RE: Is God a rational belief?
May 10, 2011 at 11:04 pm
(This post was last modified: May 10, 2011 at 11:46 pm by Whirling Moat.)
Peace....
I understand your point as it relates to the exterior view of the plausability of the account. As theVOID has indicated there are other readily available explanations which may provide a better and more palatable explanation for such an experience..However this is suitable from an external view. In other words, If Prof. Jackson was satisfied from a pragmatic point of view that the experience satisfied his own empirical tests would it not be reasonable for him to believe?
A delusion is a psychotic break of sorts. We expect that there will be accompanying explanations for the episodes such as inducement by drugs, disease, physical or emotional trauma, et al. In the absence of evidence of any of the aforementioned causes, is it reasonable for others to offer delusion as a likely explanation of a higher order than the explanation provided within the story?
For the record, my position is that it is reasonable for the one with the experience to believe if during the experience adequate tests were performed to validate the experience. I would also go as far as saying that credibilty does have a direct relationship with the believabilty of any claim. Credibilty would mean more than trustworthiness, it would also speak to the process a person undertakes before making certain kinds of claims. If the person is known for rigorously examining events before making judgements...I would say that such testimony should be regarded highly and should be weighty for anyone.
Whirling Moat
Peace...
How about the belief system of the ancient Egyptians who held that ascended man is God? That is close to my belief, from this view the fact that the scriptures are man made is not problematic.
Whirling Moat
Peace...
I sort through my beliefs better by creating such problems..
Well I intended to add his collegiate pedigree to buttress a certain aspect of the story. I wanted it to be relatively clear that his beliefs would be based on subjective experience and some real analysis of the situation..A trained scientist will probably consider that he may be experiencing a delusion..If he is satisfied after analysis that the event is real it would probable result from careful study.
Exactly, except let us say that at some point he did consider the angle that the experience was subjective only and by some method became satisfied that the experience did in fact occur outside of himself..
I guess my question would be is it possible to reduce the probabilty of ~P from an interior (subjective) standpoint, or should the rule be that any conclusion reached which cannot be corrobotated by others is subject to exponentially higher scrutiny and should be treated with skepticism when the claim is extraordinary even if the claim is verified by atleast one person of sound mind. Further, if the person conducting the test is the claimant, any results form the test other than ~P should be discarded?
Whirling Moat
(May 10, 2011 at 10:53 am)R-e-n-n-a-t Wrote: Not rational in any sense. Rational doesn't mean 'believable', and simply the fact that other, equally reputable, people have claimed to have made up all the characters removes it from the realm of possibility. If the President of the United States, or any country, for that matter, claimed to have experienced this and undertook all the aforementioned tests, even if Richard Dawkins himself backed up the President's story, this is still firmly in the realm of the impossible.
As unlikely as them both being sociopathic liers is, it would still be more unlikely that this event occured.
I understand your point as it relates to the exterior view of the plausability of the account. As theVOID has indicated there are other readily available explanations which may provide a better and more palatable explanation for such an experience..However this is suitable from an external view. In other words, If Prof. Jackson was satisfied from a pragmatic point of view that the experience satisfied his own empirical tests would it not be reasonable for him to believe?
A delusion is a psychotic break of sorts. We expect that there will be accompanying explanations for the episodes such as inducement by drugs, disease, physical or emotional trauma, et al. In the absence of evidence of any of the aforementioned causes, is it reasonable for others to offer delusion as a likely explanation of a higher order than the explanation provided within the story?
For the record, my position is that it is reasonable for the one with the experience to believe if during the experience adequate tests were performed to validate the experience. I would also go as far as saying that credibilty does have a direct relationship with the believabilty of any claim. Credibilty would mean more than trustworthiness, it would also speak to the process a person undertakes before making certain kinds of claims. If the person is known for rigorously examining events before making judgements...I would say that such testimony should be regarded highly and should be weighty for anyone.
Whirling Moat
Peace...
(May 10, 2011 at 11:33 am)Doubting Thomas Wrote: It's definitely not rational to believe in a being that you have to rely on faith to keep believing in. It's also not rational to believe in a god when it's fairly obvious that all gods worshiped throughout history were apparently made up by man.
How about the belief system of the ancient Egyptians who held that ascended man is God? That is close to my belief, from this view the fact that the scriptures are man made is not problematic.
Whirling Moat
Peace...
Quote:Welcome to the forums Interesting problem, thanks for posting it, I love these sorts of epistemic problems.
I sort through my beliefs better by creating such problems..
Quote:His character is not relevant unless he is predisposed to delusion (which downshifts the probability that his experience was real), he could be Prof Jackson or Janitor Jackson it makes no difference - We can assert in a hypothetical that he is not lying about his experience and he is not predisposed to delusion - He has generally normally functioning cognitive facilities and actually had an experience of some nature, be it an externally caused experience or an internally generated phenomenon such as a delusion, drug use etc.
Well I intended to add his collegiate pedigree to buttress a certain aspect of the story. I wanted it to be relatively clear that his beliefs would be based on subjective experience and some real analysis of the situation..A trained scientist will probably consider that he may be experiencing a delusion..If he is satisfied after analysis that the event is real it would probable result from careful study.
Quote:Let's also assume that Jackson believes that the experience took place in objective reality and not entirely within the confines of his mind, he is not questioning the nature of the experience and feels rational in believing that it is true.
Exactly, except let us say that at some point he did consider the angle that the experience was subjective only and by some method became satisfied that the experience did in fact occur outside of himself..
Quote:Therefore, It is not rational for S to believe that P given E1+E2+E3 because it is much more likely that it was caused by ~P.
It is even less rational for ~S to believe that P given E2+E3+E4 because E1 (direct experience) is a higher standard of evidence than E4.
If S is a rational person he would believe that his experience is more likely given that ~P.
I guess my question would be is it possible to reduce the probabilty of ~P from an interior (subjective) standpoint, or should the rule be that any conclusion reached which cannot be corrobotated by others is subject to exponentially higher scrutiny and should be treated with skepticism when the claim is extraordinary even if the claim is verified by atleast one person of sound mind. Further, if the person conducting the test is the claimant, any results form the test other than ~P should be discarded?
Whirling Moat
