The God thread

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Crayonz

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Neither here nor there. Or the Castle.
"Following" implies a purpose or intent.
However, this could be an inadequacy in the language and not an inadequacy in the thought behind it. Are you saying that Tao willfully follows its own inner nature?
Do animals willfully follow their instincts? :)

Please have a look at this sticky, if you wish to bring science into discussions of religion:
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=249614
Ack, sorry. I was trying not to, but it kept being brought up after I said that some people like to have proof before they believe in things while others don't. I shall cease and desist in replying to anything science related 'cause I don't want this to turn into another religion vs. science thread. :)
 

kuwisdelu

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You can't reach the 100% confidence interval in anything using the scientific method

Just dropping in as the local statistician to say that this sentence makes no sense. You can always define a 100% confidence interval. It just wouldn't be very useful. I can't think of any way a confidence interval would be meaningful in a conversation about God anyway, since I can't think of any meaningful parameters you could try to measure.


Or skip the fish (and the question is now -- isn't knowledge of Minoan mitochondria actual knowledge of Minoan mitochondria?) and isn't that scientific and doesn't it exceed 95% confidence? And how is 95% confidence an epistemological measure?)

It doesn't make sense to talk about confidence intervals in that context anyway.
 
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Mr. GreyMan

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So if somebody affirms that he knows that the statement "We saw three yellow fish yesterday" is something he knows we can be pretty sure that that knowledge it is neither epistemologically nor scientifically useful?
"Pretty sure" isn't the same as "knows" in the epistemological stance. And neither is a scientific statement because they don't give accurate error estimations.
Is there anything anyone could say about three fish that might be of scientific or epistemological use?
Quite a bit, yes.
Or skip the fish (and the question is now -- isn't knowledge of Minoan mitochondria actual knowledge of Minoan mitochondria?) and isn't that scientific and doesn't it exceed 95% confidence? And how is 95% confidence an epistemological measure?):
The 95% confidence statement is a scientific statement, but its not enough to claim "it is known;" you would need 100% for that in the sense I am using it.
Do animals willfully follow their instincts? :)
As much as humans.

But your question doesn't answer mine.
 

kuwisdelu

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The 95% confidence statement is a scientific statement, but its not enough to claim "it is known;" you would need 100% for that in the sense I am using it. As much as humans.

You have no idea what confidence intervals really are or how they're interpreted, do you?

It's fine to say these things colloquially, but please don't try to use the statistical jargon if you don't know what it means.
 

Mr. GreyMan

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Just dropping in as the local statistician to say that this sentence makes no sense. You can always define a 100% confidence interval.
By "reach" I meant "achieve," as in, getting a real statistical sampling that is 100% accurate.

However--thinking about it more--I guess you're correct that you could construct some situations in which you have 100% confidence in your measurements.
(But, they would still be dependent on other assumptions that would be not really be 100%. You can't--for example--assume your eyes work exactly right 100% of the time, and all of mathematics is based on "if... then" statements.)


I fear we have drifted off topic, however.
 

kuwisdelu

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By "reach" I meant "achieve," as in, getting a real statistical sampling that is 100% accurate.

"Accuracy" and statistical "confidence" are completely different things.

However--thinking about it more--I guess you're correct that you could construct some situations in which you have 100% confidence in your measurements.

The accuracy of your measurements has nothing to do with any confidence intervals you build unless you're specifically making a confidence interval to measure your accuracy, which assumes you have some kind of standard error for the accuracy of your measurements.

You can make a confidence interval for any percentage you want.

(But, they would still be dependent on other assumptions that would be not really be 100%. You can't--for example--assume your eyes work exactly right 100% of the time, and all of mathematics is based on "if... then" statements.)

None of this has anything to do with confidence intervals.

I fear we have drifted off topic, however.

I just don't like it when people use terms from my field in ways that don't make sense.
 

Mr. GreyMan

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You have no idea what confidence intervals really are or how they're interpreted, do you?
Only my recollection from Data Reduction and Error Analysis for the Physical Science (Philip Bevington), but it would hurt my central thesis about knowledge to claim my memory is 100% correct. ;)

Anyway, I admit I am playing fast and loose with my terms here. But, I hope my meaning is coming through, never-the-less.
 

kuwisdelu

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Only my recollection from Data Reduction and Error Analysis for the Physical Science (Philip Bevington), but it would hurt my central thesis about knowledge to claim my memory is 100% correct.

I admit I am playing fast and loose with my terms here.

I wouldn't have bothered saying anything at all if you had just said "confidence" rather than "confidence interval" in the first place and not linked to a Wikipedia page about confidence intervals. ;)
 

Mr. GreyMan

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I wouldn't have bothered saying anything at all if you had just said "confidence" rather than "confidence interval" in the first place and not linked to a Wikipedia page about confidence intervals. ;)
I admit its a nasty habit I have of linking wiki, but I want to make sure people know what I'm referring too.
I really did think that "a type of interval estimate of a population parameter and is used to indicate the reliability of an estimate" was the correct term to use in that post of mine.

But, maybe I need to go back and read chapter 3 again....
 

kuwisdelu

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I admit its a nasty habit I have of linking wiki, but I want to make sure people know what I'm referring too.
I really did think that "a type of interval estimate of a population parameter and is used to indicate the reliability of an estimate" was the correct term to use in that post of mine.

You need to have a parameter that can be measured in the first place. In order to sensibly talk about a confidence interval at all in the context of god, one would need to decide on a surrogate variable that could be considered indicative of the existence of a god.

That's a hard enough dilemma on its own, but for the sake of discussion, say we had such a parameter, and it could take on continuous values from 0 to 1, where if the true value of the population parameter were 1, it would indicate existent of god.

Then we could measure values of that variable in nature, calculate the standard error of our observations, and build a confidence interval. If a 95% confidence interval was [0.9, 1], then that would be strong evidence for the existence of god.

Incidentally, a 100% confidence interval in such a case would trivially be the interval [0, 1].

A confidence interval is — by its nature — an interval. You can't have statistical confidence in a point estimate. Unless you have zero error, in which case it's pointless to use confidence intervals in the first place. If I can observe zebra existing, it's not meaningful to construct a confidence interval for whether zebras exist.
 

kuwisdelu

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What, exactly, is a god anyway?

I guess that was the question that started this thread.

But so many languages have a word for a god or gods, and we can translate between them.

There must be an underlying pattern to what a god is.

Yet we have so many conflicting definitions.

Why?

Why can we translate the various words for "god" in so many languages of the world when we can't even agree on a definition? That seems like an interesting and weird linguistic paradox to me.
 
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RichardGarfinkle

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What, exactly, is a god anyway?

I guess that was the question that started this thread.

But so many languages have a word for a god or gods, and we can translate between them.

There must be an underlying pattern to what a god is.

Yet we have so many conflicting definitions.

Why?

I suspect because to most people the divine is heard about and/or experienced rather than defined. Definition is a characteristic of things and ideas descended from philosophy rather than things that arise in other venues.

Philosophy has, at times, tried to take over thinking and talking about the divine (witness the creation of theology), but that doesn't always work in the same way that philosophy's attempts to take over art by creating theories of aesthetics and criticism doesn't stop artists from making whatever works for them.

It seems to me that while gods and other divine concepts are talked about in universal form, they are far more often personally and often idiosyncratically conceived.

So the conceptions of gods are closer to works of art than objects of science.
 

Mr. GreyMan

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You need to have a parameter that can be measured in the first place. In order to sensibly talk about a confidence interval at all in the context of god, one would need to decide on a surrogate variable that could be considered indicative of the existence of a god.

That's a hard enough dilemma on its own, but for the sake of discussion, say we had such a parameter, and it could take on continuous values from 0 to 1, where if the true value of the population parameter were 1, it would indicate existent of god.

Then we could measure values of that variable in nature, calculate the standard error of our observations, and build a confidence interval. If a 95% confidence interval was [0.9, 1], then that would be strong evidence for the existence of god.

Incidentally, a 100% confidence interval in such a case would trivially be the interval [0, 1].

A confidence interval is — by its nature — an interval. You can't have statistical confidence in a point estimate. Unless you have zero error, in which case it's pointless to use confidence intervals in the first place. If I can observe zebra existing, it's not meaningful to construct a confidence interval for whether zebras exist.
Oh, I wasn't talking about GOD at that point, but general epistemology.

Your statements here are confirming to me I was correct in my usage. My point was that an "100% confidence interval" was scientifically nonsensical.

What exactly was your objection to my initial statement again? I guess I'm still missing it.
Why can we translate the various words for "god" in so many languages of the world when we can't even agree on a definition? That seems like an interesting and weird linguistic paradox to me.
Sounds like you might be an Ignosticist. (See, aren't wiki links useful for this sorta thing?)
 

JimmyB27

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So the conceptions of gods are closer to works of art than objects of science.
Seems fair to me. Objects of science are studied empirically, works of art are created by man.

Yup, sounds about right. If any gods actually existed, of course, they could indeed be studied, and therefore would become objects of science...
 

kuwisdelu

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Oh, I wasn't talking about GOD at that point, but general epistemology.

Your statements here are confirming to me I was correct in my usage. My point was that an "100% confidence interval" was scientifically nonsensical.

What exactly was your objection to my initial statement again? I guess I'm still missing it.

It was this:

You can't reach the 100% confidence interval in anything using the scientific method

Just dropping in as the local statistician to say that this sentence makes no sense. You can always define a 100% confidence interval. It just wouldn't be very useful.

And re-reading it, your statement still doesn't make sense. The verb "reach" with the direct object "100% confidence interval" just doesn't make sense semantically with the how a confidence interval is defined.

A confidence interval isn't something you "reach."

To expound:

however, you CAN use it to say something is more likely than something else, and say exactly how much more likely it is.

You wouldn't use a confidence interval for that, and saying "exactly how much more likely [something] is [than something else]" in a meaningful and easily-interpretable way is actually extremely difficult.

You could form a confidence interval for how much more likely something is than something else, though. For example, "A" is 9 to 12 times more likely than "B" with 95% confidence.
 
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kuwisdelu

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Sounds like you might be an Ignosticist.

Nah, not really. I'm basically a strong agnostic, but I also have my own thoughts on what I think a god is and how I think about god(s) and I have certain beliefs about the existence of god(s) that I suppose some might say would disqualify me from agnosticism (but that's still how I think of myself).

What I was wondering is more of a comparative issue. For example, Christianity is supposed to be monotheistic, but it has that weird Holy Trinity issue, and by many definitions, beings like angels could be considered gods.
 

RichardGarfinkle

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Seems fair to me. Objects of science are studied empirically, works of art are created by man.

Yup, sounds about right. If any gods actually existed, of course, they could indeed be studied, and therefore would become objects of science...

Not as simple as all that, I'm afraid. Bear with me for a moment as I open up a big can of world building.

First a disclaimer. My actual view is that Gods are a mental manifestation of part of how people think. That is I regard them as instances of certain kinds of mental processes that have no independent existence from the human mind. This doesn't mean that I think they're imaginary, rather that they are ways of thinking that can be (but don't have to be) given form in mind. From this point of view some people have an easier time with those forms manifest in mind (with external reminders such as icons), and some people have an easier time with them as unmanifest processes.

Anyway, on to the world building. It's perfectly possible to conceive of worlds that look exactly like ours that have one or more external deities that can affect the world in such a way as to not be subject to scientific analysis.

The simplest is to suppose a god that can inspire particular thoughts in people or push them toward certain decisions. Because the actions of these gods would work with standard mental processes (ideation and inspiration) their actions would not be discernible.

More complex is to imagine gods that can choose among outcomes of events, essentially gods of luck. If such gods favored their followers then the fact those people were unusually lucky could be determined by statistical analysis. But if the god has a more Illuminati-like attitude and is playing some long game for an outcome we can't see then it would be impossible to find which events had undergone such divine intervention.

A fairly extreme example is a god existing outside of spacetime who creates the universe, looks at it, decides it isn't quite what the god wishes, destroys it, and creates it again. This god is from our perspective omnipotent and omniscient, but does not intervene in the universe. From our POV in spacetime we do not realize that the whole of our existence, past, future, etc is a transitory flash in the thoughts and actions of this god.
 

kuwisdelu

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And depending on one's definition of a god, it is also possible to have gods that are powerless.
 

Cramp

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Seems to me there are plenty of words that have been translated to many languages that do not have a clearly defined meaning, without creating a linguistic paradox.
 

kuwisdelu

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Seems to me there are plenty of words that have been translated to many languages that do not have a clearly defined meaning, without creating a linguistic paradox.

And how many of them carry as much linguistic and cultural baggage as the words for "god"?

I admit "paradox" is an exaggeration, albeit a deliberate one. I initially used the word "dilemma".
 

Cramp

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I suppose when one starts to get into human constructs like morality and culture, the possibilities are endless.

Just make clear the definition one wants to use for the particular discussion and go from there, because, yes, saying 'I believe in (a) god(s),' doesn't say much of anything interesting at all.
 

kuwisdelu

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Just make clear the definition one wants to use for the particular discussion and go from there, because, yes, saying 'I believe in (a) god(s),' doesn't say much of anything interesting at all.

Well discussing your own personal definition of god was the purpose of the thread in the first place, so...
 

Cramp

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I was responding to this:

Kuwisdelu said:
Why can we translate the various words for "god" in so many languages of the world when we can't even agree on a definition? That seems like an interesting and weird linguistic paradox to me.

And it is to say that a lot of language is like this. Words are weird and slippery. What is 'art'? What is a 'game'? What does it mean to be 'good'? It is not a special quality of gods :p
 

Maxx

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Mr. GreyMan;8180557The 95% confidence statement is a scientific statement said:
Since it appears the confidence interval doesn't apply to knowing or science in any general way, maybe you need to base your epistemological judgements on other criteria.
 

kuwisdelu

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Since it appears the confidence interval doesn't apply to knowing or science in any general way, maybe you need to base your epistemological judgements on other criteria.

To put on my Bayesian hat for a moment...

If you replace the words "confidence interval" with the words "posterior probability", then all of Mr. GreyMan's statements make sense, scientifically, statistically.
 
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