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JohnH comments on Theism, Wednesday, and Not Being Adopted - Less Wrong
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Comments (320)
See JoshuaZ's comment below for exactly why I think my experiences would be dismissed.
He seems to be asking why your miracles count as evidence for your faith when other people have similar experiences deriving from contradictory faiths.
However, it seems like you're saying that these miracles don't count as evidence for any faith, including your own (except in a strict Bayesian sense, I guess). Is that accurate?
My question was different - it was about the nature of these miracles in themselves, not their relationship to a faith. If you're able to extract information from miraculous sources, I'd be very interested in your methods (especially as they are intended to be reproducible). Could you demonstrate this?
Alternately, if you still think a demonstration would be dismissed, could you explain on what grounds it would be dismissed and why one would be incorrect to do so? (Or, alternately, whether you believe that we would be correct to dismiss your claims due to some sort of information disparity - though this seems an unlikely position.)
Alternately-alternately, when you say that "if anyone follows the steps laid out in Moroni 10:3-5 (see also Alma 32, James 1:3-5) they can for themselves gain such knowledge", that seems to imply I could try it myself and validate your claim. Is that your understanding?
I think you looked at the above comment, not the below one.
You are basically accurate in saying miracles don't count as evidence of any faith, by themselves. The Spirit is a nescessary condition for determining what faith is right. (faith in this post is a collection of beliefs, faith in the other post is action, or trust, in beliefs) In as much as the Spirit is miraculus I should amend the statement to outward miracles do not, by themselves, count as evidence of anything, they merely indicate that more information is needed.
It is only reasonable that I trust my own experiences. It is also reasonable that I validate my exeriences by keeping a journal of those experiences and periodically reviewing what was recieved and what happened afterwards. This should cut down on the confirmation bias.
My experiences are valid for me, but for anyone else they are point of data that like a miracle doesn't provide sufficient evidence for anything as there are mutliple competing claims. Throwing out evidence you disagree with or that you think is a black-swan event is not a halmark of rationality. However as they can be viewed as low probability events and there could be errors in reasoning, errors in observation, and errors in transmission of those observations means that your model of the world should not be updated unless you yourself can replicate the events.
The method of how to recieve a response is in the scriptures cited. The response should be in both your mind and in your heart. You can try it yourself and validate my claims. Realize though that you are dealing with an entity that is both intelligent and has your best interest in mind, see Alma 32:17-20 for more on that subject.
So I take it you're not willing to demonstrate this ability? Say, by predicting what I've written on an index card (or whatever similar sort of verifiable prediction you're able to access)?
If that's the case, then I could certainly try to do so. Could you help me figure out what precisely I have to do such that you will predict success? The language of the text seems a little opaque. For others' convenience, I'll repost them here:
Moroni 10 3 Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts. 4 And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. 5 And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.
So it sounds like what I have to do is simply ask honestly for a sign of some verifiable sort? Or do I ask for more specific knowledge?
Already covered this:
"Yea, there are many who do say: If thou wilt show unto us a sign from heaven, then we shall know of a surety; then we shall believe.
18Now I ask, is this faith? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for if a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to believe, for he knoweth it.
19And now, how much more cursed is he that knoweth the will of God and doeth it not, than he that only believeth, or only hath cause to believe, and falleth into transgression?" Alma 32:17-19
Further, "An adulterous generation asks for a sign" which should itself be sign enough.
Yes. See also D&C 9:7-9 which gives a further example, though it is for translating sacred text so while the method of asking is the same the method of response may not be.
Also, you may want to define what you mean by honestly. Honestly being curious as to what will happen is not sufficient if it does not also include a real intention to follow God's commands if a response is received. You cannot fool God and He isn't a wish granting genie.
Essentially what I'm asking for is a reason to believe it. That could include accurate predictions about things regarding which I have no relevant knowledge. It does not include reports that such things are possible and have happened but cannot be produced right now, and it does not include the fact that I am asking for a reason.
I am willing to ask, in humility, for such a reason, from anything that can hear my inner thoughts directly so as to be able to respond. If there is a God that can do so, and belief is in my best interests, and that God has my best interests in mind, then it follows that I should be presented with something convincing to me. If I actually discovered that, say, there is an afterlife and an eternity of reward or punishments depends on one's mental state, I'd seriously consider proselytizing (though in a different manner from most proselytizers). If I discovered that some notion of objective good was not only coherent but obtained in our world, I'd probably alter my behavior drastically. Certainly, I think the prior probability of any specific organized religion being true is infinitesimal (and would in most cases I'd first have to be convinced that it's logically consistent), and a particular religious experience of nonspecific fuzzies would cause me to question my sanity first, but if I had a coherent religious experience that held up on future observation, and provided real reasons to alter my beliefs, I'd do it in an instant.
We do not disbelieve because we have seen even the slightest hint that it is true but we wish to rebel or disobey. We disbelieve because there is absolutely no reason to believe.
I have in fact actually tried this in a different context, and managed to produce an altered mental state, but saw no evidence of the supernatural, nor even a subjective 'experience of the divine'.
But it sounds like, when you imagine someone actually trying what you said would work for anyone, your mind jumps to reasons why it won't work, rather than expectations that it will.
Recent discussion brought up another one.
D&C 93:30
"All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it to act for itself, as all intelligence also; Otherwise there is no existence. 31. Behold, here is the agency of man"
No, I am just used to dealing with people that don't bother to actually try and understand the procedure and only try it partially. If you note I responded with scriptures on the subject, the same scriptures I started out with to define the procedure, so it is really just clarifying the procedure.
That is an extremely subjective statement. I will do the best I can, but from experience I know it is not likely to be sufficient, but I have been wrong about applying experience on here before so hopefully I am wrong.
"The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. " - Isaiah 35:1
I think that is enough for now.
So we're clear, these are intended to be reasons to believe in prophecy, not Mormonism, right?
These sound pretty vague and after-the-fact, and there's no info about specific predictions made beforehand or how often this source is wrong. More to the point - is this what convinced you? If not, what did?
How are they evidence against Mormonism? Considering that only one of those can be accepted as valid prophecy by anyone other then a Latter-Day Saint without theological complications, I think they are stronger evidence for Mormonism in particular then for prophecy in general.
The prophecies were given beforehand so I don't understand this part of your response. Are you asking for prophecies that haven't happened yet? If so, how would that be evidence of anything?
Please find a wrong example. I am unaware of any specific prophecies that meet the criterion to be prophecies that were not stated as being conditional on some action that have turned up false.
Convinced me of what?
I had experiences with the Spirit that would be applicable for almost any religion on the planet before I had experiences that were specifically about my religion. So knowledge that there was a God came before knowledge of which Church was correct. Going back to Moroni 10:3-5, I eventually decided that I needed to know for myself if the Book of Mormon was true. So I read it as directed and prayed about it as directed and relieved the answer that it was indeed true.
It was only afterwards that experience that I actually read the D&C, The Pearl of Great Price, The Old Testament, and everything other then the Gospels in the New Testament. I likewise repeated the procedure for all of them, and due to the insistence of evangelicals I have dealt with repeated the procedure multiple times on the entire Bible, the New Testament, and the Gospels. This was under the hope that when they said they would do the procedure on the Book of Mormon if I did on whatever it was they said (their idea not mine (and no, none of them ever cracked the Book of Mormon that I can tell )).
Does that answer your question?
Speaking of the read-the-book-of-Mormon-and-pray-about-it-and-get-a-straight-answer experiment, I've actually told a couple of my friends that I will eventually do this in the name of empiricism, but it's such a profoundly boring book that I haven't gotten very far yet. Is there a way to read it that makes it more interesting? Why isn't scripture better-crafted?
That's not what I meant - I was just trying to clarify my understanding of your chain of thought.
Anyway. My problem with these predictions was that they generally sounded like what they predicted was determined after those things happened, e.g. the second law of thermodynamics was not formalized by a Mormon.
If you really haven't considered this, then suppose: if I write down a thousand very specific predictions, and one of them comes true, would you call me a prophet? If you would, your standards are insufficient for your beliefs to correlate well with the truth.
Wikipedia lists a number of supposedly failed predictions - the hour of Jesus's return was nigh (within a generation) in 1830 but he hasn't arrived, the temple of Zion in Missouri was supposed to be built within a generation, the Civil War didn't end all nations.
What about these experiences convinced you of the truth of prophecy and / or Mormonism?
Other people have had vague spiritual experiences that convinced them of other, mutually contradictory religions. No one group is in the majority. Thus, no matter what, this is a method that is more likely to convince you of false things.
Why were your experiences different?
This is a claim I haven't encountered before. I'm curious incidentally what you have to say about the claimed scientific knowledge in the Koran.
oops, sort of miswrote, it is the first law not second. Well, the second is sort of there too but not nearly in the same way, sorry.
I am not familiar with the claims of scientific knowledge in the Koran, I would be interested in seeing the references to that.
The LDS position on the Koran is interesting. We do not know if Mohammad was a prophet but generally it appears the authorities in the Church think it is likely that he was, not a presiding Apostle but still having received revelation that was of a general nature for the area he was in. This puts the Koran on the level of Apocrypha which does contain true bits but also contains lots of not true bits so can be inspirational but does not count as scripture.
It is my understanding the the Muslims hold the Koran to be perfect so our position is contrary to theirs. Also it is my understanding that not only did Mohammad not write down what revelations he actually received when he received them but they were not written down at all until his death. I, personally, think there is too many layers of filtration over top of whatever was received by revelation to know what was revelation and what was not.
Ok. So where is it? Can you point to the specific scripture?
Regarding such knowledge in the Koran, I think you may have missed my point. I'm sorry, since that's clearly my fault since this is the second time I've used an example of an Abrahamic religion that has accidental complicating factors by being connected to LDS theology. So, let's ask the same question instead about say the Vedic texts. (The point by the way if it isn't clear, is that almost every religion has apologists who make this sort of claim about advanced knowledge in their holy texts. Just as each religion has people dedicated to saying why apparent contradictions aren't contradictions, why the archaeological evidence that doesn't fit their claims really does (although Islam is actually one that has much less of this problem than others), and how they have prophesies of subsequent events.)
The problem with rhetorical questions is they can be answered in ways that don't support your argument:
"18 Now I ask, is this faith? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for if a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to believe, for he knoweth it.
19 And now, how much more cursed is he that knoweth the will of God and doeth it not, than he that only believeth, or only hath cause to believe, and falleth into transgression?" Alma 32:18-19
I put my keys down when I came into the house - in a sense I know they're with the gun and the wallet and if I turn my head slightly to one side I'll see them. Of course someone may have crept up on me and moved them. I do not - in the strongest possible sense of the concept 'know' that my keys are there.
Everything beneath that strongest possible sense of knowledge, however, is simply talking about degrees of more or less well justified belief. So what's being asked in Alma 32:18 produces a positive answer: Of course I believe that which I know. My well justified beliefs are held much more strongly than less well justified beliefs.
Which makes of 32:19 something almost completely meaningless. Believing, having cause to believe, is simply what knowledge is. You're essentially asking how much greater X is than X. To which the answer is, 'Not at all. X is the same as X.'
In all honesty a god, or someone operating under divine revelation, would know how these things evaluated. He would have expressed himself properly.
Your argument only makes sense if you are a Bayesian that denies the whole idea of knowledge built off of axioms. Which is funny because Bayes theorem is built off of a set of well defined axioms. How do you know Bayes theorem is true outside of the axioms that it is built off of?
Anyways, change it to degrees of confidence such that knowledge is something like 90% and faith is anything below that. Or whatever critical values you wish to use.
Alright. I'm happy enough being a Mormon with proof that only makes you right somewhere around 90% of the time. Cough up.
Resetting confidence levels is a dangerous game for any person to play with their beliefs. You've said I can set it wherever I like. Fine, I choose to set it such that greater than or equal to fifty one percent confidence will be knowledge of some degree, rather than faith.
Do you see the consequences here? I've just reduced the chance that any aspect of your canon and testimony is actually correct to the odds of a coin flip. If you accept those boundaries, then you can't use the book of Mormon or divine testimony or anything like that as something any more substantial than a coin flip to guide your decisions or beliefs. It's essentially admitting that you'd be just as well off using a gambler's dice to guide your life.
There's a tension in fiddling with confidence levels like this. Between meaning and proof. If you want an empty faith – then that's very easy to have without obligating yourself to any sort of evidence, but it's not clear there's anything there to believe in. However, if you want to preserve that sort of meaning then you've got to select confidence levels in excess of fifty percent and retain those as faith and that obligates you to some sort of proof.
And, by the by: this all works whether or not you're a pure Bayesian. Axioms are true simply by virtue of the rules of the system. They are true in every possible world where the system in which they're constructed can be made to apply. To the truth state of an axiom it doesn't matter whether god will provide testimony or not.
If you think knowledge only comes from axioms - (or is built purely on axioms) - then in offering some prediction as being fulfilled you're not being asked for anything that would qualify as knowledge. It's not even clear under such a construction that you're being asked for anything that would qualify as evidence of a particular axiom.
Of course the minute you start saying that the evidence does matter to the truth states it ceases to be an axiom; for all that the formula may itself contain or wrest on axioms.
What is your confidence level that putting your hand into a campfire is will burn your hand?
edit As in I assumed you were intelligent enough to see everything you said and to assume that I was also intelligent enough to see such things.
Close enough to 100% that it makes no practical difference.
That doesn't seem to leave you any better off though. Which, yes, I assumed you'd seen. If the level of confidence you wish to select is to be high - perhaps even very high - before faith becomes knowledge, then the level of proof you can offer without destroying faith will be almost equally high. Even if we go all the way out to 100% you've just taken on a greater burden of proof.
This isn't some abstract thing. We should be able to sit you down in a room with a fair coin - or some other thing that can be relatively easily measured - and have you call it. See what statistic it approaches - how God does against blind chance. If knowledge is to be 70% confidence and god only calls it 69% of the time that 1% difference preserves your faith. The same for whatever level of confidence you select. The only way the objection offered in Alma makes any sort of sense is if there is no such difference with which to preserve faith.
Put it this way, if you think that there is a 1% probability (e.g. you are convinced it is bogus) that I am right in stating that if taken seriously God will answer prayers as from the scriptures I provided and this is enough to get you to try out what they say then that was sufficient faith in that instance. Clearly at 1% probability you shouldn't be doing anything else that comes with believing in the Book of Mormon or being LDS (at least that doesn't already coincide with what you think of as being right).
If you follow through and get evidence to boost the Book of Mormon to say 70 or 80% level then that should likewise boost the level confidence of what the book says to do to high enough to test them out. Following what the book says and finding it to be right should then boost the level, eventually at least, to whatever you have preset as your critical value to say you know it to be true.
If however one waits until they have evidence to suggest something is true with ones preset critical value then one is not acting in faith. If one has evidence at that level and then doesn't follow the commands of God then one is worse off then someone that thinks it is bogus but has had someone tell them it isn't or someone that due to everything else thinks it has 51% chance to be right.
Does this make more sense to you?
That doesn't seem consistent with part of the earlier verse you posted.
Under the account you're offering faith and knowledge are just different degrees of belief – indeed under that account knowledge is the type of belief with the most cause behind it. Whereas under the account in the verse knowledge and belief seem to be completely different kinds of thing.
If you want to call different degrees of confidence faith and knowledge, I don't really mind – the probabilities are what they are regardless of the labels you hang off them - but it doesn't seem to be doing any work that gets you closer to the conclusion you've decided on. You haven't illustrated any difference beyond the claim that at some point of arbitrarily selected confidence it's going to become worse for us if we don't follow the relevant commandments.
Which is fine as far as it goes I suppose – why doesn't god provide whatever portion of the evidence doesn't quite tip me over that vital point yet preserves enough meaning to actually be evidence?
It strikes me the answer is going to have to be along the lines of 'The more sure you are the more liable you are.' But then the degree of confidence is a measure of degrees of knowledge and you've lost that sharp divide that seems to be required for you to make meaning and faith coexist (i.e. being more sure of the religion's groundings than of a fair coin flip). The objection that I couldn't know because then I wouldn't believe would become rather meaningless – all meaningful faith would be based primarily on some form of knowledge.