On Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:40:37 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> On 4/25/2011 14:13, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> But if I were to describe the change in state, it would be "I no longer
>> need to believe that the sun is up - I know it is."
> 
> So if evidence obviates belief, and evidence obviates faith, what is the
> difference between the two?
> 
>> IOW, it's not that finding out causes disbelief, it removes the need
>> for belief because it's demonstrably true.
> 
> We're just using the words differently. Knowledge is justified true
> belief. It can be demonstratively true yet not believed (a creationist
> and evolution) and it can be demonstratively true and believed (a
> scientist and evolution).

Thinking about it a bit more - the examples you gave are perhaps not the 
best, I think.  The creationist would dispute the 'demonstratively true' 
part of evolution as the foundation for their disbelief in evolution.

There are two things one could dispute:  the theory, or the data.  In 
refusing to "believe in evolution" (a statement that I find funny 
because, again paraphrasing Neil DeGrasse Tyson, 'truth doesn't require 
your belief.'), the creationist is disputing either the veracity of the 
data or the conclusions reached by interpretation of the data.

So the dispute isn't with the idea of evolution (necessarily), but rather 
the conclusions reached by Darwin and those biologists who have reached 
the same conclusions.

Going back to the 'sun is up' example, when there is sufficient data to 
prove that a belief is correct, then it becomes truth and transcends 
being a belief.  When I see the sun around the curtains in the morning, 
and I know what time it is because my clock tells me that it's morning, I 
can believe the sun is up because there is evidence of it.  It might turn 
out to be a really bright light on a truck parked outside my window, and 
so my even justified belief that the sun is up could be wrong.

But if I pull the curtains back and see that, yes, the sun is up, then I 
no longer need to believe it because I can observe that it is up.  
"Belief" implies some doubt as to the state of what it is that I might 
observe.  If there's absolutely no doubt, then belief isn't necessary.

Just like believing I'm sitting in my chair.  I know I'm sitting in my 
chair; I can see it under me, I can feel it supporting my weight.  I can 
ask my wife to tell me if she observes the chair under me (and thus get 
corroboration).  I don't need to believe it's there because there's no 
chance that it isn't - because if it wasn't, then I'd be on the floor, 
and unable to type this message (because my keyboard is supported by my 
desk).

Jim

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On 4/24/2011 9:17 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Apr 2011 16:44:07 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> On 4/23/2011 10:09 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> On Sat, 23 Apr 2011 23:45:04 +0200, andrel wrote:
>>>
>>>>> I think there's a fundamental difference, if you're like most of the
>>>>> atheists I know - you're willing to be convinced given sufficient
>>>>> evidence.
>>>>
>>>> No, I am not, that is the point. There being a God is to such an
>>>> extend contradictory to being me, that I will never accept any
>>>> evidence(, hence my reference to that book of my father). I think you
>>>> will find that true for other atheists as well.
>>>
>>> That is different - so you're saying that if someone presented rational
>>> evidence for a God, you wouldn't accept it?  I find that *highly*
>>> unusual.
>>>
>> Problem is the "rational evidence" part. How do you tell someone playing
>> at god, with super advanced tech, or even abilities maybe, and that they
>> "are" god in any real sense. Hell, to most of the people over thousands
>> of years a Jedi would constitute a god, but we would, if any such person
>> showed up, be looking at blood samples to work out how the hell they did
>> it, not bowing to them in worship, a fact true even for most religious
>> people. First, you need a coherent definition of god, then you can talk
>> about what constitutes evidence.
>
> Interesting, I hadn't looked at it that way, but that makes a lot of
> sense to me (andrel, is this the sort of thing you're talking about?)
>
>> Since most of the stuff in religious texts fall into these categories:
>>
>> 1. Things any two bit magician can replicate. 2. Things we could
>> replicate now, with preparation. 3. Things we could at least imagine
>> replicating, if we had certain technologies.
>> 4. Things we couldn't replicate, like making a new universe, and then
>> showing someone around in it, and which are probably not possible.
>
> The first three things you state are things that make sense to me.  #4,
> though, I'm not sure 'probably not possible' seems a little wishy-washy
> to me.
>
> Jim
Well, probably not possible due to the fact that most theories about 
multiple universes seem to imply that you can't get there from here, 
even if you managed to somehow make one. The laws of physics in, never 
mind between, them would tend to preclude it.

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On Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:44:09 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Do you believe Elvis is alive?  Do you believe Elvis is dead?  Can you
> really answer no to both of those questions?

Sure, it's possible for someone with insufficient data to answer "no" to 
both questions.  Is Schrodinger's cat alive or dead?  Before you open the 
box, which would you believe?

Jim

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On 4/25/2011 16:18, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Faith is less justified than belief, perhaps?  Similar concepts, but at
> different places along the scale.

Well, to my reading, "belief" being present means I think it's true. It 
doesn't matter whether I'm justified, or whether it's actually true. If I 
believe Elvis is alive, it doesn't matter whether he is or whether you've 
showed me the funeral. That doesn't affect whether or not I believe it. 
(Showing me the funeral of course may affect whether I continue to believe it.)

If I believe something and I haven't changed my mind, then I still believe 
it. I don't stop believing I was right just because I found out I'm 
*actually* right.

Faith, in my vocabulary, may be a religious term meaning "belief without 
evidence or in spite of contradictory evidence." Or it might just mean 
"confidence."   I have faith Fred will do the right thing. I have confidence 
Fred will do the right thing.  But "faith" tends to mean something even 
stronger than confidence, in my vocabulary.

"Knowledge" is when you believe something and you have evidence and you're 
not mistaken. Or, as the philosophers put it, "justified true belief."

Tell me what word you'd use to mean what I mean by belief.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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On 4/24/2011 10:16 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/24/2011 16:44, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> looking at blood samples to work out how the hell they did it,
>
> There is already someone in India or something, millions of followers,
> born of a virgin, curing disease and raising the dead, basically
> everything Jesus ever did, wandering around live. Nobody outside of his
> followers pays any attention.
>
Might be because such people are a dime a dozen, and most of their 
miracles pretty always turn out to not be what they claim, or 
manufactured. Its not that hard to present the form of death in someone, 
either by accident, or intent, and have it pretty much undetectable by 
anything short of an EKG machine, properly calibrated. And then, there 
is the fact that a lot of that shit just gets made up by followers 
anyway, to bolster the supposed power of the one they follow.

BTW, belated, but happy zombie uprising of 33AD, which one bit of the 
Bible, but not one other document from the time, mentions. lol

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On 4/25/2011 16:14, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> See, this is just like the argument over theory. We are going around and
> around here, over what is a trinary problem, because someone wants to define
> it as a binary one, by conflating 'certainty' with some sort of 'belief'.

I disagree. I think this is just a discussion over the definitions of words. 
I use "belief" to indicate the mental state in which I think something is 
true. Someone else is using it to mean the mental state in which I think 
something is true but I am not certain. I think I can believe something to 
be true of which I am certain. Jim seems to think I cannot believe something 
to be true of which I am certain. I would find it very confusing if someone 
at Fred's funeral said "I can't believe Fred is dead" and meant it literally.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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On 4/25/2011 16:25, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Mind, it only implies carbon based life due to lack of evidence "here" that
> you could have anything else

Well, the "fine tuned" argument says that if you go a little bit one way, 
you don't get any atoms, and if you go a little bit another way, everything 
collapses into a black hole before there's time for nuclear fusion to start, 
or some such.

So, not so much "carbon based life" as "atomic matter, elements, molecules, 
etc."  Maybe if you want to make life out of free quarks interacting with 
gravity waves or something...

In any case, I'm trying not to spoil Calculating God, which has some fun 
stuff in it. I highly recommend it to anyone who ever wondered "I wonder if 
there *might* be evidence of God out there."

P.S., I don't think we've found any such evidence yet, so any example I give 
would have to be taken with a grain of salt as simply a "imagine if this 
really was evidence..."

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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On Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:35:19 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Tell me what word you'd use to mean what I mean by belief.

"I think it's true" fits well here.  There's a difference, though, 
between "I think it's true" and "I know it's demonstrably true".  The 
latter doesn't require belief, because one can demonstrate the truth of 
the statement.

So really, it comes to me as :

True:  Something that can be verified in the real world.

Justified belief:  Something that one thinks the evidence points strongly 
to; something that one has studied.

Unjustified belief:  Something that one thinks the evidence points 
strongly to, but something that one hasn't studied in-depth.

Faith:  Something that one has no understanding of the evidence for or 
against, but is inclined to believe to be true nonetheless, perhaps even 
in the face of evidence against it being true.

False:  Something that can be verified to not be true

Not sure that that's the complete scale or even an accurate scale, but 
maybe a point of discussion can form around it.

Jim

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On 4/25/2011 4:38 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/25/2011 16:14, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> See, this is just like the argument over theory. We are going around and
>> around here, over what is a trinary problem, because someone wants to
>> define
>> it as a binary one, by conflating 'certainty' with some sort of 'belief'.
>
> I disagree. I think this is just a discussion over the definitions of
> words. I use "belief" to indicate the mental state in which I think
> something is true. Someone else is using it to mean the mental state in
> which I think something is true but I am not certain. I think I can
> believe something to be true of which I am certain. Jim seems to think I
> cannot believe something to be true of which I am certain. I would find
> it very confusing if someone at Fred's funeral said "I can't believe
> Fred is dead" and meant it literally.
>
But, it is much the same thing. Because belief gets used interchangably 
to define both a state of certainty, as well as a state of uncertainty, 
where you are merely presuming a fact, without necessarily having 
evidence. Many of the same people at that same funeral would think you 
where nuts if everyone was talking about the freak accident that killed 
him, and you said, "I don't have a theory about how he died.", meaning 
that you could only guess at it, not a state of certainty about how it 
actually happened. Their reaction would, almost certainly be, "What, 
with all the things people have been saying here today, you have no 
'opinion' of how it happened?"

Its exactly the same situation.

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On Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:38:03 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim seems to think I
> cannot believe something to be true of which I am certain. I would find
> it very confusing if someone at Fred's funeral said "I can't believe
> Fred is dead" and meant it literally.

Well, I'm talking about a literal sense, not a figurative sense of the 
word.  "I can't believe Fred is dead" is a figurative use of the word 
'belief', or a type of denial (take your pick).

Jim

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