Friendly Atheism

[John 6IX Breezy]

 But I suspect even this will trigger debates about what "sound" means ...

As it should; I disagree with labeling someone's beliefs as irrational based on intuition. It warrants proper criteria and measurements.

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Why do you keep trying to change the goal post away from rational religious belief? We are not talking about what is considered medically irrational/delusional. Unless you want to discuss why some of the christian beliefs could fit the medical criteria. 

Phobias by definition are irrational fears. Just because we think (have a hypothesis for) the neuropsychology of the brain for phobias does not make phobias rational. You have no idea of what you're talking about.

I gave medical criteria because it is the closest thing I can think of to an objective measure, and because you agreed with Boru that brought up psychotic behavior.

And no, phobias are not irrational by definition. Irrational is not a criteria in the DSM 5. The closest criteria to irrational that the DSM offers is "The fear or anxiety is out of proportion to the actual danger posed by the specific object or situation and to the sociocultural context" (APA, 2013, p. 197).

Reference: American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: Author

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

No, I would not say it is rational to believe vaccines work because scientists believe they work.  I would say that it is rational to believe that vaccines work because vaccines work.  But you have the proposition exactly backwards.  Would you believe someone is rational because they believe vaccines DON'T work?

Irrationality (as far as regards the topic at hand) seems to mean either believing a proposition to be true when there is no good reason for supposing it is, or believing a proposition to be false in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is true. 

Let's take the virgin birth of Jesus as an example from religion.  Parthenogenesis never occurs naturally in mammals - it isn't physically possible.  However, it can be induced in mammals with some very complex procedures, such as gene splicing and fiddling about with stem cells.  It is therefore non-rational to believe that Jesus was the result of a virgin birth (a much more likely explanation is that Mary told a fib or two).  It doesn't matter how may people believe that it happened, or how sincerely this belief is.  Since it flies in the face of the observed facts, it is not a rational belief.

Boru

I think most people believe vaccines work, or don't work, on authority. The average person has neither the time, interest, or ability to read published research on vaccines, and simply trust that scientists have it figuired out. I'm scientifically trained, and I still struggle to understand research published in other fields. I think most people build and defend their positions using news articles that interpret and report the original research, giving it a narrative. Vaccine debates tend to also be partisan precisely because news outlets are partisan. But from what I've seen, anti-vaxers have their reasons, such as a distrust of authority (particularly governments, or fraud in the scientific community), that makes their position rational.

I think your virgin birth example is interesting. You seem to imply that it's possible, just not natural, it requires intervention. Isn't that what Christians say? The story isn't that the virgin birth happened naturally, but that God intervened. The virgin birth is rational if God exists; it isn't inherently irrational.

And I think most people believe vaccines work because the death rates for certain diseases have dropped like a paralyzed falcon since the vaccines became available.  No one needs to do biomedical research to judge whether or not vaccines work, any more than one has to research physics to understand that hammers are heavy.  Your appeal to anti-vaxxers is misplaced.  Most anti-vaxxers take the position they do, not because they believe that vaccines don't work, but because they think vaccines lead to autism.  In the scientific community, this is known as 'being mind-wobblingly stupid'.

Of course, if you're going to appeal to miracles, then the virgin birth is possible.  But belief in miracles IS inherently irrational, so we're back where we started.

Boru

[GrandizerII]

 But I suspect even this will trigger debates about what "sound" means ...

As it should; I disagree with labeling someone's beliefs as irrational based on intuition. It warrants proper criteria and measurements.

Rationality is to do with the use of reason. But solely relying on logic seems to imply that evidence need play no role. And if so, then of course theism can be rational, just not in the sense that we here tend to think of that term. That's why it's better to ask if theism is instead based on sound arguments, which in others words means based on observable evidence as much as valid logic. I would argue it's not, for the most part (unless you're defining theism in a very trivial sense).

[brewer]

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Why do you keep trying to change the goal post away from rational religious belief? We are not talking about what is considered medically irrational/delusional. Unless you want to discuss why some of the christian beliefs could fit the medical criteria. 

Phobias by definition are irrational fears. Just because we think (have a hypothesis for) the neuropsychology of the brain for phobias does not make phobias rational. You have no idea of what you're talking about.

I gave medical criteria because it is the closest thing I can think of to an objective measure, and because you agreed with Boru that brought up psychotic behavior.

And no, phobias are not irrational by definition. Irrational is not a criteria in the DSM 5. The closest criteria to irrational that the DSM offers is "The fear or anxiety is out of proportion to the actual danger posed by the specific object or situation and to the sociocultural context" (APA, 2013, p. 197).

Reference: American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: Author

You just continue to be incorrect:

An extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something.: https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/phobia

a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it.: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/phobia

[John 6IX Breezy]

And I think most people believe vaccines work because the death rates for certain diseases have dropped like a paralyzed falcon since the vaccines became available.  No one needs to do biomedical research to judge whether or not vaccines work, any more than one has to research physics to understand that hammers are heavy.  Your appeal to anti-vaxxers is misplaced.  Most anti-vaxxers take the position they do, not because they believe that vaccines don't work, but because they think vaccines lead to autism.  In the scientific community, this is known as 'being mind-wobblingly stupid'.

Of course, if you're going to appeal to miracles, then the virgin birth is possible.  But belief in miracles IS inherently irrational, so we're back where we started.

Boru

To know that death rates have dropped you need access to those statistics. Once you have those statistics you need to run some kind of correlation to establish that a relationship exists between vaccination rates and death rates; you also need to rule out any confounding variables, such as other medical advances (e.g. the emergence of antibiotics, etc.). And even after you have done all that, you've only established a correlation not a causation for the death rates. So, I disagree that no one needs to do biomedical research to judge whether or not vaccines work; at the very least statistical analysis is required that is above most people's capabilities.

The virgin birth has been attributed to a miracle since its inception. So it seems we agree that virgin births are not inherently impossible or irrational, and now disagree on miracles. But miracles are also not inherently irrational, they are dependant on the existence of God. You would need to go one more step up the latter and say beliefs in God are irrational.

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You just continue to be incorrect:

An extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something.: https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/phobia

a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it.: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/phobia

Hmm I see. I wouldn't use a regular dictionary for discipline-specific terminology; you are bound to get definitions that are descriptive of colloquial usage. The DSM is going to have more authority in this regard.

[brewer]

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You just continue to be incorrect:

An extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something.: https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/phobia

a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it.: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/phobia

Hmm I see. I wouldn't use a regular dictionary for discipline-specific terminology; you are bound to get definitions that are descriptive of colloquial usage. The DSM is going to have more authority in this regard.

More authority..............

We're not making a diagnosis.

[John 6IX Breezy]

More authority..............

Yes, authority. Dictionaries are descriptive, whereas the DSM is prescriptive; they literally create the definitions lol.

[brewer]

More authority..............

Yes, authority. Dictionaries are descriptive, whereas the DSM is prescriptive; they literally create the definitions lol.

We're not making a medical diagnosis. Stop changing the goal post. The term phobia existed long before the DSM 5.

[GrandizerII]

Yes, authority. Dictionaries are descriptive, whereas the DSM is prescriptive; they literally create the definitions lol.

We're not making a medical diagnosis. Stop changing the goal post. The term phobia existed long before the DSM 5.

The DSM IV was clearer on this:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK51...e/ch3.t11/

[John 6IX Breezy]

The DSM IV was clearer on this:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK51...e/ch3.t11/

That's interesting.

DSM 4: "The person recognizes that the fear is excessive or unreasonable."
DSM 5: "The fear or anxiety is out of proportion to the actual danger posed..."

This point at least seems to reflect the conversation we've been having. Its a shift from first-person to a third-person criteria. Perhaps having the person recognize that the fear is unreasonable is not a good criteria because the fear may appear reasonable to the person (e.g. fear of flying, fear of death, etc.).