHY of inquiry?

That is the point of this OP.

My conclusion:

Atheists and Agnostics are Dogmatic. Nothing so far on this site has done anything other than confirm this.

All I have seen is a misunderstanding of the term 'dogmatic'. Dogmatism means an assumption. The assumption on the part of skeptics and atheists here is that no amount of evidence is sufficient to convince of the supernatural.

[Divine Insight]

@ Mithrae

By the way, if there was a huge consensus on evidence of some specific supernatural claim I would give that claim a great deal of weight.

But let's face, no religion has provided that. To the contrary theists are in grave disagreement with each other. They can't even convince each other of their beliefs.

I think you need to back up a step and consider my history.

I was born and raise into Free Methodist Protestant Christianity. I naively believed the teachings of this sect of Christianity. So much so that I was prepared to teach the word of God from the Bible (which I had been told contains answers for all my questions).

Well, it turned out that not only did the Bible NOT contain answer to my questions, but even the pastors of our Free Methodist Protestant Sect of Christianity couldn't even agree on what the answers should be!

I quickly realized that not only do our pastors not agree with each other, but that all Christian demoninations and sects have precisely the same problem. They not only disagree with the different sects, but they even internal disagreements as well.

I quickly realized that maybe it's just Protestantism. So I turned to Catholicism and quickly realized that the situation there isn't any better. Then I thought that maybe the Christians have it all wrong and the original Judaism might have a consistent picture. But then I quickly realized that the vast majority of my problems was with the Old Testament to begin with. So Judaism was out as well. And to be honest I didn't bother giving Islam much more than a passing glance because it too, is based on the same original folklore.

My point being that even religions don't have the agreed upon consistency as a simple census report.

We simply don't see competing census reports proclaiming to have radically different numbers to report.

So even something as simply as a census report has religion beat in terms of credibility by far.

So you're no closer to supporting religious testimonies by referencing and acceptance of a census report.

There isn't even anyone contesting the census report. And it's not like there are multiple demoninations of census reports in conflict with each other.

And if there were then we'd be stuck with having to chose which ones, if any, have a clue what they are talking about.

So I don't see where pointing to a census report is going to get you back to supporting the personal testimonies of religious experiences.

[Divine Insight]

500 Testimonies of a shooting are valuable; 500 testimonies of a dead man walking are not.

Absolute baloney.

What you really need to say is the following:

Rumors of 500 Testimonies of a shooting have no more value than rumors of 500 testimonies of a dead man walking.

Where are these 500 witnesses? You have ONE MAN name Paul who made that claim.

That's ONE testimony, not 500.

This is where I question the honesty of theists. They won't even own up to the truth.

[Mithrae]

We'd better stick with this first point for now, since you are having these difficulties. But again, please don't feel bad about struggling so much to understand

I beg your pardon? I'm not having any difficulties at all.

I'm not the one who is trying to put scientific knowledge on the same level of uncertainty as the extraordinary claims of a few individuals.

You obviously are struggling mightily, since I have told you again and again and again that I never did and never will make an equivalency between those two. This is an exceedingly simple fact, and yet even after carefully explaining it to you half a dozen times, you apparently still don't understand.

But, like I say, different people obviously learn at different rates, so in spite of all your earlier insulting responses, eventually I resolved that I would not let your 'special needs' cause me to be uncivil. I have no other pressing engagements, so I can keep trying to explain this extremely basic fact to you for as long as it takes

So, once again: I did not ask about the field of science. I'm asking about what an individual knows. Any individual on earth - after the last four posts, I thought that you might have been able to understand this by now - but not all individuals collectively.

For example, presumably you know that there are over 300 million people in the United States. Don't you? (Given your difficulties so far, I should probably be sure to clarify each and every point here.)

But obviously, you have not personally gone out and counted each of those 300+ million people. Have you?

So in order to know that that's how many people there are, you must believe things that you have been told by other people - government census bureaus and so on. Isn't that right?

So? That hardly equates to a personal testimony of a few individuals.

That's right, it does not equate to a few individuals' testimony. Very good! Instead, it is the collective testimony of many, many individuals all collaborating on the same census project, explicitly or implicitly confirmed by many other individuals involved in directly- and indirectly-related enterprises (eg. real estate, utilities, policing etc.).

Now, I'm a little worried about proceeding too quickly here - I don't want to strain your brain - but perhaps if you take some time to think about this really carefully, you might understand that at this point what we are talking about are the third and fourth points of what I said to Bust Nak all the way back in post #10:

• The way I reason it is as follows:
  - For most of my knowledge, I depend on other sources of information
  - Any single source of information has a non-zero possibility of being incorrect
  - Multiple converging sources have a much smaller possibility of all being incorrect
  - Information can be considered reliable relative to the breadth and unanimity of the sources confirming it

It has taken over three days and a dozen or so posts, but hopefully you now understand this far, at least. I'll leave this post here for now, because obviously I don't want to go too quickly for you. I'll continue later on, but in the meantime please feel free to ask any questions if you're confused, and I'll try to help you out

[Willum]

[Replying to post 44 by Mithrae]

You obviously are struggling mightily, since I have told you again and again and again that I never did and never will make an equivalency between those two. This is an exceedingly simple fact, and yet even after carefully explaining it to you half a dozen times, you apparently still don't understand.

Could it be that, you don't realize this is exactly what your arguments are doing? That is, putting scientific knowledge on the same level of uncertainty as the extraordinary claims of a few individuals?

I mean I read your posts, and this is what I see... is it possible that you do not understand the basis of your own arguments to see this is what you are doing?
That your grasp of probability is akin to your understanding of the Dark Ages and the Renaissance?
Things are pointing a certain way...

[Divine Insight]

That's right, it does not equate to a few individuals' testimony. Very good! Instead, it is the collective testimony of many, many individuals all collaborating on the same census project, explicitly or implicitly confirmed by many other individuals involved in directly- and indirectly-related enterprises (eg. real estate, utilities, policing etc.).

I believe I already made that point myself.

Now, I'm a little worried about proceeding too quickly here - I don't want to strain your brain -

If you would like to keep this conversation civil why would you insinuate that you are worried about straining my brain? I would think that is an obvious attempt to make an insult.

but perhaps if you take some time to think about this really carefully, you might understand that at this point what we are talking about are the third and fourth points of what I said to Bust Nak all the way back in post #10:

• The way I reason it is as follows:
  - For most of my knowledge, I depend on other sources of information
  - Any single source of information has a non-zero possibility of being incorrect
  - Multiple converging sources have a much smaller possibility of all being incorrect
  - Information can be considered reliable relative to the breadth and unanimity of the sources confirming it

I don't have a problem with those points save for possibly the first point. I personally suggest that you have more sources of knowledge than you might suspect. It's not like you are living in a closet and only have information provided to you by other people. You can actually step out into the real world and even drive around and look at larges masses of people in various cities and other locations. You actually have the ability to make some pretty good estimates concerning how many people might live in a city yourself actually. You don't need to count actual individual humans. You can count houses, traffic, etc.

So I am not in agreement with your first premise, at least in general.

Could your first premise be true for YOU? Sure it could. But that doesn't make it a valid principle for the argument overall.

It has taken over three days and a dozen or so posts, but hopefully you now understand this far, at least. I'll leave this post here for now, because obviously I don't want to go too quickly for you. I'll continue later on, but in the meantime please feel free to ask any questions if you're confused, and I'll try to help you out

I'm not confused. You aren't going to quick. And I can't imagine what caused you to even think that this is the case. Again, this sounds like an attempt to insult my ability to comprehend simple principles.

I simply disagree with your arguments. Especially within the context of the subject topic of THIS THREAD and the suggestions made in the OP by G.K. Chesterton:

From the OP:

It is we Christians who accept all actual evidence--it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed.

I say that this absolute hogwash. And that is the ultimate subject matter that I am debating against.

If it's your aim to support the arguments of G.K. Chesterton then I suggest that you have your work cut out for you.

And if you aren't arguing in defense of the OP, then exactly what is it that you are attempting to argue for?

A government census report is hardly an example of a faith-based Christian theology.

And far more to the point is that, in principle, you COULD go around at take a census yourself. Could you cover the entire USA? No of course not. But you could take a large enough sample by just visiting major cities by driving across America and then extrapolate from that based on maps, etc.

Unless you're going to call maps the "testimony" of the map makers. I mean come on, get real. Even today we have satellite images you can look at. You would need to believe that all of this technology is an elaborate hoax purposefully perpetrated just to fool you into believing false information about the world.

The problem with that kind of paranoia is that there simply is not justification for it. Especially when you can drive or fly to the locations you see in the satellite images and verify that they are actually there YOURSELF.

Apparently you can actually verify far more information than you are willing to acknowledge.

You say:

- For most of my knowledge, I depend on other sources of information

I say that unless you are being held prisoner in a dungeon somewhere that simply isn't true. You can verify much of the knowledge you have. Perhaps not concerning past history, but then again we all need to take past historical accounts with a grain of salt precisely because we have no way to directly verify them.

In fact, remember the OP is talking about Christian beliefs which are based on stories over 2000 years old. Stories that can't even come close to be verified. At least you are living in 2017 and can therefore have some actual experience concerning the number of people living in the USA in 2017. I mean, you're living right among them!

That's far better than having to take someone's word for it from 2000 years ago.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 41 by liamconnor]

500 Testimonies of a shooting are valuable; 500 testimonies of a dead man walking are not.

As has been explained to you over and over again, liam, we do not have 500 testimonies of a dead man walking.
If that is a reference to what Paul, then that's it. ONE MAN testifying to 500 other people.
Repeat it after me. We do not have 500 testimonies.
Again.
We do not have 500 testimonies.

Suppose several good friends of yours claimed they all witnessed another good friend of all yours stab someone at a bar...

How do you respond?

It's possible. I've seen stabbings. Unlike someone rising from the dead, the first task in getting me to believe a stabbing has occurred, has already been done. I am already convinced that stabbings can and have happened in our reality.
Unlike resurrections/rising from death.

Now suppose several good friends of yours claimed they saw a man levitate; suppose they didn't believe it, but couldn't explain it, for it looked legit.

I presume you mean to say that my 'friends' here are not counting the man being an illusionist as a legitimate explanation?
Why?

Two sincere testimonies.

What you fail to recognise here is the difference between these scenarios and what we have with Christianity.
In your examples here, it is as you say. It is friends of mine telling me something strange has happened. People I trust talking directly to me.
Whereas with Christianity...it is not like that. It is documents, thousands of years old, written in foreign languages and translated, with the details (according to the Gospels) being received second/third/fourth hand.
Also, I don't trust even friends and family 100%. I've had people from both groups lie to me on occasions, even on important issues. So your attempt to try to get me, of all people, to say that I do trust some people implicitly won't work.

Atheists and Agnostics are Dogmatic. Nothing so far on this site has done anything other than confirm this.

All atheists/agnostics? Or just the people you talk to on this site?

. Dogmatism means an assumption.

Why is it theists insist on rewriting languages to suit their arguments?
From Merriam-Webster

Definition of dogmatism

1 : the expression of an opinion or belief as if it were a fact : positiveness in assertion of opinion especially when unwarranted or arrogant
2 : a viewpoint or system of ideas based on insufficiently examined premises

What is it I, an atheist say? I say that theists who believe Jesus rose from the dead do so on insufficient evidence. Why...it's almost like it's the theists who are being dogmatic!
I mean liam...look at what you did. You take Paul's mentioning of 500 people seeing a risen Jesus as though it's 500 actual separate testimonies. How is that not dogmatism?

[alexxcJRO]

Here is a (rather lengthy) quote from G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy:

Do you agree or disagree with the thesis that Naturalists are dogmatic about their exclusion of the miraculous?

500 Testimonies of a shooting are valuable; 500 testimonies of a dead man walking are not.

Another embarrassment of a thread from you. )

The foul smell of dishonesty is killing my olfactory cells.

Q: What 500 eyewitness nonsense are you babbling about ?

We don't even have 4 eyewitness.
We only have some bogus anecdotal (testimonial) evidence from 2000 years ago for the miracle of Christianity. 

We have the same if not better testimonial evidence for the miracles of Sathya Say Baba(he apparently healed himself in front of the thousands of people gathered in Prashanthi Nilayam who were then praying for his recovery.), The Greys(abductions) and for any other miracle(from other religions), supernatural, paranormal event out there. 

We have sincere and vivid accounts of one’s encounter with an angel or the Virgin Mary, an alien, a ghost, a Bigfoot, a child claiming to have lived before, purple auras around dying patients, a miraculous dowser, a levitating guru, and so one. 

We have The Miracle of the Sun experienced by tens of thousands of people if not millions in Fatima, Portugal. According to many witnesses the sun was then reported to have careened towards the earth before zig-zagging back to its normal position. 


But the logic dictates if not suffering of bias, special pleading you should also believe in reincarnation, The Greys(aliens), Bigfoot, Ghosts, and so one; like you believe in the miracle of Christianity because the evidence is the same: (anecdotal (testimonial) evidence).   

Q: Do you believe in reincarnation? In the miracles of Sathya Say Baba?
Q: If not are you being dogmatic in your exclusion of the miraculous from other religion?
Q: Do you believe in the Greys and alien abductions, Big Foot, fairies?
Q: If not are you being dogmatic in your exclusion of these fantastical events, fantastical creatures?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba
http://www.saibaba.ws/miracles.htm

[Furrowed Brow]

Suppose several good friends of yours claimed they all witnessed another good friend of all yours stab someone at a bar.

How do you respond?

In reality I have no friends that would ever stab anyone so I would find it very hard to believe. So my initial response is not to believe the tale until I know more. I do not immediately become agnostic on the matter and I clearly do not believe wha is being said until I know more. So my first response is to be sceptical. To get to agnostic I must believe my friend is at least capable of stabbing someone.

Two sincere testimonies.

Is the first MORE WORTHY of inquiry?

It is still possible to believe in the sincerity of the witnesses and question what I really know about my third friend yet still be sure they would never stab anyone.

On this view I don't get the conclusion the claims are correct or to an agnostic conclusion I don't know if it is true or false. Instead two sincere friends telling me something about another friend I do not believe is capable of what they are saying leaves me to think either something is terribly wrong about my world view and hence I distrust everything that is going on at that moment or that my friends have made a genuine error. But my reaction that something is terribly wrong is not equivalent to undecided.

I don't recognise your analysis of this thread - at least as far as the posts I have made. The theme I have pursued says a sceptical attitude makes more sense and it is more reasonable to assume a witness statement is false pending further information.

[Bust Nak]

No, your belief that there is empirical evidence is based on testimony. You are the one seemingly equating your belief in empirical evidence with that empirical evidence itself.

Lets say I read an article in New Scientist, I see passages allegedly from a published paper, I see quotes allegedly from the authors of the paper, but I never bothered to check the paper itself. I could have been lied to, either by New Scientist or the paper, but I trust their "testimony." Do I or don't I have empirical evidence? I then read the paper, ruling out deception from new scientist, now do I or don't I have empirical evidence?

If we could be bothered to look we could easily find plenty of claims about empirical evidence for 'supernatural' stuff: Videos of levitation, ghosts, angels and so on; before-and-after x-rays or other medical data of miraculous healings; strange circular formations with radioactive traces 'discovered' near purported UFO landing sites... Some of that stuff, like the videos, we could probably even see for ourselves, but for most of the rest we are thoroughly assured that the empirical evidence does exist and is incontrovertible. So are those cases of overwhelming empirical evidence for the claims, or merely testimony about alleged evidence?

It's better than none, but the point was there is strong empirical evidence against, we get these levigators to perform and their fail, we have stage artists who can reproduce the same effect and so on. So these alleged evidence and testimony can be dismissed.

Unless you see it for yourself you're relying on testimony. Aren't you? So the question is simply how strong and widely-corroborated that testimonial evidence is, relative to its in/consistency with our expectations and existing knowledge.

Empirical evidence always trumps testimonial evidence, before any kind of corroboration even enters the picture.

I wasn't thinking specifically about them directly contradicting each other, simply their reliability as individual sources of information. But even in the case of direct contradictions, considering that in some fields as many as three-quarters of peer-reviewed papers have results which cannot be reproduced by other researchers, if I were well-acquainted with someone experienced and trustworthy in a particular field I can certainly imagine taking their word directly over that of a random paper. Peer-reviewed work has the advantage, obviously, of having at least been glanced at by some reviewers in addition to the author/s, which in theory should weed out many of the worst problems (though on the other hand it has the disadvantage of possible confirmation bias; often only the most exciting positive results are published to the exclusion of negatives). Can you really not imagine scenarios in which an individual's testimony might be considered equally or even more reliable?

No! At best it would lead me to do some more research on the topic to see who is right myself. Side note, re: what you said about peer-review papers with result that are not reproduced - along the similar question above, was your claim based on empirical evidence or testimony?

Fair enough - which always seems to be the end result of our discussions I often find your views to be somewhat extreme, but at least generally consistent.

Thanks, consistency is very important to me.

In this case, it seems that what you are saying is your expectations/current knowledge are so firmly set that the available (somewhat weak) testimonial evidence and (extremely weak) empirical evidence regarding alien visitation don't merit its consideration as even a remote possibility. Is that a fair assessment?

That's fair.

If so, can you explain how you form or calibrate those yardsticks, and how they are measured against the available alien evidence? Obviously these will be fairly subjective measures which we rarely even consciously think about, so I for one would have difficulty trying to answer it, but it's still interesting to attempt.

Always go with the scientific consensus, and if the consensus turns out to be less than accurate, that's fine too, you now have a new consensus to go with.