Theists, are you immune to being decieved?

[pocaracas]

We may never know...

What’s your basis for rejecting the Biblical explanation? If you do not know the answer how can you know that a particular answer is incorrect?

You need to work better on these quotes... I don't remember what that was about... but I'll work with your reply.

Let's say science hasn't measured the sun's temperature... let's go to 100 years ago.
Now, you tell me that the sun's temperature is one million degrees celsius.
It is an answer to "how hot is the sun?"... it sort of makes sense... it should be very hot.
Is it the correct answer? 100 years ago, I wouldn't know. So I would ask you "how did you arrive at that answer?".

As you can see, an inquisitive mind wants to know the whole process.... not just the answer.... the answer, while making sense, may be inaccurate... and there are many many many wrong answers... and only one right one.
Without the process of arriving at the correct answer, I am not going to accept any answer that may fit my perception...

Just because the description you find on the bible fits with your perceived view of reality?

It’s not that it fits with simply my perceived view of reality but more importantly it fits with everyone’s necessary view of reality. There are certain things that must be true in order for us to learn about the exterior world, the Bible makes sense of all of these things unlike anything else can.

Do you mind elaborating on that "necessary view of reality" and which "things [...] must be true in order for us to learn about the exterior world" and how "the bible makes sense of all these things"?

The description you find in the qur'an also fits with many people's perceived view of reality... how do you account for that? Are they all wrong?

The existence of Allah does not make sense of the preconditions I mentioned above. Allah does not account for immaterial laws of deduction, the regularities we see in Nature, future regularities and so on. He’s a completely different god with completely different attributes and many of those attributes are insufficient for what must be true about reality.

Allah is the arabic word for "god". They just insist on using the arabic work to distinguish from any other god... particularly the jew and christian yahweh.... but, down deep, it's the same god. "the one true god".., I read that the qur'an has hundreds of ways to describe that god... I'm sure somewhere in that pot it also accounts for everything in Nature, regularity included.

What sort of god relies on people's writing abilities to pass on the message? yours and theirs!

I wouldn’t trade the Christian manuscript tradition for the Islamic one ever though.

I wouldn't either... if I had to pick the least of two evils... Luckily, there are many other options from where to choose!
Still, I couldn't help notice you didn't answer the question...

If there is a god that is in fact responsible for the regularity in Nature, then I want to know about it. I refuse to believe in the story written down thousands of years ago... nor any other of the countless similar stories.

Why do you refuse to?

Because I'm fully aware of a lot of details in the inner working of the human brain, and human society, that can account for all that is believed about a god... and all that has been written about all gods.

And it doesn't need to be seen... I've never seen an electron, but I've seen its effects... and they are predictable and... well... regular.

Yet you do not know why they are predictable and regular.

no... may never come to know... at best, you can offer me a respite from that by believing... Well, I want to know... belief not allowed.

Now, this god thing... any effect you claim for it, we can attribute it to something else. The regularity detail, the cause of the big bang and a few other gaps in our knowledge are... under investigation. Until then, it does no good to assume that a thousands year old story has the correct answer.

The age of a story is irrelevant to whether it is correct or not. Science itself presupposes that such regularities exist, have existed, and will continue to exist so it is incapable by nature of ever finding a solution to that particular question. I still see no reason to reject the Biblical explanation for it.

Because it doesn't have any support? No observable god, more than half the human population not convinced of the existence of that particular god.
Because it relies on belief? No tangible evidence for anything.
Because it may be one of the infinite wrong answers? provided the lack of support and evidence, it does have a damn good chance of being wrong.

necessary attributes?

Yes, the qualities He must possess in order for us to know what we know.

Do you mind elaborating on these?

Talk to a muslim... talk to Rayaan... I wish you both luck, as you'll be claiming the same things for each other's god.

I have talked to Muslims before; they do not take this approach because it does not work for their god. However, I am talking to you right now so I’d prefer we stuck to what we both actually believed.

Judging by a guy called Hamza, who seems to be somewhat of a youtube muslim celebrity, I'd say allah covers all that.

It does behave in a coherent and predictable fashion, does it not?

Yes, thanks to He who governs in a coherent and predictable manner. I also know that it is going to do so until the end of days.

Like electrons and all other elementary particles that have been cataloged.

Exactly.

Now, your god.... only shows up in the story...

Not at all, you were just describing His governing acts above.

Was I?
Oh, silly me...
Again, you believe in that... you don't know that. There's a difference there, you agree?

Well, it doesn't make so much sense to me...
You see... how did the person who wrote that know about it? If that person could come to know it, then we can all come by this information, coherently and consistently... Sadly, reality shows the opposite... you yourself rely on the story to describe the god thing... you yourself have failed to find the real evidence... you just trust that whoever wrote the book had it.

Well that’d be Moses; but the words were not merely his. You see, when the one who knows everything, who made everything, and who cannot lie reveals something to us we can know that it is true.

But... what if... what if... what was written wasn't true?
The description of the god wasn't true. Then, "who cannot tell a lie" isn't exactly like that...
The account of Moses wasn't true. Then... "the one who knows everything and made everything" isn't exactly like that...
The story... is just a story to entertain children...

What if?....

One more reason not to assume that the story is correct.

Surely, that possibility has crossed your mind, no?

And if there was ever a person who knew about it, then I want to arrive at that knowledge, in an unbiased way... you see... the human brain is way too vulnerable to biases... and pre-acquired beliefs don't help a thing.

This seems to be an unreasonable standard. You mean to tell me that when you read about the DNA structure in a journal you demand to see the sequences for yourself and not just take their word for it? When you read about what it was like to walk on the Moon you demand to walk on the Moon yourself before you will believe any of it? Most of what we learn is learned from the experiences of others.

Indeed and they all describe exactly all the steps they took to arrive at their destination.
While your story presupposes the existence of a god. No where is it stated how to determine the nature of this god, in an unbiased, non-psycho-fallacious way.

My standard aims to remove such fallacies that arise in the human brain.

Perhaps...
Perhaps it's not the one you think.
Just because it makes sense, doesn't mean it's the right answer.

Then give me the right answer so I have a reason to doubt the veracity of my own.

In a 20-D space live a race of entities.
They are born, live, and die, much like us. They breed by matching 4 entities' "genetic" material to produce one offspring. These kids grow, go to their schools, do homework, college... work, etc.
One of these kids had a Uni assignment: to build a 3+1D universe with regularity that could be self sustainable.... so he did. And, being a perfectionist, decided to kick-start the whole thing in such a manner as to spark sentient life in a few corners of this universe.

There you go. Now tell me how this story is flawed and misses the whole regularity detail....

I have no faith in string theory...
There are hundreds of string theories... all untreatable... all lacking in testability.

I used string theory as an alternate hypothesis, which requires no god and explains everything... in a coherent and consistent fashion.

How does it explain everything in a coherent and consistent fashion? I do not believe string theory is used to explain the regularities we observe in Nature at all.

String theory aims to describe everything as strings, and different vibrations of these strings represent different particles... So the strings explain the regularity.
When and if that theory pans out...

I doesn't explain how to arrive at those answers, making it useless.

How does that make it useless? It gives us the answers. That seems very useful to me.

It does have a high likelihood of being the incorrect answer, remember?

It's no better than saying that the Flying Spaghetti monster explains all the wrong things with pasta.

The FSM? You’re so much better than that tired fallacious analogy. Yahweh is not analogous to any such entity.

yes, I know... nothing is analogous to yahweh...

Mine took 32 minutes. I guess we were both being accurate. I am enjoying the discussion.

dammit, I forgot to time this... oh well, doesn't matter... half an hour, or so...