faithlessgod - 18 May 2008 06:38 AM
Bryan - 17 May 2008 10:48 PM
True, but please bear in mind that I’ve been trying to make a point with faithlessgod about the role of internal consistency.
Well I am still waiting for a response to my last post, which is clearly avoidance given the volume of posts you have provided since.
That’s very good.
If I don’t answer it then it’s avoidance. If I do answer it, then I’m engaged in my “usual semantic diversionary and avoidance games.” Heads you win, tails I lose.
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/viewreply/38588/
A)Your a priori probability that having the correct god, granting that a deity exists is, at best 0.0001
B)You were asked to provided differentiable evidence to increase the a posteriori probability of your deity being correct, that is to being greater than 0.0001
C) You suggested internal self-consistency of the worldview associated with a deity.
D) Whilst there has been some confusion over external consistency, this need not concern us here since you nonetheless suggested “non-fallacious reasoning” as your method to evaluate internal self-consistency
B):
Now what evidence can you produce that can increase the a posteriori probability over all other 9.999+ gods? That is if your choice of god is correct, what evidence would increase this probability - that is it cannot be evidence that could also be used to argue for any other god. This rules out revelation, miracles, sacred scripture, authority, sensus divinitus, argumentum ad populaum and so on. If you cannot show this then the odds that you have the right god are as close to zero (0.0001) as makes no difference.
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/viewreply/38027/
I took the above as a challenge to identify a class of evidence that enabled a narrowing of the probabilities. I take it from faithlessgod’s subsequent acceptance of the value of internal consistency that he agrees that the method I describe is effective in principle. Apparently with “B” he refers to a follow-up question where he wants me to specifically narrow the odds.
If the other gods he has in mind are not specifically identified as to world view, then faithlessgod’s challenge is as Jell-O. He could always claim that the probabilities have not changed based on an ever-shifting group of gods. But let me put it this way: There are only so many world-views. If half of the gods share a particular incoherent world-view then the odds double based on the method I suggest. And that’s a good start.
Well to move this forward I will go with (D) and use the most charitable interpretation of “non-fallacious meaning” I can and lets see where we get. There are a number of indications that, far from your internal self-consistency criterion increasing your a posteriori probability, it will, instead, decrease it! Indeed I have not seen anything from you..yet… that would indicate it can be increased.
Note that faithlessgod does not merely deny that my method has increased the odds. His statement indicates skepticism that the method could provide an increase in odds at all, in principle ("have not seen anything from you ... that would indicate it can be increased").
Later, he’ll argue that the same method has decreased the odds. That strongly suggests that the method works, in principle, to alter the odds.
So here I present a tentative analysis with a tentative conclusion, that is still pending provisional confirmation or dis-confirmation based on your responses to this analysis.
1. You have repeatedly presented fallacious reasoning in these forums and this thread, as Doug and others can attest to. This cast doubt on your claim for the superiority of your self-consistent worldview, since you should have no need to use such reasoning if it is what you say it is and is also indicative that your confidence in your self-consistent arguments are misplaced.
I am not aware of any example of fallacious reasoning on my part touching the arguments I have presented in this forum, and I challenge you to provide your very best and clearest example in support of your claim.
2. Evidence of the specific inconsistency of your theism is the problems you have over Euthyphro that I have dealt with before with you and is occurring here now with others.
I have yet to see the Euthyphro Dilemma applied successfully to the view I’m presenting. A straw man seems to more commonly appear in place of my views.
3. I have conversed with other Christians who do not have a problem with Euthyphro, since they take the other horn to you and so have less challenges to obtaining self-consistency. You might say they are not Christians but that is irrelevant here since we are considering competing theisms and theirs is a valid competitor.
I don’t think you know which horn of the dilemma I take, based on your comment above.
4. You have not answered the challenge of needing a self-consistent Judaism on which to based your self-consistent Christianity. By the basic rules of probability and logic - the conjunction fallacy - such a Judaism would be more self-consistent than yours or any other Christianity or Islam.
That doesn’t follow, since Judaism would not be a competitor until Christianity branched from Judaism. At the juncture of separation the usual rules apply (tests for internal and external consistency).
5. If you use a completion argument whether to make an inconsistent Judaism consistent or just more complete, Muslims could use the same argument against you.
The Muslim can use the same approach, but is not guaranteed the same results (either touching internal consistency or external consistency). And he is left with a god about whom nothing can be known (except, coincidentally, the knowledge that nothing about God can be known).
6. Whilst this only applies to your Christianity given its juxtaposition between judaism and islam, if you were to switch from 4 to 5 and back, this would be the leg hopping fallacy and evidence against your self-consistent system. I am not saying you would do this, but if you did, that is what would be concluded.
Thus point 6 doesn’t count for much.
7. Other theisms have a lighter or simpler worldview, by the same conjunction fallacy these are more likely to be self-consistent
Right, but at the level of important issues there is less difference between competing world views. That means that simplicity per se is no protection from internal inconsistency. In adding more and more tenets to a world view the a apriori probability of a contradiction increases--but who says how many need to be added? If Christianity was true would I lose my salvation if my belief in dualism was false (for example)?
World views group fairly readily in terms of the basic big questions regarding life and existence. That is where the key winnowing takes place.
8. Deism is a theism without a worldview, if you insist on comparing them with worldviews then the principle of charity would dictate to chose the most self-consistent worldview available and, whatever it is, would be more self-consistent than yours being absent Euthyphro dilemma for starters.
Any deism that has a view of the various big questions respecting the world (what it is, what it means, what to think about morality) has a world view. Deism is no more absent the Euthyphro problem than is the view I’ve presented--but with perhaps a bigger problem for epistemology.
I asked how much time would one spend on a theism with a 0.0001 chance of being correct. Well if finding the correct god was the most important thing in my life a brute force consideration of one god a day would take roughly 30 years! Of course we want to do better than brute force and speed up to process, hence the concept of differentiable evidence increasing the a posteriori probability.
Is it possible in principle for a god to assist your efforts in some manner? 
We can use such evidence to prune the theistic search space, not summarily but by standard Bayesian reasoning. At the very least spend no time on theisms with a criteria which would reduce the a posteriori probability below 0.0001. From everything I can see in the above 8 points I can tentatively conclude that your own suggested criteria does exactly that for your theism, hence it less likely than other theism and so is not worth purs(ue)ing any further.
Your 8 points include a false accusation, (an) apparent straw m(a)n, and some dubious reasoning. Tentative is an overstatement.
