No he hasn't - it was already that way a long time before the waffle was shocked

I refer to my first comment in this thread (paraphrasing a little) - "Everyone is ignorant".

But again that's only if you apply a ridiculous standard of proof on it before you decide to call it "proof".You're effectively saying all of mathematics, all of physics is human arrogance.

However technically right, what worth is there in assuming that viewpoint? Where would that sort of reasoning get you? Probably on a mountain in Nepal wearing a robe.

Which I would like to point out, would be totally awesome. Especially at sunrise.

I believe it was Socrates who most famously said (probably in foreign) "The beginning of all knowledge is to know that you know nothing".

A scientist should accept that every idea is open to reinterpretation or being totally overturned. You should never cling to any concept so preciously that it blinds you to new ideas.

Great so we agree





All like reasoning in my mind just strengthens the argument for ignoring faith. once again:

Quite probably - I can't remember what the question was any more

*goes to bed*

That's fine, but you have to realise that you are drawing your own line there. You have no method of moving beyond that to tell other people where their line should be. Yet this is something that you attempt, and you also tell them off for allowing themselves to be told.

My initial argument was intended to demonstrate a logical limit to the power of all arguments about God, both for and against, which is that they can never be settled without the assistance of the object of their inquiry. Basically if God is all powerful and all knowing - you can only test for his existence if he allows it. All I needed up to that point was to show that this absolute certainty is unattainable.

If we extend ourselves beyond the question of whether God is demonstrably fact or fiction, and go into the realm of probability, that doesn't bring an end to the problem at all. If you say you are 99.99999999999999999999999999% sure there is no God, and that this is close enough to proof that I should accept it as such, I'm just going to doubt your number. If you try to use any number at all, I will make you abandon it. And that will throw up a problem with your approach to the probability of this in general - which is that you cannot enumerate it, and the reason why you can't put your probability theory into any concrete form is that it's actually just a gut feeling you have. A hunch.

If you choose instead to rely on the absurdity of certain religious stories, I will simply argue that is tantamount to saying you don't believe the bible because any story with a character called Ichabod can't be true. And beyond that we would have drifted into a region of anecdotal argument that only serves to improve my position at your expense anyway.

If we go towards Occam's razor or other simplistic logical tools, I will denounce them as mere rules of thumb, and insufficient as a method of choosing between competing hypotheses. Or else argue that they can be applied equally against you.

You might choose a new direction entirely, but my strategy is going to be to force you at every step to dilute your arguments and rob you of that certainty with which you started, until the remainder amounts to little enough that I will simply dismiss it as lacking persuasive power, nothing more than a matter of opinion. Whether this strategy works is really up to you, but I'll be honest - you are going to need some pretty good material to win through with your current line of reasoning.


Well your definition of illogicality is wrong, so you are off to a loser there. What you describe is impracticality, and as religion is not a saw for cutting things, nor a hammer for bashing them, I see that as no criticism at all. Prof and Rusty will no doubt argue that their particular beliefs have some practical value to them that has nothing to do with explaining anything at all from a non-human-centric point of view, and that will be fine too, because there are plenty of funcional object in the world (see hammers and saws) that serve other purposes than that entirely.


That's really a problem with human nature tbh. Some people take any excuse they can to abrogate their responsibilities, and conversely there are any number of religious believers who do no such thing. This idea that religion uniquely robs people of free will is just not convincing me, there is too much disagreement within religion for that to be true.

How can you have on sect within Christianity that believes in picketing people's funerals with signs saying "God hates fags", while another sect is debating homosexual marriage and gay bishops if there isn't both room and need within the scope of religion for interpretation and disagreement?


We'd need a whole other thread for a full list of my points of departure from Dennet in that video. But I will point out that arguments from analogy are much weaker than other forms, and that isn't an especially strong example even of its type.



I rather think science does work exactly as I said. When you have multiple competing hypotheses, you don't pick the one that you like the sound of to be your chosen fact. What you do (if you are being a scientist) is devise a line of reasoning that rules out faulty hypotheses until you reduce the number to one. That become the theory for the time being unless and until either the remaining theory is disproved, or a new competitor emerges. If you cannot disprove some of the theories, the question remains open until a test is devised. Winners are not declared on the basis of apparent but unquantifiable probability unless the system has failed.

Of course this assumes real science is being done, in which case the scientific method is being used to test the empirical world. All bets are off if we allow fraudsters to pretend they can make empirical judgments about occult entities.


Absolutely, it should not need to be said that this goes both ways. Science cannot be used to answer religious questions, religion cannot be used to answer scientific ones. The error is identical in each direction as neither method of inquiry is appropriate to the chosen application (that is a definition of illogical).

It's arrogant, highly so. I don't especially object to arrogance in general, I just prefer to see it done well (try not to mix arrogance with erroneous logic is my rule of thumb).

Misrepresentation of the highest order sir!

Firstly I suggest you renounce some of that before the resident mathematicians see it - I think they would claim that a mathematical is the highest standard of proof there is.

Secondly, I was pointing out that you can only dismiss a hypothesis by coming up with an experiment that shows it is actually wrong. Have we any scientists in the house? I think they are going to be on my side there.

At no point did I give you any excuse to presume that I think all knowledge must meet any particular standard to be treated as useful or factual. But you are claiming to know that other people are wrong, and that is not the same as knowing something uncontroversial, ie, that the velocity of a body remains constant unless the body is acted upon by an external force.

It is highly presumptious of you to assume that you are not going to be subject to some standard of proof when you want to tell other people that your ideas are superior to theirs. So stop whining and start proving.

Any wife of mine who says 'oh no it's not your child, erm....it's god's, we've been so blessed' isn't going to be so readily believed I'm afraid. And they weren't even married. Double standards if you ask me.

The thing is could you say that the other delusions of some people, for example, if they believe they are being monitored by the Government how can you tell that situation doesn't truly exist?

Even if you believe, then what about someone with the belief that they are the son of God, how would you say that delusion is different for sure?

From outside of religion, it appears no different to me.

Going back to some of the mathematical questions raised. 2+2=4 is actually a provable statement. It quite famously took Bertrand Russel 32 pages of intricate set theory to do it, but you can lay out a rigorous proof that it is so.

Interestingly, maths is more significantly aware that there are finite limits to what it can know. This is thanks to a groundbreaking piece of work known as Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. In a nutshell it proves that in any complex system that you can either not state all of the fundamental axioms, or there are things that cannot be proved from the fundamental axioms.

There have since been examples of this theory shown in the area of Cardinality, which concerns itself with the size of infinities (yes, there's more than one). It's been known since work by Cantor that there are at least two sizes of infinity, known as aleph-null and aleph-1 (aleph being a hebrew letter). The size of Aleph-null is the set of things like counting numbers, integers or fractions, all of which can be mapped with a 1-1 correlation (thus showing they are the same size). Aleph-1 is a larger set; the rational (decimal) numbers is a set of size aleph-1. The question was, was there such a thing as aleph-half (something between the two set sizes). Mathematicians have been able to prove that if it does exist, then it does not lead to contradictions in mathematics, and that if it does exist, it doesn't lead to contradictions in mathematics.

As such we actually have a provable instance of something that we simply cannot know with any certainty.

PS. Please don't for one moment think that I'm trying to demonstrate any further points than literally what is written!

Given that I've spent time in Psychiatry, I can say that the pattern of delusion isn't isolated nor is it general. It is usually accompanied by things such as lack of emotion, jumping from one thought to another with no trail, self-neglect etc. The delusions aren't as general as "being monitored by the Govt" but more specifically "being monitored by the Govt. I bought a can of coke and it had a dent in it. That means it's been poisoned and they are trying to kill me", or "the radio is telling me that I must kill xyz" (this is despite you in the room at the same time as the radio, which is switched off) or worse "the traffic light is red which means aliens have killed my mum". It tends to be very specific and (AFAIK) easily disprovable.

If one of you on here said you're being monitored by the Govt, the nature of the people on this forum would lead me to think it wasn't impossible. If you then said they're after you because they want your jelly babies, I'd be less inclined to accept your statement.

I asked the GF who's a Clinical Psychologist, apparently that's not the case. In many case there are elements that are often plausible and with no definitive way of counteracting their belief.

It's kind of why I asked why are those delusions different from, what from the outside of religion also appears to be, the delusion of faith.

If only 3 people believed in 'God' I'm sure they would be classed as delusional, perhaps it's just down to numbers. If a majority believed there was a man in the moon that ruled our lives then that would not be seen as delusional, no matter how delusional that belief would be.

So, I guess faith can only exist if there are enough people to believe it. At one time many gods were worshiped, were they delusional? I would reckon many would say so but then to those of us outside of religion why is any other religion different to that one?

I think I've got across what I'm trying to say, religion/philosophy/whatever can be cumbersome especially in a typed discussion.

Are we in orbiting tea pots and invisible pink unicorn territory yet?

I find Psychologists tend to go very much by the book (no offence intended - my sister wants to be a CP too). I'm going by my own experience which IMO is far more valuable than any textbook (incl DSM V ).

You're correct in that in some cases you cannot refute or counter a delusion but in my experience, the majority can be proven false (though you're not meant to show it's false or it can deteriorate their mental state!).

I think I did state earlier that if there had never been a belief in a deity and suddenly someone did, they'd be classed as delusional.

Lol, no offence taken, I often rib her anyway as we did the same degree but my advanced courses were the biological ones not the wishy-washy talky-talky ones where you can talk a leg into being better. Sometimes you do need to use drugs as well!!!!

I hadn't realised she's actually treated a few delusional clients, quite varied apparently. Mind you she's seen just about everything in that job I gather.


True, sorry I must have missed where you wrote that. I seem to have been online all day today and have gone completely word blind.