Oct 24, 2009
5 things that can’t be proven by science but are still rational to have beliefs about
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William Lane Craig discusses 5 untestable yet rational types of knowledge:
- Logic and Mathematics
- Metaphysical truths
- Ethical beliefs
- Aesthetic judgments
- Science itself
(via JT)
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Owned! That was awesome. People who think any area of human endeavor can answer all of their questions are in for a wakeup call. Everything we do has a blind spot.
Science = how? Theology = why?
I just like how they kept showing that other guy who was totally checked out. I can scientifically prove that he was thinking about the PENN STATE game today…
Most excellent! Thank you for sharing this, I will pass it along to others to encourage them to remain resolute and honest about such things.
“put that in your pipe and smoke it”…AWESOME!
1. Logic and Mathematics
I’m not sure what the point he was trying to make here. so I’ll give you this. I don’t do math.
2. Metaphysical truths
other minds other than my own? this is from the 70s or 80s, right? …science has advanced, we know why other minds do what they do and that they exist.
is the external world real? we can touch the external world, it has a molecular structure. SCIENCE!
the past wasn’t created 5 minutes ago with an appearance of age? again, you bring out your white coat and goggles and you can break down somethings true age.
3. Ethical beliefs
ethics are just like morals, you are taught them. that’s personal, science need not be involved. it says it right there, ‘belief’ not ‘fact’.
4. Aesthetic judgments
if he’s trying to say why we consider things beautiful, it’s symmetry. scientific studies, etc, etc.
5. Science itself
yes, there are things science can’t provide answers to yet. but there are a lot of things science has provided answers to over the past 25 years, let alone centuries.
1. Thanks
2. ‘break down something’s true age’ – you can do that, but it’s not science. Science is repeatable, observable and controlled. Making inferences into a non-repeatable, unobserved and non-controlled past is not scientific method, yet we still see it as a valid and rational thing to do.
3. Need not be involved? It couldn’t be if you wanted it to. Science can’t make value judgements, yet they are an extremely important part of our existence.
4. I don’t think the correlation between reported beauty and the patterns/symmetry in the beautiful object is a significant scientific explanation of my experience when beholding beauty.
5. He didn’t say science has failed to provide answers to some things. He’s saying that there are many assumptions within popular science that aren’t proved by empirical methods – yet they are still held to be true.
I thought it was a great point. There are many things we hold to be true that aren’t empirically proven (like the empirical method itself).
(P.s. I love science.)
Okay, obviously, you haven’t done the research, and you don’t understand what he really means by metaphysical truths. Notice the prefix, “META”. He’s not saying that there’s no way of knowing that the things right in front of you exist or not by science, but rather, for example, that there’s no way of scientifically being able to prove whether or not someone else even has a mind the same way you do. There is only one person that can tell you that his/her mind exists, that very person. But how could someone else be able to know if that person’s mind truly exists? Certainly not by science. That’s just incomprehensible.
Thanks, let me complement.
1. Logic and Mathematics: presupposing that math and logic exists a-priori of the real world is magical thinking as believing in god. (e.g. euclidean geometric is the first branch of physics [the first model of space])
2.0 “Metaphysical truths (there are other minds)”: even if there are no other minds, the effects are the same as if there were.
2.5: “(five minutes ago)”: similar to 2 but now the unfalsifiability is more obvious.
3. Ethical beliefs: ethics is subjective and changes with time, even the most abominable could be “right” in other times for other individuals. Science can show, e.g. statistically why they make evolutionary sense at given stages.
4. Aesthetic judgments: science can investigate what is aesthetic for some and not for others, and make a prediction, do you need anything else?
5. ‘Science can not prove itself’: science can test it self, if empirically works most of the time then it shows itself to be a plausible method and even can admit that there is a better method (if proven scientifically).
6. Relativity: he obviously doesn’t know what he is talking about, the speed of light has been *measured* to be constant.
“3. Ethical beliefs: ethics is subjective and changes with time, even the most abominable could be “right” in other times for other individuals.”
I wonder if you are willing to live in the reality that you are claiming. If you’re willing to say that rapebis subjective in it’s ethical value.
I wonder if you would be upset if your daughter was raped, or if you would stand on the foundation you have built for yourself and say “well, that man thinks what he did is ‘right’ so there is no basis for me to say what he is doing is ‘wrong.’”
I don’t know you, but i doubt you would be able to live that way. You would want justice from him because what he did was wrong! You would not be fine with him getting away with no punishment.
You can’t call what rapists do evil or wrong if you believe ethics/morality are ultimately subjective.
Ice Cream flavors are subjective: I like chocolate, my wife likes vanilla. Neither of us are wrong, they are opinions.
Morality is not subjective in nature. There is good and there is bad. It is bad for someone to steal/rape/murder. I really doubt you could live under those beliefs.
Do you really know what you’re talking about? I’m graduated in physics and yes, the speed of light has been measured, but what turned this measured speed to be constant and the highest speed possible was other thing completely different. It all started with Maxwell’s equations: he discovered that the measured speed of light appeared in a manipulation of those equations when he tried to put together the facts that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field and a changing electric field produces a magnectic field. With some maths, he proved that theses to facts together resulted in a wave’s equation: light is an electromagnetic wave that has its velocity given by the vector of pointing (which had the same value as the measured speed of light). Coincidence? Actually not.
Einstein stated later that this velocity (aprox. 3 x 10^8 m/s) was in fact an important universal constant. There a THEORY was born. Of course I’m not saying Einstein was wrong, I’m only saying that he did assume something that was not (in fact, it can’t be) scientifically proven.
Really, you people should really think A LOT before you say a philosopher as good as William Lane Craig is wrong. Or you really think you would do better in Atkins place?
I’m not trying to be disrespectful but you’ve sort of missed the mark on this one, and should probably watch the full version of this video. This was made in 1998 and is still a very rationally used video in teaching at universities across the country. All of your arguments can be disproved by the science you’re trying to defend.
1. Ethics have never been backed by science yet they are rationally accepted by science. Bottom line. Dr. Craig is 100% right on this statement.
2.Aesthetic judgements are just that, judgements. And yes when someone has a symmetrical face it is considered pleasing to look at but it is also almost always a matter of taste and preference. There are cultures to this day that will disprove this “scientific discovery” and science has never claimed a definitive answer to beautify. Ever. And I think aesthetics are meant to mean more than just personable beauty in this situation.
3.Science itself may have made many discoveries since even the Enlightenment when it made it’s first quantitative leaps, however, as you stated yourself, there are things science can’t provide answer to. I feel that believing science can and will provide answers to everything at one point is very over reaching.
And all under the watchful eye of the late William F. Buckley, Jr.
Because science assumes logic, science cannot prove the truth of logic without reasoning in a circle.
According to logic, circular reasoning is a fallacy.
But if logic cannot be proven, how can we use a tenet of logic (no circular reasoning) to disprove that science may prove the truth of logic?
My head hurts.
Honestly, this is lame and disingenuous (I mean the video, not Dr Craig’s points or Abraham’s post). If you’re making the claim that someone gets “humiliated” you shouldn’t cut the film before that someone gets a chance to reply. It’s an unfair and uncharitable edit.
Yes, it’s a bad title.
It appears you can watch the whole thing in 11 parts. Here’s part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1Y6ev152BA&feature=related
Atkins picks up on points 3 and 4 and talks about potential evolutionary origins of these. 1, 2 and 5 don’t get dealt with before the subject moves on.
I really don’t understand the point to this. Of course you can’t test “beauty” in a test tube. And we know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder — you think it’s an awesome song, and I think it sucks. Same with God. You believe in Allah, James believes in Jehovah. Tom believes in Vishnu, I believe in no God. All rational positions with certain presuppositions
So we can agree it’s “rational” for people to have opinions about God — but that doesn’t make any of them right. They’re just opinions. It’s like having opinions about the Invisible Pink Unicorn. I say his horn is 3″ long, you say it’s 5″. But in the end it doesn’t matter, because the unicorn is invisible and isn’t around to prove anyone wrong. It’s just speculation. How many angels can dance on the pin of a needle?
No matter what you believe, there needs to be reasons. Faith doesn’t matter — if something is based on faith, then you could believe the opposite on faith with the same basis. To believe something you should have facts, not faith.
If you don’t have facts, then why believe it? And why would you want to try and convince anyone else?
“To believe something you should have facts, not faith.”
Everything in life is based on a degree of faith.
Due to the limits of induction…you can never use the scientific method to test everything. So while it may be rational to believe that if you jump off a building you will drop, it could be that this very next time you will fly upward. You accept the principle of gravity within our atmosphere on faith.
I would agree that you should get all the facts you can, but I think we’ll all be better off admitting that faith is not the opposite of reason, but part of the continuum of reason. At some point, its reasonable to have faith…for example in gravity as a principle, after 1000 consecutive tests, you can surmise that you will drop most likely if you jump…and plan accordingly.
Einsteins theories? Based on reason…plus faith. Quantum mechanics? Reason, theory, and then faith (in the math, the logic underlying the theories, etc).
As bright a man as Blaise Pascal was, he was smart enough to understand the limits of the scientific method and even of reason. If you are not familiar with ‘Pascal’s Wager’ it is well worth learning about, and could save your life, literally.
Prove ‘love’ based on facts. Is the food your mother is feeding you at Thanksgiving a gesture of her affection for you…or simply her fattening you up for a cannibalistic meal the next day? How do you know for SURE? Faith based on past facts.
Facts have their place. Reason has its place. Faith is rational to have if you have enough facts to satisfy yourself. I for one am pretty sure for instance that my mom is not fattening me up to eat me the day after Thanksgiving…how about you?
Dan says: “So we can agree it’s “rational” for people to have opinions about God — but that doesn’t make any of them right.”
I agree, opinions are not necessarily right. But they are not necessarily wrong either. The question is, which have the ‘ring of truth’ to them? Which have enough facts behind them to move you from hiding behind theoretical questions and into action?
Your position of not believing in God takes extraordinary faith. The majority of humanity from the beginning of recorded time has overwhelmingly believed in God. So you must have some pretty compelling facts on the ‘no God’ side of the discussion to make you stand with less than 5% of mankind. What are those facts?
Death will clear all these debates up. Being dead I think will bring remarkable clarity. Hopefully your facts are remarkable enough to bet your life on?
Pascal’s Wager? I’m really surprised people can still use that with a straight face. It’s a terrible argument. Pascal was a brilliant man, but that was once of his worst ideas.
Do you realize how many Muslims there are in the world? According to Pascal’s Wager, you should really believe in Allah to hedge your bets. Oh, and Mormonism is gaining… you wouldn’t want to be wrong about that. And of course Hinduism has been around for a very long time and is believed by many people, you should add that in…
If there was evidence for the miracles of Jesus, I’d believe them — why wouldn’t I? That would be really awesome if Jesus did miracles and people could heal people today and God would answer prayer and all that. I’d love to live in that kind of world.
Unfortunately, that takes faith, because there isn’t an ounce of fact for any of those claims. And if I believed Christianity on faith, then I’d have to believe all the other superstition in all the other religions, because they have just as much evidence for their claims (that is, none, but they all say they do to unbelievers until they are challenged on specifics.)
No evidence that Jesus did miracles and healed people. Well no scientific evidence.
Tacitus (Roman historian) refers to Christianity as an “evil superstition” but confirms that Jesus was a real person, crucified under Pilate. Some disputed Pilate was a real person until archaeologists uncovered the Pilate stone in 1961…
Josephus (Jewish historian, again not a Christian) talks about Jesus doing unexplainable works.
And then you have to explain how the Christian church grew so quickly in a culture opposed to its growth, the complete turning around of Paul from being against Christians to defending them (and historians for and against date Paul’s letters in mid first century AD). If he didn’t really see the resurrected Jesus why change your mind – to receive poverty, incarceration, physical violence and the like?
Historical evidence is different to scientific evidence but no less important. And you may not believe it at all but it is nevertheless
a complete fallacy that there is no evidence.
This would be like me saying to you that “your position of not believing the sun moves around the earth takes extraordinary faith. The majority of humanity from the beginning of recorded time has overwhelmingly believed that the sun revolved around the earth.”
It actually takes very little faith to not believe in God. Because all I’m saying is I don’t know, and that’s not faith. I say there could be a god who is hiding from us or that I just can’t see for whatever reason. It’s possible. I don’t know. That’s not a faith-based position. It’s a skeptic-based position — if further evidence comes in, I’ll reconsider my position.
A faith-based position is saying you KNOW what created our universe. I don’t say that first of all. But you don’t say just that — oh no, you KNOW (by faith) far more. You know the name of this “god.” You know the order in which he created things. You know that he is 3 in 1. You know all of his attributes by name. You know he has a son. You know all about this son. You know he has a holy spirit. You have long systematic theologies that often disagree with one another about all these “clearly seen” attributes. All based on FAITH.
And then you claim that I, who doesn’t know so doesn’t believe, has “extraordinary faith” to not know? Do you REALLY think my position requires more faith than yours?
Of course it doesn’t. But let’s say it did. Wouldn’t that be good? Faith is good, right? Or are you arguing for my position — that the more faith there is, the more likely that it will be wrong?
“This would be like me saying to you that “your position of not believing the sun moves around the earth takes extraordinary faith. The majority of humanity from the beginning of recorded time has overwhelmingly believed that the sun revolved around the earth.”
Of course, we have lots of scientific evidence that shows us that our common experience of the sun rising and setting is wrong. What scientific evidence do you have to show that humanity’s common experience of the transcendent is incorrect?
Furthermore, how would you even begin to make that argument? What metaphysical grounding do you have to make logical and scientific claims? As Hume so masterfully argued, claiming that this is how you’ve always experienced it (in a world without God) won’t cut it.
“It actually takes very little faith to not believe in God. Because all I’m saying is I don’t know, and that’s not faith. I say there could be a god who is hiding from us or that I just can’t see for whatever reason. It’s possible. I don’t know.”
If it is possible that God exists just as it is possible that He does not exist, then how does refusing to believe in God not take faith? Isn’t saying, “I don’t know,” and then choosing one side over the other require faith?
Good post.
So what? How does the existence of something we cannot prove demonstrate the existence of something else we cannot prove?
This is nothing more than filling in gaps with superstition. It doesn’t make the superstition “B” true just because we can’t prove the science of “A”. Ignorance of one thing doesn’t legitimize another unrelated thing.
Example: I can’t prove the speed of light, therefor telepathy is real? C’mon folks, tell me you can figure this out. This guy is using non sequitur as logic.
His point isn’t that because we can’t prove “A” then “B” must be true. His point is that people commonly dismiss God because they “only believe in things that are scientific/testable” or denigrate others belief because it isn’t scientific/testable, but this position is patently absurd because we all believe things that aren’t scientific/testable. He is dismissing an invalid criticism of God, not offering a positive proof of God.
Hey Aces,
You might want to watch the video clip. In it, Craig is responding to Atkins claim that science is “omnipotent.” Atkins asks Craig whether he thinks science can explain everything. The list of five things that Craig gives are not “gaps” by any means, but things that are inaccessible to the scientific method.
There is a link above to the entire debate. If you watch the entire debate you will see that Craig makes positive arguments for the existence of God that do not rely on gaps in current knowledge.
This is my PET soapbox topic!
very nice.
i’m curious as to how the other guy replied?
A great clip.
Dan,
I’m not really interested in debate for its own sake, I’ve done plenty of that. I’m more interested in you personally.
You can decide if that’s insincere or not since I obviously don’t know you. You’d of course, have to accept that on faith (not trying to be cute there, just stating the obvious).
There are many points that have been made here. I’ll choose a few to respond to:
1. First, on Pascal’s Wager. I think it surely can be silly if you evaluate like you did. Is that really how you think a brilliant mind like Pascal used the wager? The point is not to cover all your bases, since that is inherently self contradicting. Jesus says His way is the only way. If you pick His way, then you necessarily have to exclude the others. And since you seem like a smart guy, I’m sure you’re aware of how passionate the Muslims are about the Prophet? I do not think any sincere Muslim would place Jesus above the Prophet in importance (and doing so I’m sure could actually get you killed in parts of our world today). So you have to choose one or get neither. In my view, Pascal’s wager then allows you to ‘get off the dime’ so to speak. I’ve spoken to enough intellectuals in my life to know that they, just like anyone, can hide behind their arguments…fearful. It takes courage to finally say “hey, I’ve really got enough information to make a choice, now I need to back all this up with some action.”. Many intellectuals are frankly cowards (not saying you are by inference, just to be clear). So for the person that has sufficient evidence to know that one path is preferred, Pascal’s wager is exceedingly intelligent. You can only learn about love from reading a book so much…at some point you much move from the explanation to the reality. Pascal’s wager can help you do so. But if you don’t like it, don’t use it.
2. On the miracles of Jesus being true. Your perspective is not new. In a bible story, church folks asked Jesus to perform a miracle and THEN they’d believe. Jesus refused. Why? He knew they had prior commitments to not believing (if you read the bible, He obviously did not refuse to do miracles, but refused in this case). They were hard core skeptics and not looking genuinely for proof in order to change their lives…they were looking for proof to throw Jesus into jail or worse. He knew that no matter what He did, they could say “no way, that’s no miracle”. I’ll give you an example from TV today. Some folks love to do TV programs proving that there is a natural explanation for miracles…say the parting of the Red Sea as outlined in the book of Exodus. And for an hour they talk about how it could be easily explained in ‘human terms’. In my view, these programs don’t accomplish much. Why? Because if you believe that God is in the loop of causality, then its easy to say “hey, God used natural means to make this all happen”. And if you don’t believe there is God, then you say, “hey, see, the universe is just an unbelievably well organized billion year mutation, and this is just another example of that.” So you begin with a premise and use the factual data to support your premise.
So back to you. You say you’d believe if you saw facts. Surely you are aware of the many books on the subject of Jesus’ resurrection…the topic is well covered. So ask yourself, what PRECISELY would it take for you to say ‘hey, Jesus really DID rise from the dead’? Unless you can time travel, first hand witnessing is out. So what would it take? You seem well read, I assume you have read Mere Christianity? If so, how to you respond to Lewis’ Lord, Liar or Lunatic argument? Lewis was an academic his entire life and no one would rationally argue that he is not brilliant, so his points there are not the musings of a half wit. How do you respond to his argument for the truth of Jesus’ claims? Lewis was an atheist but came to faith, so he does understand both sides of this dialogue.
You say you’d love to live in a world with miracles, etc. How do you know you don’t live in such a world right now? What facts do you have that support your view?
3. On your point that it takes little faith to not believe in God. I think you are not being fair to yourself…you are a man FULL of faith! First, you must have extraordinary faith in your own reason…you believe something that nearly all humans who have ever lived do not believe…that there is no God (we are not discussing a particular god here, just ‘a god’). And some of those who have believe are extremely bright people, so its surely not lack of intellect on their part that causes them to believe.
Second, you must have exceptional faith to believe in your experience. Many many people have experienced the benefits of a life with God, even miracles. Your experience is that these are not valid. So you have faith in your own experiences over and above all these others.
Third, you have incredible faith in your ability to reason, given the necessary conclusions you must come to re: the origins of your reasoning. For with no God, you must then be left with ‘the universe’ in some way as your explanation as to how you and your reasoning powers came to be. Big bang, blind chance, mutations, whatever. Not God, that we know. So you believe that the higher reasoning that you doing evolved from a lower form. How do you know your reasoning is reliable though? Could you not be simply a bundle of chemical reactions, evolved over time, with no capacity to think accurately but deceived into thinking so? In other words, given that you have evolved, how do you KNOW you can trust the conclusions your reason brings you to…why is your reasoning reliable?
Fourth, you have incredible faith in there being Truth with a capital T, yes? Otherwise, why argue about this? Our discussion here presupposes right, wrong, objective truth…but with no god as the source of all this, how do you explain it? You “just believe it” true?
As I mentioned in the beginning, I have no interested in a sparring session. I genuinely want to know that I’m talking with a real human being who is attempting to be honest with what they really believe. So if you choose to respond, please respond sincerely and not just to make points in an internet debate. If you prefer, I’ll be happy to take this conversation private.
Mike
[...] Five things science cannot prove [...]
[...] 5 things science can’t prove [...]
The following is from Wikipedia, ecplaining that Pascal did not intend his wager as a proof of the existence of God.
“But Voltaire, like many other critics, misunderstood the Wager. Pascal did not offer the wager as a proof. [12] It is merely a conclusion to his arguments against certainty that relies on the notion that reason is untrustworthy and that discerning God’s actual existence appears to be “a coin toss.” If reason can be trusted on the question of God’s existence, then the wager simply does not apply.”
William James, in the book “A Will To Believe” makes a detailed argument with the conclusion that there is faith as the foundation of all reason just as there is reason as the foundation of all faith (ie We cannot have faith in something that we find unreasonable).
So, as has been pointed out by others above, we are ALL people of faith. Your faith that the laws of gravity will still be in place tomorrow are based on sound reason but it still has faith as its foundation. My faith in the existence of God is also founded first in reason.
I’m typing this message because of science. If religious people want to delude themselves I say “have at it Hoss” but when they try to force laws on me based on their beliefs then we have a problem
You think a 3 minute video where the claimant’s opponent barely has an opportunity to address the superficially glossed over comments by Craig is proof of anything? The only think of which it is proof is that many on this thread want desperately to believe in the illogical without bothering to think too deeply about such matters.
Things are things and some things are other things.