Fundamental Arrogance in Christianity

[Aristocatt]

The bear in cave argument doesn't really work.  We have evidence that bears do in fact live in caves.
I can be skeptical that a bear lives in that cave, but the sum of possible dangers that I do know exist within the cave can make entering the cave seem like a bad decision relative to the amount of awesomeness(utility) I expect to gain by entering the cave.  


If you showed me a graph with a normal distribution, and a mean and median of 50.  Then you said you were going to pick one of the numbers that made up that standard distribution at random, I wouldn't claim "Ohhh I know the number is 50"  I would admit that I am completely ignorant of the number.  If you pressed me to guess the number, and said that if I were within 1 STD of the number selected, that I would get $10 dollars, I would pick the number 50.

In both cases, I do not assume that the bear is in the cave, nor do I assume that the number is within 1 STD of 50.
However, in both cases, I can use my understanding and knowledge of other concepts to make a decision about what action I should be taking in both instances.
I do know caves house bears, just like I know that the best chance to correctly be within 1 STD of a number plotted on a normal distribution is to select the median(or mean or mode, they are all the same).

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You can have absurd null-hypotheses though. If you have an absurd null hypothesis on your hands, sit down and think for a bit, you probably fucked up somewhere.

E.g.
I flip a coin 100 times and hypothesize that it will come up heads at least 10 times.
The null hypothesis is that it will come up 10 or more times.

Clearly this is a bad null hypothesis if my goal were to establish a relationship between coin flipping and probability, but that is because there are millions of experiments of coin flipping that already have shown what that relationship is.

On the other hand, if I suspected that the coin was faulty and biased towards tails, then my experiment is poorly constructed. I have improperly defined my hypothesis and because of it my null hypothesis is backwards.
In this sense, saying P or not-P doesn't really get at the crux of what the null hypothesis should be. It deserves to be qualified.

A good way to think about the null hypothesis, is that if you assert some kind of new-unknown relationship in reality, the null hypothesis is the negative of that.
That is, the new relationship I was looking for with the coin flip was that it was biased towards tails. So my null hypothesis is that it is not biased towards tails.
Basically don't assume you know something until you have evidence for it.

[PETE_ROSE]

They may be evidence of something, but just what they are evidence of is the tricky part.  That's why the default is no relation.  You've simply linked them to God because there is a convention of doing so.  And that is improper.

I can think of at least 3 peer-reviewed studies that suggest belief in God is instinctive rather than conventional:

Boston Study; Oxford Study; Skin Conductivity

Of course all of these studies are silent as to whether the instinct refers to something real or only imagined, but that does not affect my argument. It is natural for humans to believe in the divine by default.

Thank you for those links NS. The lie detector test for atheists was an interesting read indeed.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I can think of at least 3 peer-reviewed studies that suggest belief in God is instinctive rather than conventional:

Boston Study; Oxford Study; Skin Conductivity

Of course all of these studies are silent as to whether the instinct refers to something real or only imagined, but that does not affect my argument. It is natural for humans to believe in the divine by default.

I disagree. The question is what does it mean for it to be natural to believe in gods and the afterlife, and your argument very specifically makes the inference that one interpretation of that meaning should be the default position. That's a flawed inference. Whether that instinct refers to something real or imagined is indeed relevant to your argument. It may be natural to believe in the afterlife for reasons having nothing to do with an actual afterlife. The null hypothesis isn't about what is natural or conventional, but about the relationships between causes and effects. There is no reason why a natural concept should necessarily correspond to a veridical one. Until you demonstrate that there is a relationship, the null hypothesis is that there is none.

At the beginning of every inquiry, there is always a given. You may later conclude that the given was incorrect but that does not negate the fact that you had to start with one.

[Angrboda]

I disagree.  The question is what does it mean for it to be natural to believe in gods and the afterlife, and your argument very specifically makes the inference that one interpretation of that meaning should be the default position.  That's a flawed inference.  Whether that instinct refers to something real or imagined is indeed relevant to your argument.  It may be natural to believe in the afterlife for reasons having nothing to do with an actual afterlife.  The null hypothesis isn't about what is natural or conventional, but about the relationships between causes and effects.  There is no reason why a natural concept should necessarily correspond to a veridical one.  Until you demonstrate that there is a relationship, the null hypothesis is that there is none.

At the beginning of every inquiry, there is always a given. You may later conclude that the given was incorrect but that does not negate the fact that you had to start with one.

That's the role of the hypothesis. If you start with a given, then your inquiry is pre-scientific. That's beginning with your conclusion and walking down the path of confirmation bias. A child may naturally presume that there are monsters under the bed. However it is not the job of rational inquiry to start with that as a given and disprove it. That's madness.

[Harry Nevis]

They may be evidence of something, but just what they are evidence of is the tricky part.  That's why the default is no relation.  You've simply linked them to God because there is a convention of doing so.  And that is improper.

I can think of at least 3 peer-reviewed studies that suggest belief in God is instinctive rather than conventional:

Boston Study; Oxford Study; Skin Conductivity

Of course all of these studies are silent as to whether the instinct refers to something real or only imagined, but that does not affect my argument. It is natural for humans to believe in the divine by default.

It SHOULD affect your argument.

[Harry Nevis]

I disagree.  The question is what does it mean for it to be natural to believe in gods and the afterlife, and your argument very specifically makes the inference that one interpretation of that meaning should be the default position.  That's a flawed inference.  Whether that instinct refers to something real or imagined is indeed relevant to your argument.  It may be natural to believe in the afterlife for reasons having nothing to do with an actual afterlife.  The null hypothesis isn't about what is natural or conventional, but about the relationships between causes and effects.  There is no reason why a natural concept should necessarily correspond to a veridical one.  Until you demonstrate that there is a relationship, the null hypothesis is that there is none.

At the beginning of every inquiry, there is always a given. You may later conclude that the given was incorrect but that does not negate the fact that you had to start with one.

What is the given for "Where is the objective, verifiable evidence for the proposition of a deity?"

[Whateverist]

They may be evidence of something, but just what they are evidence of is the tricky part.  That's why the default is no relation.  You've simply linked them to God because there is a convention of doing so.  And that is improper.

I can think of at least 3 peer-reviewed studies that suggest belief in God is instinctive rather than conventional:

Boston Study; Oxford Study; Skin Conductivity

Of course all of these studies are silent as to whether the instinct refers to something real or only imagined, but that does not affect my argument. It is natural for humans to believe in the divine by default.

Good that you acknowledge my bolded.  But by extension what should one's stance be toward other 'instinctual' beliefs such as a flat earth or the rotation of every other object in the sky around our most special of planets?  Do we just accept that which we're inclined to believe or attempt to gain a more comprehensive perspective?

[Neo-Scholastic]

I can think of at least 3 peer-reviewed studies that suggest belief in God is instinctive rather than conventional:

Boston Study; Oxford Study; Skin Conductivity

Of course all of these studies are silent as to whether the instinct refers to something real or only imagined, but that does not affect my argument. It is natural for humans to believe in the divine by default.

Good that you acknowledge my bolded.  But by extension what should one's stance be toward other 'instinctual' beliefs such as a flat earth or the rotation of every other object in the sky around our most special of planets?  Do we just accept that which we're inclined to believe or attempt to gain a more comprehensive perspective?

My everyday stance is to trust but verify. The alternative is to doubt everything until proven otherwise. My point is that while the second has its place it shouldn't be considered the default position all the time for everything.

I cannot go through life on the assumption that my instincts are always wrong, or that my senses are entirety unreliable or that reason is ineffective.

To use Joe's example, children are naturally afraid of the dark for presumably sound evolutionary reasons. Their right and proper default belief is that the nighttime forest is dangerous even if no predators are currently present. Such is highly unlikely in a suburban home and their fears can be soothed by looking under the bed with a flashlight.

That is the extreme example. Our more common experience is that things generally are as they seem to be. The mountains in the distance are most likely not cardboard cutouts. For the reasons I outlined previously there is no compelling reason for considering not-P any more compelling than P with respect to the existence of god and that since our instincts, common experience and thousands of years of cross cultural reports point us in the direction of God's existence that makes it the better default belief.

[Mister Agenda]

Thank you for those links NS.  The lie detector test for atheists was an interesting read indeed.

It would be more interesting if there was a proper control and more differentiation. What about asking Christians to dare Brahma to bring calamity on them? What about separating the atheists based on whether they were once religious or were raised to be freethinkers? How about differentiating between asking for trouble from God and wishing terrible things on yourself in general? All this study does, which is not insignificant, is to suggest more studies.

[Aristocatt]

Damn dem confounded variables!