On Belief in God X

[MindForgedManacle]

You're sort of missing the pount. As already pointed out, the actual purpose isn't to claim improbability of their religious views being correct, but to demonstrate that they're being inconsistent - and arriving no where - by claiming that their theological and soteriological views are thereby correct because of some particular experience, when it can be - and has been - claimed by believers of EVERY religion, and EVERY denomination of every religion.

In other words, if you accept the basicality of religious experience as a confirmation of said beliefs, you arrive at a contradiction and inconsistency, since said experience can be claimed by anyone just a validly and lead to mutually exclusive beliefs being true, such as there both being only one God and there being multiple gods being simultaneously true.

If you get dealt a royal flush, what do you do? It's right there in front of your eyes. Doesn't that give you justification for believing you have a royal flush?

You basically ignored my post...

In addition, your comparison is flawed because there is in fact an objective way to determine, to the satisfaction of all present, whether or not you actually, fairly were dealt a royal flush, which you cannot with religious experience, which can come to contradictory conclusions if it is accepted as a basis for determining the actual truth of the matter.

[Ryantology]

I don't know if you're picking up on the subtleties here, or if you outright disagree with these subtleties, but the royal flush scenario highlights the irrelevance of probabilities. Think of this alternate scenario: I deal 5 cards to you. You turn them over and see cards p, q, r, s and t. The chances of that ever happening were going to be some ridiculously small number, yet you sit there with the experiential justification that rightly allows you to claim you indeed have been dealt cards p, q, r, s and t, regardless of the maths.

Going with the poker analogy, however, you have to remember that the claims made by the religious imply an abrogation of the rules as we all understand them. A theist is not really making a claim of a royal flush, because royal flushes are simply highly unlikely and they do happen. They are making a claim that they hold a super-duper-extra royal megaflush. Every one of them. At the same time. According to their claims, they hold a hand of one million cards and every one of them is an infinity of every suit at once. When we scoff and say that isn't possible in a game of poker, they insist that their hand, and only their hand, deserves a special exception; that the rules of poker don't apply to their hand. But, ask them to show the cards, and they say they can't, because the cards are magical and you can only see them if you believe the theist's claim.

Why, then, should any of the other players not simply ignore these obviously cheating players, finish the hand among the rest of them, and continue the game without the obvious cheaters?

[paulpablo]

Recently I've realised that it's not correct to counter someone's belief in god x by pointing to n number of historically possible gods and deducing that x/n is low. This is incorrect if, and only if, the believer has experiential justification for their belief.

This thought is exactly the same as if we were all playing poker and we were dealt 5 cards. Someone could look at their hand and say "I've got a royal flush!" and then someone could counter by saying "it's unlikely because the probability of that happening is 1/x". Well, the *fact* is that they have got a properly basic belief that they have a royal flush (i.e. their belief has come directly via the senses). Therefore, they are justified in believing they have a royal flush even if the odds are 1/(10^99).

This is where the believer is positioned. Whether their senses *actually* gave them a true encounter is another matter, but my point is (I guess) that saying the truth of their belief is statistically unlikely is meaningless to someone with a justified belief (of some degree), hence why the two parties just slip right past each other without really engaging in a proper discussion.

Eager to see what the atheist response would be to this...

I didn't read anyone elses personal response but my own would be that when ever I have pointed out to someone who believes in god that their god is one of many that has been and is being worshiped it isn't to point out they might be worshiping the wrong one,
It's to point out that throughout history and throughout the world today mankind is constantly making up strange and unbelievable gods and prophets, plenty of them contradict each other and they are all passed on via human culture, it all points to their being either a bi product of human imagination and superstition.

Making a statement saying there are many gods you might be worshiping the wrong one makes the assumption that there are any that exist at all.

Also what do you consider to be experiential justification for a belief? If someone believes in god because of an experience with god I wouldn't be able to argue much against that I just simply wouldn't believe them when they told me about it because of my previous point about the amount of prophets and messiahs who have been on this earth already, charles manson, reverend jim jones and so on.

[FallentoReason]

[genkaus]

I disagree. While the experiential justification is sufficient for me to believe that I hold those cards, to rightly claim it,

FULL STOP

i.e. claim with the expectation of others believing me, I would require more than that.

*bzzzzt* I haven't once said anyone else *but* the person with the experiential justification should be believing event x/belief y.

You missed the caveat I issued down the line - IF there are no valid objections or alternate explanations.

Sure. But we're not talking about what others should take away from your anecdotal evidence. All I'm saying is that the theist has the right to claim their religious experience but ONLY because internally they are being consistent; you see a royal flush, you can claim you have a royal flush. End of. If you want to bring in other people's degree of belief with respect to any given claim, well, that's a different matter altogether...

That's another problem with theistic beliefs - they are often not internally consistent.

...yes, true, but what I was getting at is that if you see a royal flush, then you have reason to believe there's a royal flush in front of you. Getting that person to check and recheck, question themselves and think of alternative explanations is ridiculous. The only thing that would suffice from that angle would be to accept there really is a demon controlling our minds which are actually floating in a vacuum. Only then might a properly basic belief be false, because in actuality there isn't an external world like we perceive there to be. If you personally have no reason to accept that crushing level of scepticism, then treating the theist's properly basic beliefs as B-grade makes *you* the inconsistent one.

Let's leave the demons out of these. We both know that there are a myriad of ways in which what you consider a properly basic belief could be false without invoking them.

This is something you haven't acknowledged so far - that atheist does have many reasons to be skeptical about the theist's claims and he shares those reasons. If I am the one holding the royal flush, the other guy is not simply telling me to check and recheck. The first reason he gives me is that he happens to be holding a royal four-of-a-kind. That alone is reason enough for me to atleast look at my cards again. As it happens, he is also willing to show me his hand. Which means, I am not being asked to check and recheck my cards without any reason, but that I am being given sufficient reasons to doubt my experience.

Again, you're dipping into a slightly different topic. When I said "grant them that experiential justification" all I'm saying is that you should accept that they're being internally consistent, just like the guy who sees a royal flush has the right to claim they have a royal flush. Whether we believe him or not is a different topic altogether.

Granting that would depend on their claim. For example, while I may grant the experience of having a royal flush as being internally consistent, the same wouldn't stand for the claim of having five of a kind. Theistic claims often fall in the latter category. They are sufficiently contradictory to reality for a person (whether it be the theist or anyone else) to question the experience on that basis alone.

[Ryantology]

They can say whatever they want about the cards they see in front of them. The way properly basic beliefs function almost always guarantee that they are being internally consistent with their claims. Whether or not the internal is consistent with the *ex*ternal is a different matter, and one that you can tackle by undermining their concept of a super-duper-extra royal megaflush. If it's contradictory like a square circle, then their experiential justification is invalid since the experience was false to begin with, just like someone who claims to have seen a square circle holds a false belief.

What I'm trying to say, and what I often say to theists when this subject comes up, is that internal beliefs (should) mean nothing by themselves. Any belief I hold is not a based upon anything I can reliably trust until it has undergone, and survived, the far more rigorous stress test that is testing it external to myself; sharing it with others and allowing them to test it. I am a human. I have senses which are prone to reporting false or contradictory information and I do not have anything like a perfect understanding of what they do show me to know, every time, what is legitimate and what is not all by myself.

If I hold a hand which looks to me, at first glance, like a super-duper-extra royal megaflush, it would be dishonest of me to actually believe it is such a thing until I lay the cards down and subject my hand to the scrutiny of both the rules of the game and the other players at the table. I may really want it to be the ultimate hand of poker, because I am playing this game and I want to win it, but if I am to be a player of this game, I can't let my desire to win be more important than following the rules. Otherwise, I am not really sitting at this table to play the game honestly. I'm only sitting here so that I can make believe that I'm special and feel the entirely insipid satisfaction of knowing that nobody else can ever prove that my hand isn't better than all of theirs.

In short, internal beliefs (other than those which form the border between myself and full-on solipsism) don't mean jack shit to me, and that does not except any that I actually might hold.

[Chas]

Recently I've realised that it's not correct to counter someone's belief in god x by pointing to n number of historically possible gods and deducing that x/n is low. This is incorrect if, and only if, the believer has experiential justification for their belief.

This thought is exactly the same as if we were all playing poker and we were dealt 5 cards. Someone could look at their hand and say "I've got a royal flush!" and then someone could counter by saying "it's unlikely because the probability of that happening is 1/x". Well, the *fact* is that they have got a properly basic belief that they have a royal flush (i.e. their belief has come directly via the senses). Therefore, they are justified in believing they have a royal flush even if the odds are 1/(10^99).

This is where the believer is positioned. Whether their senses *actually* gave them a true encounter is another matter, but my point is (I guess) that saying the truth of their belief is statistically unlikely is meaningless to someone with a justified belief (of some degree), hence why the two parties just slip right past each other without really engaging in a proper discussion.

Eager to see what the atheist response would be to this...

The analogy is flawed. The flaw is that the believer believes in the straight flush without having seen the hand. There is no evidence that his particular religion is the right one. None.

[FallentoReason]

FULL STOP


*bzzzzt* I haven't once said anyone else *but* the person with the experiential justification should be believing event x/belief y.

You missed the caveat I issued down the line - IF there are no valid objections or alternate explanations.

Are you saying if there's no valid objections or alternate explanations, then you still have no reason to believe them? I'm confused...

Either way, we're not talking about anyone else's beliefs but the theist in question.

That's another problem with theistic beliefs - they are often not internally consistent.

True, but we're keeping it simple in this thread. You see a royal flush, you can claim you have a royal flush. Nothing more, nothing less.

Let's leave the demons out of these. We both know that there are a myriad of ways in which what you consider a properly basic belief could be false without invoking them.

This is something you haven't acknowledged so far - that atheist does have many reasons to be skeptical about the theist's claims and he shares those reasons. If I am the one holding the royal flush, the other guy is not simply telling me to check and recheck. The first reason he gives me is that he happens to be holding a royal four-of-a-kind. That alone is reason enough for me to atleast look at my cards again. As it happens, he is also willing to show me his hand. Which means, I am not being asked to check and recheck my cards without any reason, but that I am being given sufficient reasons to doubt my experience.

And why should the person with the experiential justification for their claim even listen to your suggestions? Sure, any given properly basic belief might have been formed in such a way that it doesn't actually reflect the truth about the subject in question, but when we're talking about a past event, we can't exactly go about it like you outlined allegorically. All the theist can really do is claim p i.e. what they perceived to experience. Suggestions that presuppose ~p and therefore bluntly conclude that they're e.g, deluded, don't really do much. As the theist, I'd just shrug my shoulders and say "so what? I know what I experienced". You casting a bit of agnosticism over a past event isn't a strong argument at all.

Granting that would depend on their claim. For example, while I may grant the experience of having a royal flush as being internally consistent, the same wouldn't stand for the claim of having five of a kind. Theistic claims often fall in the latter category. They are sufficiently contradictory to reality for a person (whether it be the theist or anyone else) to question the experience on that basis alone.

Sounds like you know the totality of what we call "reality". Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence my friend

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They can say whatever they want about the cards they see in front of them. The way properly basic beliefs function almost always guarantee that they are being internally consistent with their claims. Whether or not the internal is consistent with the *ex*ternal is a different matter, and one that you can tackle by undermining their concept of a super-duper-extra royal megaflush. If it's contradictory like a square circle, then their experiential justification is invalid since the experience was false to begin with, just like someone who claims to have seen a square circle holds a false belief.

What I'm trying to say, and what I often say to theists when this subject comes up, is that internal beliefs (should) mean nothing by themselves. Any belief I hold is not a based upon anything I can reliably trust until it has undergone, and survived, the far more rigorous stress test that is testing it external to myself; sharing it with others and allowing them to test it. I am a human. I have senses which are prone to reporting false or contradictory information and I do not have anything like a perfect understanding of what they do show me to know, every time, what is legitimate and what is not all by myself.

If I hold a hand which looks to me, at first glance, like a super-duper-extra royal megaflush, it would be dishonest of me to actually believe it is such a thing until I lay the cards down and subject my hand to the scrutiny of both the rules of the game and the other players at the table. I may really want it to be the ultimate hand of poker, because I am playing this game and I want to win it, but if I am to be a player of this game, I can't let my desire to win be more important than following the rules. Otherwise, I am not really sitting at this table to play the game honestly. I'm only sitting here so that I can make believe that I'm special and feel the entirely insipid satisfaction of knowing that nobody else can ever prove that my hand isn't better than all of theirs.

In short, internal beliefs (other than those which form the border between myself and full-on solipsism) don't mean jack shit to me, and that does not except any that I actually might hold.

Jeez... you must have a pretty hard time getting through your average day. Do you confirm with the bus driver every time you get on that the route number the bus is displaying is accurate? Do you then confirm with the people within earshot that the bus driver did indeed say yes/no? I'm having a hard time believing you question every single internal belief (i.e. properly basic beliefs, as I don't see any other way for an internal belief to form, apart from a priori beliefs but they don't apply to your science-based p.o.v. above) you hold.

---

Recently I've realised that it's not correct to counter someone's belief in god x by pointing to n number of historically possible gods and deducing that x/n is low. This is incorrect if, and only if, the believer has experiential justification for their belief.

This thought is exactly the same as if we were all playing poker and we were dealt 5 cards. Someone could look at their hand and say "I've got a royal flush!" and then someone could counter by saying "it's unlikely because the probability of that happening is 1/x". Well, the *fact* is that they have got a properly basic belief that they have a royal flush (i.e. their belief has come directly via the senses). Therefore, they are justified in believing they have a royal flush even if the odds are 1/(10^99).

This is where the believer is positioned. Whether their senses *actually* gave them a true encounter is another matter, but my point is (I guess) that saying the truth of their belief is statistically unlikely is meaningless to someone with a justified belief (of some degree), hence why the two parties just slip right past each other without really engaging in a proper discussion.

Eager to see what the atheist response would be to this...

The analogy is flawed. The flaw is that the believer believes in the straight flush without having seen the hand. There is no evidence that his particular religion is the right one. None.

I'm not sure how you know what they've seen or haven't seen. On that note, they have the right to believe their religion is right *only* if they have experiential justification.

[genkaus]

Are you saying if there's no valid objections or alternate explanations, then you still have no reason to believe them? I'm confused...

Either way, we're not talking about anyone else's beliefs but the theist in question.

No, I'm saying that if there are no valid objections or alternate explanations, then the theist has a good enough reason to believe the experience. The presence of those factors should undercut his own experience.

True, but we're keeping it simple in this thread. You see a royal flush, you can claim you have a royal flush. Nothing more, nothing less.

Then that would be an over-simplification. Theistic claims are never as simple as seeing a royal flush. While seeing a royal flush you are looking at something that is very much possible - though improbable - and perceiving it through normal visual mode. Theists claim to perceive something outside known possibility often via some different mode of perception. That is the fundamental difference between seeing a royal flush and experiencing god - a difference which changes things a lot.

And why should the person with the experiential justification for their claim even listen to your suggestions? Sure, any given properly basic belief might have been formed in such a way that it doesn't actually reflect the truth about the subject in question, but when we're talking about a past event, we can't exactly go about it like you outlined allegorically. All the theist can really do is claim p i.e. what they perceived to experience. Suggestions that presuppose ~p and therefore bluntly conclude that they're e.g, deluded, don't really do much. As the theist, I'd just shrug my shoulders and say "so what? I know what I experienced". You casting a bit of agnosticism over a past event isn't a strong argument at all.

The reasons for the theist taking my suggestions form the basis of a rational debate:
1. He cares whether his beliefs are true.
2. He wants convince me of the truth of his beliefs.

If neither of the above is true then there wouldn't be a reason for the discussion at all. If he doesn't want me to share his belief and would continue to hold them regardless of truth of the matter, then all debate is pointless. So I'm assuming that atleast one of the above is true and thus reason enough to listen to my suggestions.

As for presupposition of ~p, that is the default position we both happen to agree on. We agree on certain premises such as this being the real world, perceivable through occasionally erroneous sense and working in specific manner. As far as things we agree on are concerned, there is no god in the picture. He is the one trying to bring in something extra. And not only that something extra improbable (like the royal flush) - it also often runs contrary to premises we've agreed upon (like a royal flush when we both can see that I have 4 kings).

Sounds like you know the totality of what we call "reality". Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence my friend

I don't need to know the totality of reality to judge something as unreal. As I said, if it seems contradictory to whatever part of reality I do know about, then I have sufficient justification for doubting it.