Perhaps 'souls' or other 'things' are on a spectrum within what will be considered physical. — Coben


... so I was just responding to that. It's monumentally unlikely, that's all. I think, in all fairness, if I said "perhaps God will turn out to be a toad called Keith" people would certainly not take such a supposition seriously on a theology forum despite it being technically a possibility. — Isaac

That quote was part of an argument against ruling out via deduction. So, you took a sentence out of that argument and put and treated it, precisely as I said, as part of another argument. I needed to explain potential areas where the argument was ruling things out it couldn't and also the metaphysical assumptions of that argument.

It is technically a possibility that souls might turn out to be real but such a possibility does not have its chances affected in any meaningful way by the discovery of things like quantum foam. — Isaac

And here you continue, in exactly the same vein, acting like I had said 'There's quantum foam, so ghosts are possible' When in fact it was part of an argument saying that the ontological qualities of 'the physical' have been shifting, so the deduction....the one I was arguing against, are problematic.

So, even after I point out what I was doing and it is clear in the post and then in my confirmation of it that I was not doing what you assumed - and even called such an argument a poor argument,
had I been making it -

You're taking my argument as an argument (and not a good one) supporting the existence of those things. — Coben

you continue to respond as if I was making the other argument.

And then you go on to tell me things I know as if my post entails that I need this layman to layman lecture, despite this apparant need being based on something I have now said several times I was not doing.

God is an atheist made the argument implicitly by saying everything is physical a number of posts back. Most people do not write out their arguments in short syllogisms. And I suspect in part, not in this specific case, which I have no idea about, the arguments would look in need of more bolstering than they are willing to give. I take you at your word that you have no encountered this argument. Me, after a couple of decades in forums like this, I have experienced it many times.

I have also experienced people shifting my posts and the posts of other people so that they can make the points they want to make rather than respond to the posts we wrote.

It's tiring.

Usually however, after I explain what I was arguing they go 'Oh, ok.', rather than continuing to argue against an argument I did not make

and, again,

in fact, specifically said was a poor argument. I mean, I said it was a poor argument and you spent yet another post telling me why you think it was a poor argument!

perhaps...

I think people realize now that PTSD as it is sometimes framed can cause long lasting or even permanent damage. But the trick it seems to me, is not to close the door on recovery. All sorts of physical trauma, even extremely severe can be fully recovered from. Sometimes it seems to me people are told too often 'you will always be X'. I understand that one should not minimize the trauma and its effects, but also one should not presume to know what one can heal. There is a balance there and individuals vary and respond in varying ways to different treatment modalities (this holds for physical issues also.)

Epigenetic phenomena are extremely well documented. However I am not quite sure what this has to do with consciousness outside the individual mind.

I intended to treat it as an argument supporting the reasonableness of positing their existence. — Isaac

Yes, that's what I meant. That is what I meant I was not doing. It was not a positive argument in favor of their existence, it was an argument critical of a 'ruling out' via deduction [not induction].

Nope, because the specific deduction I am talking about is that 'since they are immaterial, and everything is physical, they can't exist'. I really don't know how to make that clearer. Souls or ghosts are immaterial. Immaterial things don't exist. Souls and ghosts don't exist. I encounter this all the time. I also see similar ones building from the word 'supernatural'. There is a lot of hidden paradigmatic baggage in the terms. Yes, often theists and others share some of that baggage [they have a dualism and place X in the non-material], but some do not and the baggage has assumptions in it that are not justified on both sides of, for example, the Christian dualist vs. physicalist divide.

I also specifically said 'rule out.'

You're taking my argument as an argument (and not a good one) supporting the existence of those things. My post is in response to Wayfarers, and in a context where people think they can rule out, via deduction, things that have been considered non-material, as if 'material' has maintained the same meaning and as if it is even likely the set of material things and even the kinds of qualities material things have and do not have will not continue extending. People in a number of posts here are simply saying 'there is nothing beyond the physical' in the steps of an argument ruling things out that have been considered non-material. I am saying that the idea of the physical/material is not stable so this kind of per se ruling out is not justified.

Yes, this is a point I tend to make in these discussions. Matter or the physical is the label for not only an expanding set of 'things' but the set itself has changed criteria over time: waves, things in superposition, fields, massless particles, dark energy, quantum foam are now in that set. There is no reason to assume the door is closed on what will be included or even what the qualities of things will be. Perhaps 'souls' or other 'things' are on a spectrum within what will be considered physical. Most people work with a dualism, either denying that there is one or assuming there is one. And matter is juxtaposed to the non-material. However we now have material things and processes that perhaps would have made older dualists quite content: Oh, you mean that in your schema matter can be like X and not be like Y? Well, ok, that would cover the entities I consider real but you do not on deductive ontological grounds. There's a confusion of map for territory being used to rule out things. And an old map. The semantics have changed, but everyone is acting like they haven't. The knowledge is not final, as you pointed out, but everyone, on this issue, is acting like it is. Like it must be either a dualism with non-material things or all those things consider supernatural do not exist. And often in theist/atheist debates BOTH sides seem to assume this.

You know how to completely mess things up, don't you. — god must be atheist

Compliment?

You are denying this, and you are making actual material blobs into processes, which is outright false — god must be atheist

Are you saying that my body is not a collection of processes?

It's like calling a brick a process. — god must be atheist

It sure looks like one at the atomic level. And then if we go deeper to the quantum level the whole thing is made up of probable and shifting locations of stuff that is sort of wave, sort or particles.

Why, oh why do people put their religion before their reason? — god must be atheist

Who said anything about religion?

Religion can co-exist with reason, you don't have to deny the obvious in order to believe in a god. — god must be atheist

Well, actually, I don't think what matter is and what 'physical' means are obvious. The idea of 'physical' has gone way beyond bricks, to include massless particles, fields, 'things' in superpostion....

iow stuff that has very little in common with the matter we think of in everyday life (though this is also like that).

Even mass, that most physical of all sounding qualities is actually a process. It is a resistance to change in location.

Religion can co-exist with reason, you don't have to deny the obvious in order to believe in a god. — god must be atheist

There is very little that is both true and obvious about matter, certainly not when it comes to bodies or when comes to considering issues of processes vs. things.

And why is the person who is representing himself as seeing the obvious and being rational using ad homs and insults? Why isn't the representative of reason, as he posits it, sticking to the arguments?

I think this may be true of adolescents, but I don't think an adult will have a problem understanding, for instance, that the Law involves processes as opposed to being a blob of Stuff. — frank

A body is a set of processes, but it is also a blob. Or at least, calling it a blob, certainly for certain middle-aged overweight men, is not misleading.

"As far as the words “life” and “mind” are concerned, they merely refer to reifications of activities and have no separate existence as entities. — frank

A body is processes or activities and so 'body' is a reification. At the same time I think is fair to call them separate entitites, each one. Perhaps minds are like this. The might not be physical entities - or perhaps the word physical is really rather misleading, since many things considered real and physical in science are not blobs - but they might be entities.

I have anxiety over the fact I might not exist — Kranky

Are you sure you have anxiety? Are you sure it's about that?

My long earlier post is suggesting an answer to the second question. That you shouldn't be sure it's about whether you exist and further that is, in fact, about other things.

Consider now the options that are available to us: either other minds exist or other minds don't exist. — TheMadFool

I'll throw out a third options. Other minds are both other minds and also part of the same mind. A bit like a subpersonality in one of us.

Perhaps, unlike radical skeptics like Descartes — TheMadFool

I am sure he assumed other minds existed most of the time, just not while trying to find a foundation for knowledge in that exercise he's famous for.

Now, if the solipsist claims that it's doubtful that other minds exist, he must mean either that our senses and minds are unreliable or that the evidence for the existence of other minds is compatible with their non-existence. — TheMadFool

Some solipsists are saying there are not other minds, period. Not merely that the evidence is compatible with this but it is also the case. Not saying that's a strong position or not, just mentioning there is a third here.

The second possibility is slightly different for it claims that all the behavior that we exhibit which we consider to be indications of thinking is also compatible with the non-thinking beings, beings that only appear to be thinking but are actually not thinking at all: P-zombies? — TheMadFool

Sort of...could be facets of the one beings dream. IOW we don't need organisms that have all the qualities of life we do but no consciousness, but phantoms. These solipsists would then, I think, not be physicalists or even dualists, but idealists or something similar.

Yes. If you click on your name in red with the arrow in my post (and this is a general rule) it will jump you to the post I (or anyone) is referring to. So you can always check that way what the heck people are referring to, even if they don't quote.

I'd say that is a misleading statement and a confusing one. I would not call it simply true, nor would I say it is simply false. Truth and falsehood are not binary.

In order for a claim to be falsifiable it must already be false... or it's a prediction... which is neither true or false at the time it's first spoken/uttered. — creativesoul

Right but we don't know if it is true or false. When we say something could be falsified. We mean, if if it were false. What it refers to has qualities that allow for counter-evidence. It's a different type of 'can' or 'could'. And it is subjunctive. There is a subjunctive implicit in the sentence. If it were the case that is is false (and right now we do not know if it is) we will be able to falsify it. Some things that are false need nto have this aspect. I get your point, and perhaps it should be made more explicit in a description of falsifiability, but I think it also rests on an equivocation.

Either all pairs of particles produced by sub-atomic decay are entangled or they are not. If they are not then the statement is false. It would take observation of particles produced by sub atomic decay that did not subsequently 'exhibit' identical properties to falsify the statement, but that situation cannot even occur if the statement is true. — creativesoul

My interpretation of what you are saying is that since true hypotheses cannot be falsified, since the evidence will end up supporting them, then they don't pass Popper's criterion. But this is confusing some kind of final knowledge with what we experience.

We put forward an hypothesis. We don't know if it is true or false from our limited perspective. But we can judge, at least to some degree,whether

if

it were false, it would be falsifiable.

True ones will not end up getting falsified. But the criterion still makes sense since we are in a limited knowledge in situ, in time perspective.

If someone says there is a universe beside ours that cannot in any way be observed or experienced and no effects from it arise in our universe and we can never go there.

It might be true. It might be false. But it doesn't pass falsifialibity. We can say that. It's truth, should it happen to be true, does not stop us from saying that it isn't possibly falsifiable.

The can in can be falsified.

Is not the same kind of 'can' involved in whether true things can be disproved. It's a category confusion.

First off, what a luxury you have. Many people simply do not have the time to doubt everything they think. They have to make decisions and act on them. Drive to work. Find water. Hide from the gang. Stagger to their screaming baby at 3am. So, your predicament is a sign that you basic needs are being met, you have free time and likely no immediate threats. Yes, perhaps neither you nor they exist, But if you do, you have it better than a large portion of the world. Second, there is no reason to listen to the little voice telling you you have to solve this problem, and certainly at any time soon. What is that little voice up to? What is it an authority on?

Third, your problem is actually something else. You might be afraid to be social. You might not know how you are going to make a living. You might have deep fears that you are not adequate in more mundane, less ontological, ways. Smart enough, strong enough, sexy enough....according to your own criteria or fears about what others rightly expect.

Philosophical obsessions are usually distractions - emphasis on the word obsession. Because as much anxiety as you are feeling about this issue, anxiety is not nearly as challeging as fear and anger and hopelessness related to real life and real people.

This may all seem rude. I didn't try to answer the question you presented.

But if I see someone not eating, ever, and withering away, I am not going to rush to try to answer their obsession with, for example,
Why is there something rather than nothing?

They may think that is the pressing issue, but it's not. They need food or an operation or some therapy. And then need to figure out why they aren't dealing with the lack of nutrition, but rather shifted to something impersonal and 'the answer.'

And yes, I can imagine someone saying 'but what's the point of being social if I don't exist?' and any of a number of counters to what I said above. Well, if you don't exist, it doesn't really matter what you do, for you, and actually it's a way of avoiding finding out what you want to do and all your fears around that.

The ongoing anxiety and mulling over you're maybe not existing is not a problem, per se, it is your solution. An activity that is a solution. Is it a good one, however?

How is solipsism, specifically the part where you deny the existence of other minds, tenable when cogito ergo sum can be used to confirm the existence of all thinking beings? — TheMadFool

But it can't be. It can only confirm, it if can, that one mind. I think therefore I am relates to 'I'.

If I can say the mind of an other is uncertain then that other may say the same thing of my mind, and so on, making every mind of uncertain existence and yet anyone, everyone can say, truthfully, "cogito ergo sum". — TheMadFool

That other mind can be uncertain about me, if it exists, but I can't. We are priviledged in relation to our own consciousness. We understand how they might doubt our existence as we can more easily doubt theirs than our own.

Coben
I could follow your expert opinion that today's experts are not the right ones, but then other experts will have a different take on that.
— Coben

But I don't think any expert in metaphysics would deny that, historically, most expert metaphysicians - including most of the undisputed best - have thought that God's existence could either be proved or shown to be overall more reasonable than not. — Bartricks

But those experts were basing their opinion on other proofs than the one in question. Either their proofs were faulty or these should have convinced other experts that the proof had been found. Of course this leaves room for other proofs to be the case, but it doesn't apply to my needing to believe one modern expert in regard to his or her proof.

The point, though, is that for non-experts the fact that the majority of great metaphysicians have judged God's existence either to be rationally demonstrable, or to be more reasonable than not, provides them with good reason to suppose that this is in fact the case, — Bartricks

1) they were using different arguments than the one that has not now been confirmed by other ones now
2) those experts had extreme pressure to assess arguments in favor of God as sound.

Say you are in some kind of a diamond hall and the diamond experts are sat at their tables sifting through piles of diamonds and paste fakes, putting diamonds in one pile on their respective desks and paste fakes in the other.

You go up to one of these tables. There is a pile on the left marked 'diamonds' and a pile on the right marked 'paste'. Stones have been put in these respective piles by one expert - the expert sat at this particular desk. So no other expert apart from this one has inspected these stones. And it is also well known that diamond experts do sometimes - though far more rarely than any non-expert would - mistake a paste diamond for the real deal. Nevertheless, as a non-expert yourself you surely have very good reason to think that a stone taken from the pile marked 'diamonds' will be a diamonds and not paste? And that's the case no matter whose table you go to. — Bartricks

As I said in the other response, I don't think these kinds of experts dealing with concrete objects with real work direct consequences are in the same kind of expertise type. Further the closer parallel would be if one expert in the room says, I have come up with a new test for authenticity. I am the only one who has this test. It takes a while for others to evaluate it. Me, I am wondering why it doesn't have a coalition in favor of it. OK, the expert finished that diamond test protocol yesterday. Fine, I'll check in in a while. First I have no need to take it seriously now. If I was on a plane that is going to crash and there is one parachute expert and he is telling me how to put on, for example, the last remaining chute, which like his, is broken, so that it will work. Well, absolutely. I will take that expert deathly seriously. I have no other option. And his skill set makes it more likely than mine, for sure. But a metaphysical expert telling me he as a proof and thinks I should take it seriously, whatever that means, makes me wonder why he himself is not interested to see how other experts react. Individuals have tremendous motivation to view their creations as right. Hence peer revies type processes in most fields. I don't really need to do anything.

As a kind of parallel. Online I have encountered experts in all sorts of fields use their fields to rule ou what they would call supernatural phenomena. They have in the main been confused about what one can do with deduction. I have encountered professional philosophers, and fairly frequently, who reach what I consider confused conclusions. I have a smattering of expertise in philosophy, but I am no expert and I am not a philosopher. But I still find with regularity great individual confidence when it has seemed to me they were incorrect. And, in most cases, I could find philosophers who agreed with me, though this was not the basis of my disagreement. So, no, in some fields and some situations and to varying degrees I will take seriously experts conclusions. And it gets very complicated how I make my choices there, which are not binary.

Do you have reason to think that the piece of paper in the pile marked 'proof of God' in the tray on that one metaphysician's table is a proof of God? — Bartricks

I would wonder why there wasn't a crowd about that proof.

How else would you summarise falsifiability in ten words or less? — Banno

Perhaps a better approach for concision is via the negative. If a non-falsifiable hypothesis is false, no one will ever know.

It is 11 words, but I think the word 'might' opens all sorts of doors.

I don't think you do. It is surely sufficient for a non-expert to have reason to believe there is a proof of the existence of a god that an expert has said so, especially when the proof in question has not yet been assessed by other experts. — Bartricks

Not for me. I don't have some kind of working relationship with experts in metaphysics to get a sense of how accurate they are as a whole, how much divisions they have (schools, differing approaches and paradigms) and how much this affects their conclusions. With many experts I can look at the whole groups track record, to some degree at least, and also to some degree individual track records. My gut sense and experience is also that even experts overestimate their ability to deduce things. They are overconfident of their ability to judge the semantic scope of terms and what we can be certain of in general. Of course I could be wrong. And I assume that experts in metaphysics are much better than laypeople at that. Of course they are aiming high and very abstract.

Oh, I say that 'h', I breathe it, man.

How else would you summarise falsifiability in ten words or less? — Banno

If it's wrong, I might notice.

6 words

Not to pull the thread to far off track, the 'h' isn't silent, like it is in 'honor', but unstressed. I definitely use an before words with silent a silent h, but I even use it here where I do pronounce the h, but much. A hy po...it feels like I am stuttering. An hypothesis flows for me. Not saying a before it is wrong, however.

An hypothesis is falsifiable if some observation might show it to be false.

An hypothesis is falsifiable if counterevidence relevent to such an hypothesis could be observed.

14 words, sigh.

That's complicated...

H’ represents a consonant sound, so we would expect ‘a hypothesis’, and that is what many say and write. However, where the stress in a word beginning with a sounded /h/ is on the second or subsequent syllable, some native speakers precede the word with ‘an’ rather than ‘a’, so you will also see and hear ‘an hypothesis’. But if you say and write ‘a hypothesis’, you will not be wrong.

It's not saying that a single observation would prove it false, it is saying that it has the quality of being able to be countered by observations. One can observe things that act as counter-evidence.

Now what? — creativesoul

Well, you likely have yourself, consciously or unconsciously or both, set up a bunch of heuristics. And your solution might or might not work fairly well for you but not be right for your neighbor. Intuition has to play a strong role in those heuristics. When you decide to ask for second opinions? When you choose to doubt consensus amongst experts and do some reseach? how to choose between opposing experts - and there are almost always opposing experts, from mainstreat to fringe? how much you decide other factors - monetary compensation, paradigmatic biases, tradition, etc. - are affecting or may be affecting expert positions? And what you do when you have doubt. These all end up being approaches to a no answer is perfect and certainly not everyone approach to dealing with fallibility. And different people have different optimal solutions, since they differ in intelligence, lay knowledge of different fields, vocabulary (reading justifications and evidence), confidence, available time and more.

Well, you do have a point. Philosophy is all about opinions and as such is personal. But this doers not mean that the ideas presented cannot be evaluated entirely on their own merit and, particularly on a forum such as this, the integrity of the poster be respected. — A Seagull

I am not saying one should accept ad homs. And my point wasn't that it was personal and about opinions. I wasn't justifying the ad hom, but arguing against the conclusion that people who use them cannot mont a good argument. Those people exist, yes. But other exist who occasionally or often use ad homs but are also capable or rational argument. It's a fussy point. I mentioned it because it's a claim to know things about the other person that even involve a kind of mind reading claim. You did that and you did it because you can't do X. IOW that person is covering up their weakness intentionally. Here this is a fussy point. If the other person used an ad hom they can't expect the response is simply logical and rational. But it's a kind of conclusion jumping I see a lot on the net. You believe X so you are Y. You believe X because you are or experienced or can't face or......

To me it seems better to just call out the ad hom, even with some passion, but not present as logical conclusions things that are not.

p

Expert philosophers make mistakes, but not as many as non-experts, and so other things being equal it is wise to trust the expert over the non-expert. — Bartricks

But if it's on the issue of there being a God, I still have to choose which expert. I could follow your expert opinion that today's experts are not the right ones, but then other experts will have a different take on that. Suddenly I need to be an expert in experts in metaphysics. Now your argument that current metaphysics experts are to be ruled out to a great degree is an argument I an understand, without being an expertin metaphysics, but I can imagine that other current metaphysics experts would mount other arguments against the experts you consider the real experts who coincidentally or not have the same postion you do, if not because of the same argument. And many of those experts concluded there was a God based on proofs that have not held up or at least are not the one you think is the proof. Which raises more questions about their expertise. On the sidelines of all this, for me, the choice to go with practice and experience wins hands down. Mine, not necessarily for everyone. I am not sure what one does once one has accepted this proof. One still, it seems to me, in most forms of deity, still need to enter into practice and experience anyway. But that's even more of a tangent.

But in this hypothetical situation, if one expert says that X is a proof of God, and what this expert is saying is not positively contradicted by a consensus of experts (because the other experts simply haven't scrutinized the argument yet), then a non-expert should take seriously that X is a proof of God. — Bartricks

Take seriously leaves open a huge range of responses. And they don't have to rely, for their beliefs, on arguments (alone or at all).

I mean, why shouldn't they? If the expert really is an expert, then they know their beans. They've spent years and years thinking about these matters - far more than a non-expert. — Bartricks

Sure, but there's no hurry. And it's not like a situation with a dentist where one can already have experience, as a layperson, with credentials and dentists who are licenced and perhaps even check what others have said. With a metaphysics expert, it would almost take an expert to know if the other is an expert. You could check their education, sure. But then to know that their dissertation was actually in metaphysics or a relevant area. And perhaps they are every strong at certain kinds of explication but not necessarily proofs. Perhaps they are strong on evaluation other people's ideas, but not their own. Perhaps they have a bias related to their own desires, either way. It's not like experts in a number of other fields with more concrete results that can be looked at.

I would trust a metaphysics expert, in general, when judging an argument or essay in metaphysics, over my own ability to judge such an argument in a thorough way. But that's in general, over a bunch of arguments. I would not put their ability outside of that area above my abilities. IOW I would value my experiences, in this case, and what I have learned through practice and direct experience at least equal to their ability to draw the correct conclusion on paper. I am not saying laypeople in general. I am saying my ability.

Non-experts do that kind of thing all the time. — Bartricks

Sure, we do. But in my case I see it in most cases as choosing between

And they're used to being cautious and to checking and rechecking their arguments - for their career depends on them doing so. — Bartricks

Good arguments, not necessarily correct conclusions. They can have their office across the hall from someone who is also skilled with arguments and who has at the same time completely different opinions, sometimes over things where more direct empirical evidence plays a role in the issue.

So, given all that, even if one solitary expert says that X is a proof of God, then even if that supposed poof has not been verified by other experts, a non-expert should still take seriously that X may be a proof of God. — Bartricks

Take is seriously, I guess. I would likely respect it as the product of skilled thought. In my experience people overestimate what deductive arguments that are quite abstract but are not symbolic, for example, are capable of. So, I'd have a healthy dose of skepticism.

And, yes, it does take time for an idea to reach consensus in philosophy. On the other hand an argument that should convince any metaphysics expert should be making the rounds. It would be an earthshattering proof. I would think it would have a buzz around it, and certain some acquaintance supporters in the expert community. If not now, if just written say, then soon.

And if we are told that there is closemindedness amongst the experts, well, this cuts into the argument that I as a layperson should trust experts on these issues.

And then there is the alternative: direct immersion in experiences and practices.

Exactly. A lot of people seem to think it means a specific set of positions on ontology that they think are fluffy and dismiss. Not saying those positions are fluffy, but their reaction is based on a pejorative definition of metaphysics.

You expressed in an earlier post your conviction that God's existence could not be demonstrated rationally. — Bartricks

It's a transitive process. You have to demonstrate it to someone and in this case, at least most experts. They nod their heads when you're done. I don't think this is going to happen. I could be wrong, it's an intuitive position. I haven't seen it happen (seen in the broad sense, but that is hardly proof). I wouldn't rule out the possibility, but I doubt it.

But there have been expert metaphysicians for millennia. And most have thought God's existence can rationally be demonstrated. — Bartricks

Most of those metaphysicians were living in times where your profession, life, family were all in jeopardy if one openly believed there was no God. They were likely trained and evaluated by believers whose lives, families and professional lives were similarly dependent on that.

I realize that today there are now counterpressures, which lead to biases in the other direction, though not generally against one's life and family. And an academic metaphysician can probably hold their job if they openly believe in God and even if they assert they have or have read a proof.

For me outside the expertise, I see a lack of consensus withing experts. In college, decades ago, I wrestled with some of the proofs, perhaps not the one you find convincing, and found they did not work. I would have been allowed, in that context, to find them correct. At least one of my professors was a theist. I also had a general reaction that deduction at that level can seem perfectly convincing but turn out not to be the case. I would say I was a strong and clever student but no genius and never became an expert.

From my position, I find a lack of consensus.

And experts often say those experts are not really experts - I do this also, both when I am an expert and as a layperson even. But here I am in a position where I need to use processes that are experiential - some coming of themselves, others the products of long practice. I think most people are in that position.

As such lack of widespread current acceptance doesn't really tell you anything important about the credibility of the argument. — Bartricks

It certainly doesn't rule it out. At all. But here we are, without expert consensus or majority in favor of it. I am focused what the in situ situation for most people is. I am not saying the proof you consider a proof is wrong (I read it quickly and the only conclusion I can draw so far is that one person has no idea what a God of the gaps argument is and is not). I am focused on position most people are in. But as I expressed earlier, I don't really see this as a problem. I think experience is a great way to learn.

Say an expert in a field thinks he/she has made a discovery in that field. You - a non-expert - think that X is the case. But this expert in the field is very confident that X is not the case. His evidence has yet to become widely known in the field and so it has not yet been widely scrutinized. — Bartricks

I have had this experience in a wide variety of fields. Medicine might provide a good example, let's see.

What should you, as a reasonable person, now think? You know that this person knows a lot, lot more about this matter than you. And you know as well that this person is very confident that X is not the case (which is unusual, because normally experts are more circumspect).

Well, I think you should take very seriously that X is not the case. — Bartricks

I think it works better if it is a consensus of experts, and I tend to take it seriously. But they've been wrong. I have the unpleasant but highly educational experience of a child where the supposed experts on the mind/body treated a member of my family for their emotional (and practical) troubles. The police and the courts were involved so there were experts from other fields confirming that the experts making decisions about my family members were the relevant and best experts. My gut feeling was it was wrong. My family member's gut feeling was that it was wrong. I investigated, during differnet periods and filled out my critique of consensus with more knowledge and also found fringe experts who supported my position. I became very confident that there was a systematic/paradigmatic problem. Now I took the experts opinions seriously. In fact, I and we had to. But beyond that I don't find it easy, in some new situation, to dismiss experts, unless I have already dismissed them over a longer period of time.

But we are always in position of having to trust our intuitions, in different ways and to different degrees. I do not leave over power to experts easily, especially if the risk is high and I have time and my gut says not to. If we study the history of many disciplines including ones that are supposed to be free of bias like science, we can see that minority opinions have turned out to be correct or better. And especially if I see clues that there are paradigmantic biases in the consensus they seem unaware of or, for example, motives to hold onto a way of looking at something other than evidence of solid deduction, I can often start with a very strong rejection stance, even if they are the experts and I haven't even found one fringe expert to help me flesh out my particular position.

BTW I hope you realise that ad hominems are a disappointing tactic used by people who cannot put forward any rational argument. — A Seagull

Well, to be fussy, no, I don't think that's the case. I have seen people mount excellent arguments and use ad homs. It might be a tactic used by someone who cannot put forward a rational argument or it might not.

My prof laughed at metaphysics. — jgill

If this means he or she thought it was all ridiculous, well that's a metaphysical stance and not an easy one to defend either. Further, metaphysics is present within scientific disciplines, certainly physics, but in others as well.

But perhaps your professor just really loved metaphysics and that's where the laughter came from.

Carlin’s claim was certainly counterfactual and thus cannot be proven to be the case, but I think his general point about how the jargon buries any humanity behind sterility is valuable. — NOS4A2

Sure, I don't think everyday speech needs to use PTSD. Trauma is a peachy word meaning....

a deeply distressing or disturbing experience.

Traumatized...
subject to lasting shock as a result of a disturbing experience or physical injury.

I don't think those words are depersonalized, the long diagnostic phrase is, but not that term and its family of related terms.

Shell shock was fine, in terms of blunt description. But it could confuse people when the soldiers did not go through the types of trauma associated with artillery. And it was good that they noticed, after studying Vietnam Vets that women who had been raped had very similar patterns.

We do walk around with a lot of daily psychological blather. I don't think the whole DSM diagnosis should be the general way we talk about it. I think trauma and traumatized are fine. Or 'got fucked up by his experiences in the war but he's working on it'.

But we can't really blame professionals for having jargon. I wouldn't walk around saying I got a nasty avulsion doing a slide tackle in my sunday soccer game. I'd say I scraped the shit out of my calf on artificial grass this weekend. But the doctors can have their nice abstractions.

Well, if this is the case: that one can prove it in metaphysics, using those tools, then the proof has not effectively convinced, certainly the lay public, and even within metaphysics the proof (or proofs) are not consensus accepted as holding up. So we do not have the consensus, or even I think a majority, of the relevant experts supporting the proof(s). It seems like a lay person is in the position of considering it not resolved within metaphysics. And since there are experiential methods to pursue, I don't really see a reason to become an expert in metaphysics to make sure one has the defenses in relation to metaphysical arguments. First, many theists continue to believe due to experiences or faith or combinations, despite not being able to refute arguments. Second the theist basing the beliefs on something other than verbal expertise in metaphysical argument can refer the person trying to make them doubt their belief to the metaphysicians with proofs. Just as one might in a number of mundane situations, where someone tells us there is nothing wrong with our carburator or temporal lobe and then present us with an argument we cannot refute, not knowing enough about brains or cars to refute the argument. We can still respond - well, expert X said A and I even got a second opinion. You'd have to take it up with them. Or in some fields of knowledge we refer them to expert consensus or majority opinion.

We have to pick our spots in terms of gaining expertise and when to trust experts and, in the end, also have to develop our intuition - when to get a third opinion, when to distrust consensus or majority expert opinion, when it's time to become an expert or at least a more knowledgeable layperson in a field, when to trust the marginalized expert, when to doubt the mainstream opinion and more.

I agree that if we are trying to see who has the arguments about the existence of God, we should head to metaphysicians (who might or might not be experts in other fields).

I just don't think it's a good heuristic for developing one's own belief or developing a relationship with God or unlearning certain modes of experiencing/not noticing.

Theology assumes God exists and assumes scriptures have information about that God and work from there. It certainly goes into metaphysical areas, but metaphysics as a subject area does not assume such things though a specific metaphysics expert might. And one could easily be both a theologian and an expert in metaphysics.

This, your statement, is mostly correct but as the adage goes, for evil to grow all good people need do is nothing. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I'm not suggesting you do nothing. I think there are side effects of taking religious writing in the way you have and also in what I considered a binary approach. Those side effects I consider both easily avoided and problematic. I certainly did not mean that one should accept the giant guilt trip of Jesus' crucifixion as it is presented in some versions of Christianity.

I am trying to be good and even if my interlocutor is brain dead, my hope is that lurkers will get it.

I get more converts, so to speak, from the lurkers than the, usually obtuse and belligerent poster — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Of course. But I am not saying you should make the obtuse happy or treat them with kid gloves. My point was that those who are not obtuse will probably be better served by more nuances, less binary, approaches. The obtuse deserve that kind of approach, but we both seem to agree they will not be changed by that either. My point was precisely NOT for you to come up with an approach that is better for the obtuse.

A true metaphysician is, as a philosopher, interested in what's true, not in promoting belief in God per se. — Bartricks

I didn't mean promoting. I meant encouraging in the sense of: Oh, you want to know God or know if God exists, well, here's an approach that has worked for many. I did not mean proselytizing which I find generally distasteful.

Again, I disagree. There are plenty of people here who know they exist, but have thoroughly confused ideas about what kind of a thing they are, due to being very stupid. — Bartricks

Sure, but your analogy was from the existence of God to the nature of selves in general. That a person might be fully aware of their existence, but not know how to describe selves is certainly true. But here we are talking about the existence of an entity. To me the analogy is to the existence of one self. If that self in question is me, well, I think I have expertise. Now some people may be better at discussing the issue in the abstract, but put me in the room with the doubters, I have a huge advantage.

Personally, I don't think most people come to belief in God via argument and texts. Most are born into it of course, but then of those who come to it later they generally sought it out and went to experts in the practices. They participated in the system. And I doubt many went to unviersities for this.

If someone wanted to find out about the arguments for God's existence then you most certainly should refer them to a philosophy department and it'd be mad not to - for it is in philosophy departments alone that these questions are rigorously explored by experts. — Bartricks

Yes, but that was not the point I was making. I don't think those arguments are a good way to demonstrate the truth of their conclusions.

Note too that someone who was one justified in believing that God exists might, through encountering arguments against that belief - arguments that they do not know how to counter - come to be unjustified in their belief, and thereby lose their knowledge. — Bartricks

Sure, could happen.

Knowing that God exists does not, I think, require knowing arguments for God's existence. But knowledge depends on the existence of a justification. You can be default justified in a belief, and that belief can be true, yet something can happen - one can, for instance, encounter what seems to be good evidence that the belief is false - and through that encounter the default justification can disappear. — Bartricks

This cuts both ways. One can come across good heady arguments that make you want to deny what you have experienced and correctly interpreted. Obviously the ideal is a combination, but I think demonstrations - even if they must be hard earned over decades - are better than arguments.

So knowing that God exists today, does not guarantee that you'll know he exists tomorrow. — Bartricks

Thinking that God exists because on paper it makes sense to you seems very fragile to me also. Frankly, even more fragile. And then, I am not sure what difference it makes, since it is not relational.

The wider context is that I don't think God can be demonstrated on paper, or proven to exist. However I do think practices can demonstrate it. So, I am disagreeing with your reactions to others - and I find some of their reactions confused at best - but going off on a tangent.

Those are not equivalent claims. Someone could know that God exists, yet not be an expert on the question of whether God exists. — Bartricks

I suppose in the sense of how to argue for that assertion, yes. On the other hand that might not be the best way to demonstrate the existence of God. The best way might be through encouraging and mentoring practice.

For example, someone can know that they themselves exist, yet not be an expert on what selves are. — Bartricks

True. Though when making the case what their specific self is, that one entity, the person in question often has a tremendous advantage. Many are poor at introspection and communication, but in the specific case of demonstrating what my self is like, I should at least be on the panel.

The point is just that the question of whether God exists is a question in metaphysics, not science. — Bartricks

So far, yes. But if someone asked me how to find out about God, or how to find out how to come to the belief or how to experience God, I am not going to refer them to a philosophy department at a University or to the people who write academic texts on metaphysics. Of course those I would send them to might ALSO have a background in the subset of philosophy, metaphysics, but in most cases not. IOW I think this is a process that is experiential and based on practices, perhaps community and certainly real interest, not academic interest, in both sense of academic.

I’m not saying that the Israelis are entitled to that land. But then again, could you blame them? — Noah Te Stroete

Sure. One can blame people for what they do, even if others do bad things. And especially since the process simply made them a gathered target. It wasn't even a good choice for their own interests. Treating the already present Palestinians as equals would have saved them untold grief.

Palestinians are likewise as a group prone to prejudice against Jews and may or may not have welcomed such a large influx of a despised people. — Noah Te Stroete

There is general history of arab and Muslim nations dealing much better with Jews than Christian nations have. And note the assumption in your sentence. Of course they should all get to come there. Perhaps this would have caused tensions, but ousting the Palestinians didn't help the safefy of Jews. What gave the newcomers more rights than people already there? (Well, the British did, but that's another story and doesn't make it moral). Of course I have sympathy for the situation the Jews were in, but I don't think their approach there has been good for them, it was certainly not good for the Palestinians and it has continued to create tensions that could lead to world wars. I sometimes wonder if that was not someone's intent. Hey, let's create a permanent tension there where everyone is unsafe cause this is going to piss everyone off forever. This is not meant as a argument, but rather as a reaction to what has really been such a terrible set of ideas

for everyone.

I get the intent. But it was terrible on practical and moral terms. Yes, there was also a positive moral intent. Also.

And I am not naive enough to think there was some perfect solution. But this was a terrible one and admitting some portions of that terrible side might help. But just as in marriages telling the truth often feels like it just gives the other person power.

That idea has not saved a single marriage.

The stigma was orginally that they were cowards,not manly enough to withstand the challenges of war. Then it got considered a more medical type reaction, which is better. It's not a disease, however, but rather a natural response to overwhelming experiences.