The simplest ones: Rome is in Italy. Man went to the moon. The world is flat. Unless you’ve been to Rome, the moon or sailed around the earth, how can you, personally, verify them?
@Patrick_S if we are going to discuss this, please can we not start with straw-manning right off the bat?
Verification is not simply a personal thing. What I mean is that you are implying that only my personal experience and direct observation can be valid as the basis of verification. I am not saying this and I have never said it. There are many tools available to us to verify claims or ideas, and I think you know that?
P.S. Setting aside the current epistemic debate, does the example you pose ‘the world is flat’ reflect your own view? If so, that is for a whole other thread my friend…
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Sorry, but that’s what it looked like here.
And no, I don’t believe in a flat earth, even though I can’t prove it beyond doubt.
This only proves my point. Note: This is not me saying… 'If I cannot verify something - using only my personal experience and direct observation - it is a belief. Where you got the idea that I limit this to personal experience and belief I don’t know, but it certainly isn’t from that sentence.
Flat earth:
Glad to hear it! However, you can in fact prove it isn’t a flat earth beyond reasonable doubt with some simple low-budget experiments that you can personally do or do in concert with some friends. Look it up. You can use:
- Simultaneous sundials - differential radial angles contradict proposed solar path of a nearby sun.
- Radial geometry means distances traveled by car, ship, train and plane contradict times recorded and fuel consumption. Whereas spherical geometry correlates perfectly.
- Horizon measurements of ships using lasers clearly show earth is curved, you can repeat this using $20 equipment from RadioShack
- Basic observations of the sun through a cheap telescope, coupled with basic science knowledge will demonstrate clearly that if the sun were as close as they claim, we would all fry.
- Tidal measurements contradict the moon movements claimed. The angle of attraction to a close moon contradicts all tidal evidence.
- Go down two well shafts of equal depth and diameter on opposite sides of the United states and note the time the sun goes overhead and the light reaches the bottom. Track the time and the angle of incidence. Do the trigonometry for a close sun on a flat earth and a far away sun with a round earth, and the close sun on a flat earth fails.
There are loads of other tests you can do, but that is for another thread if we are unlucky enough to be plagued with a person under the spell of that particular cult.
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I agree with that.
So you have no bias from your upbringing? LOL
I didn’t. You did. I simply explained the conditions under which they are applicable. You are the one who applied them.
You have repeatedly ignored my challenges and instead resorted to this ad-hominem tactic of making accusations. You are transparent so we are not distracted. I shall simply forge on to provide the demonstration which you are too afraid to even ask for. I think you don’t ask because you suspect that the demonstrations are so easy and obvious just as I know they are.
There are many ways to demonstrate that people can know things for which there is no evidence and no demonstration possible. I shall do so with a series of questions, to which the answers are obvious.
- Are people capable of destroying evidence?
- Once they have done so, does their knowledge of what that evidence was for vanish?
- Can nature destroy evidence?
- So not all events which can happen to us leave evidence that they did happen, right?
- When something happens to us then do we not have knowledge of that event?
- Is not the demonstration of something also an event which happens to us?
- How do we know something is demonstrable if we cannot know such a demonstration happened?
- How can the memory of a demonstration give us knowledge of something but memory of the thing itself cannot?
- Is it not therefore inconsistent to claim that a demonstration can give us knowledge but our personal experience of that demonstration cannot?
Your definition of knowledge is simply nonsensical.
With the definitions of both objective and subjective knowledge a more complete picture is constructed without such inconsistencies. The epistemological superiority of that which can be demonstrated is that we have a reasonable expectation that the knowledge can be transmitted. My knowledge of a demonstration may be a personal experience which by itself can be called subjective, but I know it can be repeated for someone else to have that same personal experience to acquire the same knowledge. In isolation all knowledge is subjective and it is only in the ability to share knowledge that it can be objective.
LOL I am an agnostic with respect to an objective knowledge of the existence of God. I have said this before many times. Ask anybody. The shot over my bow has missed and boomeranged back on you. Since I like and consistently defend the atheist perspective (again I have said so many times), I have no desperate need to cling to a theist position. LOL
I think that at the bottom of all your anger, accusations, and bias is some sort of spidey-sense that I seem to have tingled, that tells you that I am the enemy and I must be destroyed because you can see that the clear and obvious conclusion to my argument is that your idea that scientific knowledge is the only knowledge is both inconsistent and unsupportable. I do think this is what this all comes down to Peter. Your anger, your vitriol, your accusations, you ignoring my challenges and the desperate resort to an attack on my person all point to you being very much bent out of shape by the deeper and long term implications of what I am saying. So… let us simply drop this lame attempt of yours to make this personal. It is actually quite boring.
Mitchell, I have better things to do than deal with your dishonesty, hypocrisy, anger, unjustifiable personal attacks, misrepresentation, false accusations, spite, sarcasm and general unpleasantness. Our interactions are over.
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For those of you who are interested in a conversation rather than picking fights, I hope to put my thoughts together in a post that might better avoid some of the more valid criticisms I have received where I believe those criticisms primarily arise from poor communication on my part of simply failing to elaborate key points. As I have said, this was not a thread I initiated intentionally and so it lacks the kind of thoroughness and rigor I would have liked to provide to kick things off. I am in the middle of a rather intense project right now with deadlines and I just don’t have enough time to deal with this properly. I don’t imagine that people are really hanging on my every word here! But I feel like I have some responsibility to clear up some points.
I will get to it in the next week or so.
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Yes, unfortunately the polarizing impact of strong atheist voices does cause some to react by overstating the strength of their position, but the stats tend to show a general reduction in religiosity, particularly in the young. And yes, we all must needs be agnostic because absolute certainty is never available no matter which way you lean.
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Thank you! Well put. Thanks! My boys and I are discussing this from time to time as we encounter special pleading apologetics. I don’t want them to build their faith or reasoning on a false foundation.
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appreciate the thoughts, i for one am not easily offended so feel free to hammer the ideas out. But at core the question you raise is basic theology, please see if you follow the logic here…
IF there is in fact a God, then by definition and very nature, all knowledge about him cannot be empirical. By very definition. He is not part of this physical universe, thus nothing whatsoever about his being can be empirical, or “proven”, or anything close by the definition you are using.
Does it follow, then, that if there were a God, that his hands would be tied, that he would be utterly helpless and powerless to communicate any knowledge to a human? of course not. He could indeed speak and communicate with humans in any number of ways, utilizing nature in various ways. Now all such communicate could be in no way proven, empirically, scientifically, or otherwise to have genuinely originated from the eternal God outside of creation. that should be self-evident.
But it remains that if there is a God, then it follows logically that 1) we can indeed have knowledge of him if (and only if) he so chooses to communicate such knowledge, 2) on our side, we have no choice but to receive such knowledge by faith, as there is absolutely no way to empirically confirm such communication as authentically from God, 3) while our knowledge will by definition be unverifiable, it would not on that basis be incorrect, or cease to be real knowledge. It would in fact be knowledge by authority. and 4) Of course it will remain open to the accusation of doubters and skeptics as you note above, but again i think this is logically unavoidable. Even Jesus himself, after doing various striking miracles to confirm his being, found people remaining skeptical and doubting to various levels.
Would appreciate any thoughts you have… and please note, for now at least, I am only examining the underlying logic… i.e., IF there were a God, this is how it would logically have to be. I’m not (at this point) arguing that this is how it is, but for now just hoping we might agree so far as the core underlying logic, or clarify carefully and specifically where any disagreements might lie?
Withdrawn to think 
To put it another way… If you had been a contemporary of Jesus, and you had been there when he made some very specific claim or prediction or prophecy about his second coming… I would and could equally say that "all claims that flow from the platform of Jesus, regardless of whether one is a literalist or not, require one to commit to believing them on faith, not on evidence that is independent of Jesus himself.
Would it then follow that you would or could not have “knowledge” about the second coming? Sure, it would require you to trust his authority to speak on that topic… but if he is a trustworthy teacher on that topic, and in fact had access to such knowledge, then you could receive real, genuine, and true knowledge about that future event from him, even if that knowledge was in no sense verifiable, probable, or empirical.
Same would be true about any and all direct communications from God that communicate about him: his character, being, plans, or the like… knowledge that we would have that was revealed from him that would otherwise be unverifiable. None of that is empirically verifiable in any sense. But it doesn’t follow that we can’t have “knowledge” about God regarding these things if God so chooses to reveal it. But yes, it by definition would have to be received through trust in the authority, not by verifiability.
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I maintain that it is possible, and in fact has and does happen, that we can have true empirical knowledge of God’s providential M.O., and that is based on having true presuppositions. I plead Maggie. Again.
Hi Randy, I am happy that something I have said has been useful to somebody! Cheers!
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Firstly, @Daniel_Fisher, thanks for your thoughtful and well written posts. I am not easily offended either. In order to do a fair job at hammering things out, I will take the position of advocatus diaboli.
Taking this in ignorance of the later post about Jesus being a physical intrusion into our reality, I think there are problems here anyway. Firstly there are many Gods to choose from here. I realize you are a Christian, but if your argument hinges upon choosing one particular God, how does one do that exactly? How does one ‘know’ how to choose, or ‘know’ that one’s choice is correct? Secondly, what definition are you using such that we are 100% clear on His nature, and we are commanded to know God, but are also told God us ultimately unknowable. So, to say all knowledge about him cannot be empirical is to overlook that we do not and can not possess all knowledge about him regardless of what form it might take. Although we can say there is broad agreement, theologians have argued about the finer points of His nature and definition since Adam was a boy. I don’t mean to be picky here but if your whole argument rests on this first bit, we may have some work to do.
To quote any number of atheists here, once you invoke magic or special pleading, anything is possible. God can do anything, so we do not have to make arguments in support of the possibility of communication from outside our reality. Once you assume the first premise from your first paragraph, then this second one comes for free.
Not so fast. If God can communicate through to our reality, He can also appear in front of the masses including a 1000 strong team of crack scientists, manifest a live T-Rex, have it eat someone’s child, then turn the T-Rex into a coffee table, feed that to into a wood-chipper and have that spit out the fully intact child holding a lollipop and a photograph of Elvis and wearing fresh underwear. My point is that once you allow God unlimited capability, it is a contradiction to then claim that there is no way such a being could prove Himself to exist, at least as proven as anyone else, unless - and this is the part that is self-evident - He chose not to be.
Well without a description of an instance of such communication to work with, I would say only that it follows logically that we can believe that we have been communicated to by something, and that we chose to believe that to be the Christian God. We can also choose to believe that what was communicated was true. There is a difference between knowing you experienced something, and being able to know for sure what that something is. Lastly, saying that it is indeed knowledge of Him rests on your assuming that your interpretation of your experience is correct. If it is merely what you have chosen to believe you experienced, then the knowledge that you believe came from Him is also part of that belief.
Agreed.
Again, assuming that God is not going to come before the masses and show who He is in a major and unmistakable way as described above, and we go with the vague personal experience model of personal revelation, then yes, its unverifiability is not in and of itself a basis for claiming it to be incorrect. The reverse is also true though, in that its unverifiability does not make it correct either.
The line ‘or cease to be real knowledge’ assumes that it was always real knowledge and its unverifiability would not change that. Again, you have chosen to believe it to be true, and you have chosen to accept the definitions and nature of God as the basis for claiming that the information you believed you received was from God, and that was your Christian God communicating to you.
The next part I would object to quite strongly here is the words ‘in fact’ and ‘knowledge by authority’. For the reasons stated above, I think that the use of ‘in fact’ is a miss-step. However the bigger problem is this knowledge by authority. This is essentially a short-cut around the whole thing. If you simply declare the God exists - the authority - then His knowledge - whatever it is must also exist. This would be true even if you didn’t receive it, or for that matter if you didn’t even exist.
It seems to me that what we are struggling with here is the question - can we consider received information to be true even if we cannot prove that the receipt of the information really occurred or that the information was from God? A root, the answer must be that if the Christian God exists, and he can communicate with you, and He did communicate with you, and he always tells the truth, and he did convey the information to you, then yes, if could be true information. However, in the situation you have contrived, you could not know it to be true and that is the key point.
To use a common atheistic line, using Jesus’ stories to show that some people doubt even when faced with miraculous deeds, merely tries to lift the whole thing up by its own bootstraps. Acceptance of that story requires one to assume a knowledge of God in an attempt to defend against the claim that you cannot avoid, at some point, assuming you have knowledge of God. This is true even if God exists (provided he doesn’t start playing around with a T-rex)
To summarize, you can make this argument regardless of God. If you believed that I visited you in your sleep and told you my middle name was Ferdinand, but you never checked it with me, and just chose to believe it to be true because you are convinced that I am a truthful person. Plus I had previously claimed to be able to speak to you in your sleep. Then IF my middle name is Ferdinand you are in possession of true facts that you cannot know are true. At that point they are beliefs. If I then confirm to you in person that it is true, then you know it to be true, and can treat the information as knowledge about me. However, with God, you never have that opportunity, so it can never be knowledge, only belief - regardless of whether or not God exists, or the information you believe came from God is indeed true information.
The problem of verification goes to what you can call what you believe. If you can verify it then you can call that belief knowledge. Based on the power, authenticity, and intensity of your experience, you may feel justified in believing it to be God, but feeling justified is not the same as being justified.
I hope I have been clear and also fair. I am always open to the possibility that I am horribly mistaken, so feel free to crush me with counter-logic.
Now on to your next post.
If God is the word, and the word is the bible and God is Jesus, then Jesus is Scripture and then the two statements are equivalent. Is that what you mean?
This highlights the main problem with special pleading. If Jesus can do anything, then he can predict the future. Case closed. But this is not about that, it is about what we can know. I would say that we can know that the future will be as He predicts, if and only if we can know He is the messiah, and that we can know that He can predict the future, and we can know that he only tells us the truth. Yet how is it that we can know these things? By what evidence? At the time of Jesus, we only had His claims which we could believe or not believe.
So we are almost in agreement here, but I would remove the word knowledge where you have used it and replace it with belief. What you believe you have received and who you believed you received it from are the points in question, NOT whether what you believe coincides with what is true. At some point you need to know that what you belief is true, you may believe that you are justified in believing it to be true because you believe in God, which is circular, and so that does not allow you to call what you possess, ‘knowledge’.
This is using my definition of knowledge. I know that allows me to be called arrogant, presumptuous, ignorant, egotistical and even completely deluded, but that’s philosphizing!
Anyway, I am fairly sure this is going to lead to a lot of push-back from many people. I await yours and others’ responses…
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Let’s see if the “straight lines of dashes” in my attachment to this message help. The Double Triplet Scenario
I certainly hope so, because I am unable to conceive of any way to make my meaning clearer. IMO, adding mathematical equations and calculations would only complicate the subject matter.
It occurs to me that it may be possible that part of the challenge in seeing the difference between the SR and NLR versions of the Double Triplet scenario lies in the fact that the NLR version is identical to half of the SR scenario. If so, l assure you: in order to drive home the difference between SR and NLR, I have found it crucial to diagram the SR version thoroughly.
Au contraire mon ami. IMO, anything more than my diagrams is “commentary.” I note that either my diagrams are sufficient to make my point–that SR and NLR seem to have similarities but, in fact, are radically different and conflicting theories–otherwise someone around here, other than you, would have said so, or there is no current member of biologos competent enough to recognize that my diagrams make my point. The latter possibility boggles my mind.
You. re: “Surely the topic at hand and the discussion points I introduced can be considered independently and handled on their merits?”
Me. They can, indeed, which is why I’m in this thread. But if this were nothing more than an an Anti-creationist vs. Anti-evolutionist thread or an Anti-bible vs. Infidel thread, I wouldn’t be here.
Why would that preferred reference frame just happen to be the Earth’s orbit?
The first thing you would have to explain is the Michelson-Morley experiment which is the gold standard for challenging the ether. How is it that the ether perfectly follows the Earth in its orbit around the Sun? If we ran this same experiment on Mars would we get a different result?
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??? Maybe, first, you’d like to explain why you lept over this sentence in the third paragraph of the wikipedia site about LET which reads:
“Because the same mathematical formalism occurs in both, it is not possible to distinguish between LET and SR by experiment.”
Both SR and NLR affirm length contraction. Unfortunately, what you do not seem to be aware of is that SR’s length contraction and NLR’s length contraction are NOT the same.
I am going through each premise, and I am wondering why the Earth would be the privleged frame in all of the universe.
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