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?

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 49 by Furrowed Brow]

In reality I have no friends that would ever stab anyone so I would find it very hard to believe.

I honestly envy you, that you have such a trust in your friends that the idea of them willingly stabbing someone is preposterous to you.
However, to reiterate my own point from earlier, what I think you yourself should have said is that yes, your friends ARE capable, as in physically, of stabbing people. So if someone says "Furrowed Brow, Friend Philip stabbed someone in the bar last night!", it's not immediately outside of the realm of physical possibility. An immediate explanation (assuming the claim is true) is that he was attacked by a drunkard, and in self defense, stabbed the drunkard with a broken bottle.
Liam didn't outline what exactly he meant when he gave stabbing as an example. Did he mean, do we trust our friends to not do an (usually) immoral act? Do we believe our friends are physically incapable (a cousin of mine has very bad cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair, so wouldn't be able to)?
What exactly did liamconnor mean when he asked us whether we would believe one/several friends if they said that other friends had stabbed? What angle are we supposed to be looking at this hypothetical claim? There's several different ways we can do so, some of which have nothing at all to do with whether or not we trust the person telling us the initial claim.
I'm thinking now if my landlord slash kinda-step-dad (complicated) told me today that his son, my best friend and kinda-brother stabbed someone in a bar. I trust both people with my life.
And yet, trust wouldn't factor into whether or not I believe the claim. I'd ask step-dad to give me as much details as possible. In other words, I'd be seeking to falsify the claim, to try and find somewhere in his accounting that would reveal that he himself has been fooled. And who knows? Maybe he has...and if I had gone along with the claim, simply because I hold him in high regard, that would be me being incredibly foolish.

To get to agnostic I must believe my friend is at least capable of stabbing someone.

Do you believe that your friend is at the very least physically capable? My cousin isn't, but my brother is.

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.

Until liamconnor responds with more details about his hypothetical scenario, I'd have to ask exactly what you yourself mean, Brow.
Remember, liam hasn't told us anything about the stabbing in the bar. Was the stabbing friend acting maliciously? Was it self-defense? An accident (maybe he was juggling broken bottles and one of them slipped out of his hand and hurt someone?)
Brow, when you say you don't believe your friend could stab anyone, do you mean that you believe your friend is not the kind of person to, out of a sense of malice, to stab someone i.e. it would have to be self-defense or an accident?

[Furrowed Brow]

I'd be interested in your (and others') insight on this: Should we speak of evidence 'for' something, as if the conclusion were somehow implicit in the raw data, or is it more reasonable to say that evidence is simply the available facts and information providing context for the evaluation of hypotheses' plausibility?

Or something else entirely?

Well.... ...hmmm.....well.

I'd say the conclusion is implicit to the interpretation of the data. There are facts and the there is a conceptual framework we impose to try and fit the data.

That certainly includes common usage, but the problem is that such a conception also means that the existence of New York is evidence for the existence of Spiderman:

The existence of New York is not evidence for Spiderman because there are all sorts of narratives about New York we could tell and in many of these Spiderman is just a comic invention. And we know that if we really want to go find the source of the narratives that involve Spiderman there is a strong suspicion we will only find a comic strip. Put more simply the concept of New York is not dependent on the concept of Spiderman.

The existence of Spiderman is evidence for New York because Spiderman lives in New York. The presence of New York is implicit to tales of Spiderman.

But I think the real point about evidence is that we just need to be more forensic in our assessment of the role of a witness statement.

• Stage 1: Moe says "the cat is on the mat"

The first stage is evidence that Moe wishes us to believe the cat is on the mat. At stage 1 and before any assessment the statement is not evidence for or against whether the cat is on the mat.

• Stage 2: What Moe says is assessed for other it is in error, a lie or true.

It is only at stage 2 once the statement has been examined and assessed does the witness statement became evidence for or against the cat being on the mat. A minimal assessment will simply note the claim may be in error or a lie or true. At that stage and given a a three way choice with two false options reason dictates we proceed on the assumption the claim is false until additional examination is attempted. As to whether we can start to believe the claim might be true and then how strong or weak we find the claim will depend on further assessment. So long as that assessment does not arrive at 100% certainty and the assessment reaches the level of mathematical proof then the claim will fall into the category of evidence weak through to strong.

[marco]

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

You mean illustrated, not validated? It would seem that we start off talking about miracles and then discuss the sighting of a ghost. I know of people who have seen what appears to be a ghost. They have no explanation but they accept what they saw. It is possible there will eventually be an explanation that does not involve dead bodies. There was no dogma attached; both are professors of physics.

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.

Then if that is all GK is saying that is fair enough though dogmatic usually carries a pejorative meaning. Miracles seem to oppose the accepted laws of physics, so perhaps the dogmatism lies in the acceptance of these laws. Without such acceptance man would not have progressed, so there is reason involved too.

The further complication is that miracles involving Christ cannot be examined in the usual way - asking people what happened. It seems reasonable to accept they did not happen.

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 43 by Divine Insight]

Wrong.

I am not referring to the N.T.; I have merely borrowed from it. My hypothesis (or rather, Chesterton's) is that the value of 500 people testifying to a shooting is A PRIORI greater than the value of the same 500 people testifying to a something miraculous.


The point here is not prove or disprove God, or the possibility of miracles. The point is that atheists/naturalists are dogmatic: they JUST KNOW that any report of a miracle HAS to be false.

Maybe they are right; but it is still dogmatic--a True BELIEF, not tested.

[marco]

I am not referring to the N.T.; I have merely borrowed from it. My hypothesis (or rather, Chesterton's) is that the value of 500 people testifying to a shooting is A PRIORI greater than the value of the same 500 people testifying to a something miraculous.

It's hardly a hypothesis; it is common sense. Different claims have different levels of credibility. It is good working practice to believe that, when someone reports an event that contradicts common sense, we don't believe the report. If this is the sum total of what you are saying then there's nothing to argue about.

[Willum]

[Replying to post 43 by Divine Insight]

Wrong.

I am not referring to the N.T.; I have merely borrowed from it. My hypothesis (or rather, Chesterton's) is that the value of 500 people testifying to a shooting is A PRIORI greater than the value of the same 500 people testifying to a something miraculous.

Which would be great if the 500 weren't made up themselves...

You see, if 500 testified to a shooting, their names would be recorded and testimony taken, they would be cross-examined to see if there were any obvious lies, and of 500, far more than one would slip up.

No such luck with the 500 miracle witnesses.
They have the perfect testimony of the imaginary.

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 53 by marco]

Miracles seem to oppose the accepted laws of physics, so perhaps the dogmatism lies in the acceptance of these laws. Without such acceptance man would not have progressed, so there is reason involved too.

"Accepted Laws" is full of problems: but we can start with the metaphor (it is a metaphor) LAWS. In truth, they are the accepted EXPERIENCES of Men testing the behavior of nature at very specific points in time and space. The later move--extrapolating from these individual cases to a universal--is unphilosophical, as Hume pointed out (or at least adumbrated). The jump from, "given the majority experiences known to me exclude what person's 1, 2, 3........500 claim; therefore persons 1, 2, 3..........500 are wrong" puts faith in the statement "majority of experiences = the exclusion of a minority of experienses".

On what grounds?

[marco]

[Replying to post 53 by marco]

Miracles seem to oppose the accepted laws of physics, so perhaps the dogmatism lies in the acceptance of these laws. Without such acceptance man would not have progressed, so there is reason involved too.

"Accepted Laws" is full of problems: but we can start with the metaphor (it is a metaphor) LAWS. In truth, they are the accepted EXPERIENCES of Men testing the behavior of nature at very specific points in time and space. The later move--extrapolating from these individual cases to a universal--is unphilosophical, as Hume pointed out (or at least adumbrated). The jump from, "given the majority experiences known to me exclude what person's 1, 2, 3........500 claim; therefore persons 1, 2, 3..........500 are wrong" puts faith in the statement "majority of experiences = the exclusion of a minority of experiences".

On what grounds?

I can't see why you term "laws" as metaphorical. Some laws are derived empirically; some probability values are reached empirically; others are not.

Philosophy can say what it wants; physics gives us a way of getting to the moon and back. If the philosopher thinks the calculation of elliptical paths is unphilosophical, that's okay. We can live with that just as we can smile at angels occupying a needle point.

You've been told we don't have 500 witnesses. Your own dogmatism is the sincere belief that what Paul says must be true and for me that is a riskier dogmatism than applying scientific laws.

Accepted Laws can be amended, as Einstein did with Newton. But behind all this there is reason and that's the best man can do on earth.

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 58 by marco]

I can't see why you term "laws" as metaphorical. Some laws are derived empirically; some probability values are reached empirically; others are not.

In the medieval ages what we call "laws" were called "inclinations"; stone's simply naturally inclined towards the earth. In my opinion, far better science than laws: it is a 'law' that I drive sober--therefore, there should be no such thing as a DUI, right?

Law is a metaphor, and rather a bad one. The medieval "inclinations'" was far better. It better connotes "here is what we see happening", while law connotes "here is what HAS to happen, though all we have for this is what we have seen happening".

Philosophy can say what it wants; physics gives us a way of getting to the moon and back.

Yes, experience. And from this, we conclude a universal. This is a faith maneuver: in my experience and other's, this is how nature behaves; therefore, nature CANNOT behave in any other way.

If the philosopher thinks the calculation of elliptical paths is unphilosophical, that's okay. We can live with that just as we can smile at angels occupying a needle point.

A silly counter example. But I will bite: how do you know that the elliptical paths of these objects are not merely the current paths?

I am not saying they were not; I BELIEVE they were. But I admit I am dogmatic in that assertion. It is a FAITH.

You've been told we don't have 500 witnesses.

In this OP? This OP borrowed the number and case from the N.T. but it was the case of the N.T. It was a scenario, which could easily be put into modern terms.

The point of the OP was not that Jesus was raised, but that exclusion of miracles is a dogma, not born out by experience (for true experience tells us that people do claim the miraculous); it is a faith in the majority vote. The majority of history reports the same kind of stuff I experience; therefore, anything reported outside of these experiences could not have happened.

Is the "therefore" clause philosophical?

Please note that the opposite case = that exceptions to majority experience happen--does not in anyway violate the experience that the world tends to behave in a certain way, which allows what you call "progress".

Your own dogmatism is the sincere belief that what Paul says must be true and for me that is a riskier dogmatism than applying scientific laws.

So untrue I can not even begin to answer. There is an impulse in me to be offended by the accusation; but, as I believe it is based on pride (i.e., that you would attend to my posts as much as I would like) I will resist the emotion. The fact remains, you are wrong regarding my approach to the bible.

Accepted Laws can be amended, as Einstein did with Newton. But behind all this there is reason and that's the best man can do on earth.

Reason? Does reason mean "everyone attests to a habitual universe; even those who attest a rare exception to its habits will maintain that they are rare exceptions; therefore, the world behaves regularly without exceptions"?


I don't see the philosophy in this dogma.

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 55 by marco]

Different claims have different levels of credibility.

Why?


I agree; but I confess this is a dogma. I have no philosophical grounds for this. It is based on faith; faith that the universe MUST be consistent; that because water has ALWAYS boiled at x then it MUST always boil at x.