@@arcanics1971 Yep, same. And when you've heard enough bogus claims, then it starts to become obvious that most will be bogus at least according to personal standards. There's a hidden 'divine hiddenness' critique in his question, but I wanted to keep the video short.
You investigate 100 claims and show they are all false, then someone says "oh, but claim 101 is real!". So you investigate 1000 claims and show they are all false, only to have someone say "oh, but claim 1001 is the real one!". At what stage can you simply say I've proven this beyond reasonable doubt? As the saying goes insanity is repeating the same thing and expecting different results.
1. Do you believe our beliefs ought to be proportioned to the evidence? Having studied philosophy and then law, I’ll say “Sure,” but will adding that the concept of “evidence” is not always intuitive and/or straightforward. Examples: 1A. You’re walking past your neighbors house and hear what appears to be splashing in a pool. You walk up to the fence, look over, and see your friend, TrolleyDave, swimming in his pool. Do you have ‘evidence’ TrolleyDave is swimming in his pool? 1B. You’re walking past your neighbors house and hear what appears to be splashing in a pool. You walk up to the fence, look over, and see waves in the pool, TrolleyDave out of the pool soaking wet while seeing what appear to be wet footprints from he pool to where TrolleyDave is standing. Do you have ‘evidence’ TrolleyDave was swimming in his pool? If this is, indeed, evidence, how do we proportion the evidence? During jury voir dire, how are jurors instructed to treat 1A and 1B? If a juror intuitively believes that 1B should be less proportioned than 1A, are they allowed to sit as a juror? 2. “If we could verify some miracle actually occurred, would that give us a reason to think that God exists?” This question is fraught with issues, including: the notorious lack of defining What ‘is’ a miracle? What ‘is’ a god? Where is this god-type when said miracle occurs (A-Theory or B-Theory of Time)? Thus, I’d reject this question. And since Cameron Bertuzzi has been doing this for so long, I’m wondering why he doesn’t know how to ask a better question. 3. “If you’re an Atheist…” For numerous reasons, this question would immediately be objected to by opposing council in a US courtroom. If I understood it correctly, It’s (presuppositional-type) foundation is suggesting: If you can’t know everything, you can’t know anything. This type of thinking avoids: - From what we ‘do’ know (assuming we can know), we can, via a process of elimination, determine what is ‘not’ the case. - The Pandora’s Box Objection: Briefly that if everything is such a mystery, then we’ve opened up a Pandora’s Box of Mystery where anything might eventually be the case. - Because of a lack of time restraint, Cameron has created an unfalsifiable scenario. Conclusion: Cameron, would you agree that a person's (a non-believer's, skeptic's, agnostic's, apistevists, or atheist's) views are irrelevant to the validity of your personal god claim(s) and do not extricate you from your burden of proof to demonstrate either your specifically defined god, or some asserted holy text, is what you claim it is? If no, how do their views influence the validity of your personal god claim(s) and your burden of proof to demonstrate that either your specifically defined god, or some asserted holy text, is what you claim it is? Note: Never let someone Shift the Burden of Proof - especially via speculation.
I really like pointing people to Digital Gnosis's Bad Apologetics episode on miracles. Often the response is "I'm not going to watch an 8 hour video." Well, fair enough I guess but I'm expected to research literally millions of miracle claims or read Keener's two volumes on miracles?
I disagree with the way you argue the 2nd point. You argue on the point of "how could we prove it" but he says "if we could" and "this is contingent on if we could". I think the point is not about how we could verify, but "if we could" as a hypothetical, THEN we move on to the question and argument: "would it give us a reason to think that god exists". In which case I would say that I would be more open-minded to the possibility of god existing, but it still wouldn't be evidence for it in and of itself. A connection still needs to be made that the originator of the miracle was in fact god himself. It could have been a different originator of the miracles (other gods, aliens, satan, demons, angels, etc.) in which case it wouldn't have been god and our belief in god at that point would have been misplaced. And going back to the first question, since I agree we should only really believe something we have evidence for, a miracle should not justify belief in god until a connection can be made between him and the miracle. I also wholly disagree with "everyone believes things based on the evidence they have available to them". Many, MANY people believe things that were literally made up on the spot without any evidence. Just made up out of thin air. I also thinks this applies doubly for people and theists who make ad-hoc fallacies in order to cover for unfalsifiable claims. They will make something up on the spot to cover for something they made up earlier and then repeat the process. Also ties back to the definition of faith: 'belief without evidence'.
Hi, thanks for taking the time to watch the video, and for taking the time to share your thoughts on it. I really appreciate it! With regards to how I argue the 2nd point. Sure, he's asking if we had a verified miracle then would that count as reason to believe god exists. To which I replied that yes, it would give us reason to believe that a god exists. However, it would be impossible to verify that a miracle existed, for the reasons that I mention. Making the problem that if we proportion our beliefs to the evidence, and the evidence points towards us never being able to verify a miracle, then miracles can never give us reason to believe God exists. A Christian might accept some event as a miracle, but that would be because they have a lower epistemic bar for what counts as a miracle and verification. With regards to belief without evidence, it is down to way that our brains process information that means that every belief we hold is based on some kind of evidence. It might be good or bad evidence, and someone like you might not consider it evidence. But from a personal standpoint, those things would be evidence for that person. Even the things that you consider to be 'made up from thin air' would be part of the body of evidence for that person. The ad-hoc reasoning you're talking about is still based on social schema that would be considered evidence for the individual doing the reasoning. Nobody believes things without what they would consider evidence simply due to the nature of the schematic processing that goes on during belief formation.
@@TrolleyDave "It would be impossible to verify that a miracle existed", "miracles can never give us a reason to believe god exists". Are these truly accurate statements or are they perhaps assertions that you have created? I agree it's currently impossible, but like you said in your motte and bailey video about asserting god does not exist and talking about science cracking what is consciousness, does that mean it will always be impossible with 100% certainty? Or is it a calculation based on present and past evidence that doesn't add up to a true 100% but maybe gets very close. But I still, I think this misses the true mark of the question. Assuming you could prove with 100% certainty, (not asking how you could, but skipping over that part instead), a miracle has transpired. Now you say yes which I think is the crux of the point rather than the verification process. Which I already gave my reason for why it still wouldn't. And obviously, his final question was flawed in a thousand ways.
@@alfamari7675 They aren't assertions that I've created. It is an argument from David Hume. And yes, it will always be impossible because of the fallible nature of our knowledge of natural laws, and the fact that testimony can never be proof of a miracle.
@@TrolleyDave Of course testimony itself can never be proof. But that's an assumption in and of itself: "testimony can never be proof of a miracle". The original statement was "if we could verify some miracle has actually occurred". It doesn't say "testimony". So either it could be hypothetically possible to go back over the testimony and find the place it happened and find other evidence that leads to other evidence and with enough intertwining links of evidence that would constitute as proof. Or it could be also interpreted as a future tense statement (some time in the future if we could prove ...) like science finds a divine particle or god reveals himself in everyone's minds unanimously and undeniably, idk whatever. Obviously this stuff is almost certainly not going to happen and probably very close to impossible. So much so that using it interchangeably with certainty statements should be fine. But with precise technicality, these don't sound like statements that are 100% certainty statements and are more like it may or may not be possible for science to crack what consciousness truly is but we don't know what the future holds or if its even a concept that can be tested and revealed. Like what happened before the big bang, or multiverses. It almost sounds unfalsifiable in and of itself and similar to the assertion that god does not or cannot exist. So if, for example, god performed a miracle where he undeniably revealed his presence to us and literally 100% of people on the planet agree, how is that accurate to say "miracles can never give us a reason to believe god exists"?
@@alfamari7675 Apologies for the slow response, been a very busy past few days. Sure, let's call it an assumption. It's a reasoned assumption, but what would be the problem with that? And I know the original statement said 'if we could verify some miracle has actually occurred'. I was explaining why we could never verify that a miracle has occurred, as I've stated several times. Sure, we could hypothetically go back over the testimony and find the place it happened. But that wouldn't be testimony of the miracle itself, that would just be testimony of where it occurred. The only evidence we would have of the miracle itself would be the testimony of the people that witnessed the miracle, as the event would already have occurred. If the event had already occurred, then we would have no means of verifying that it's a genuine miracle event through investigating it. In the case of testimony of the miracle itself, it would have to overcome our prior experiences, and prior probabilities. It would also have to overcome the probability that they were simply mistaken about what they saw, or are being deceptive, or were wrong about what they saw, or were deceived by their senses, or that we simply don't have enough information how the natural world works. Sure, we could lower our epistemic bar for what counts as evidence or what counts as a miracle, but ought we lower our epistemic bar considering all the other facts? Science finding a divine particle would certainly be evidence in favour of God, but it wouldn't be a miracle. It would simply be us finding something new about how the natural world works, and what constititutes its makeup. It would be no more a miracle than discovering that panpsychism is true. Again, I didn't say that miracles can never give us a reason to believe God exists. I said that if we could verify a miracle occurred then that would give us reason to believe God exists, or believe in God. The problem is that we could never verify that a miracle occurred, for the many reasons I've stated. Even if the entire world witnessed what we thought was a miracle, there are still the problems that you mentioned. Like how to verify that it was God, and not some super powerful race of aliens. Miracle events would also point towards the existence of a super powerful race of aliens, so what theory choice method would we use to determine on over the other?
