RE: Book of Acts: Pure Fantasy
January 19, 2012 at 8:50 am
(This post was last modified: January 19, 2012 at 8:52 am by Whateverist.)
I suspect we would all agree that we live in a natural world. The only thing at issue is what belongs in that natural world. Apparently gravity is a part of the natural world even though we don't understand how exactly it works. If there is a higher intelligence or cosmic consciousness or mysterious other out there capable of acting in ways we don't understand (like gravity), they would be part of a more adequate account of the natural world. We simply lack objective knowledge of such things, or at least I lack it.
I'm not sure there is anything one can say to conclusively counter anyone's claims in this area however. If you want to preach to the choir I'll give you a couple of amens. But when it comes to persuading someone who thinks they have eye-witnessed something of this sort, I think you will fail. Of course you can call them gullible or stupid but that almost never persuades and only rarely coerces. I prefer to save the trash talk for when these folks show up trying to coerce me into believing their magic book or personal revelation.
The point about Occam's razor is a good one. As a rule of thumb for folks looking for what it is they think about new topics, it is pretty good. But it isn't an immutable principle and it is easy to misapply it. Researchers used to warn against anthropomorphizing the behavior of animals but which is the correct application of the razor? That every animal including ourselves has the same base emotions, feelings and drives .. or that every creature is a world unto itself, a black box about which we cannot intuit anything with our powers of empathy?
I'm not sure there is anything one can say to conclusively counter anyone's claims in this area however. If you want to preach to the choir I'll give you a couple of amens. But when it comes to persuading someone who thinks they have eye-witnessed something of this sort, I think you will fail. Of course you can call them gullible or stupid but that almost never persuades and only rarely coerces. I prefer to save the trash talk for when these folks show up trying to coerce me into believing their magic book or personal revelation.
The point about Occam's razor is a good one. As a rule of thumb for folks looking for what it is they think about new topics, it is pretty good. But it isn't an immutable principle and it is easy to misapply it. Researchers used to warn against anthropomorphizing the behavior of animals but which is the correct application of the razor? That every animal including ourselves has the same base emotions, feelings and drives .. or that every creature is a world unto itself, a black box about which we cannot intuit anything with our powers of empathy?
