Truth

[Grace Seeker]

I see that this thread has gone on to address other issues than where it was when I last participated in it. But I'll still follow-up on a question asked of me:

There are Hundreds of them.... if you were to make your own way of practicing Baptism, then wouldn't this be an Innovation ? Something being added to something which was not meant to be part of... such leads towards misguidance...

No, I would not understand this as innovation.

Further, there are times when it is perfectly appropriate to add (or detract) from the original way something was said of done. All people, and hence all religions do this, even in Islam. For instance, electronic amplification is often employed, instead of just the voice alone, in making the call to prayer. The Amish (in Christian circles) would call use of such a device as a type of inappropriate innovation, yet it is perfectly acceptable in Islam (at least those places I know about). Other types of innovations would be acceptable to some and not to others even within Islam where there is supposed to be one interpretation (e.g., Yusuf Islam for instance was told by his Imam that he could play his music and it would be halal as long as his songs are "morally acceptabe", and though for years he did not, now he once again does, while others hold that all guitar music is haraam). The question that needs to be addressed is not whether something is or is not an innovation, but whether such innovations are appropriate or if they violate some aspect of one's faith. An innovation may not be appropriate, but it should not automatically be assumed that because it is an innovation that it is not meant to be practiced. Such thinking that prejudges an innovation for simply being an innovation without regard to its intrinsic appropriateness would seem to itself be a form of misguidance.

 

[Lynx]

Lynx



I don't feel that I was speculating on the nature of morality. Like I said: I don't think that science deals with it at all and I stated the reasons why. Are you suggesting that there is such a thing as a scientifically verifiable moral truth?
What I said about the inner state of the atheist is a religious explanation and I never claimed that I've provided evidence for it.

Oh okay. Well your entitled to express your opinions as much as you'd like. I thought you were trying to explain away atheists with a blanket statement that they are all just in denial. My own opinion is that we as humans DON'T think of murder as 'wrong' across the board and that there are people who are genuinely convinced that God does not exist.

Most atheists that I've come across do ask for proof for God's existence from the natural sciences and, conversely, say that they disbelieve in God because they don't feel that the natural sciences show anything that would indicate His existence. But, I'm sure that there are plenty of people out there who would accept an a priori argument. Don't feel shy about telling me why the arguments that I presented don't work.

I wouldn't mind explaining why I think those arguments don't work. I guess this thread is fine since it's called 'Truth' and the OP is no longer with us. The one you mentioned was the cosmological argument. The traditional response to the cosmological argument is that it makes an illogical leap from 'everything needs a cause' to 'God is that cause' that is not justifiable. It could just as well have been some unknown property of the universe that created itself. The variation you mentioned about 'if there was an infinite time before us we would never be here' might be true except that there wasn't an infinite time before us; time started at the Big Bang so there's no reason why we shouldn't be here. In fact, time did not exist before the big bang and the common mistake that proponents of this argument make is to assume that there was an infinite time before the big bang.

If I've missed out any important details in that argument , or if you have other ones in mind let me know. I just wanted to get the discussion rolling.

 

[Hugo]

I actually pointed out the exact part where the induction is taking place. The assumption of the uniformity of the universe is assumed BASED on induction because we think the universe is uniform based on previous experience. Every scientist assumes THIS implicitly. You can't ever escape logical doubt UNLESS you assume this because deduction on its own is completely useless in producing new knowledge. Let me tell you again: in a deduction all premises are either a) assumed/arbitary or b) previous theorems.

What bothers me with your absolute certainty here is that induction itself cannot be shown to be true, because according to you, you would have to use induction to do it and as far as I know there have been NO OTHER universes so I have no idea what you mean there by 'previous experience'. Secondly, it seems that you cannot even entertain the idea of deduction, a priori reasoning. Please explain, in the Einstein case what assumptions he could have made and what theorems he used? Of course he used algebra and other theorems in Physics but somewhere a leap of insight or brainwave or call it what you like occurred which could NOT have come from what was known already because the concepts and physical realities he predicted where NOT known and at the time had never been observed.

In inductive logic the truth of a conclusion is measured by probability rather than a binary T/F truth value that you find in standard systems of deductive logic. Fallacies in inductive logic are different from fallacies in formal logic. What I described to you was a textbook inductive argument.

I do not dispute that inductive reasoning is possible and for example is used in Law and by Lawyers all the time but more often than not the fallacies we find are common to deduction as well - for example equivocation. If we take your sun rises in the morning example, then obviously you could use an inductive argument to say it will rise tomorrow but I can use the Laws of planarity motion and predict exactly what time it will rise in 2059. No doubt you will argue I have to have some initial measurement much as in the same way if I want the area of a square I have to measure it first so that is NOT induction and I do not rely upon induction I rely upon physics. I think I do understand deduction and induction but do you, so a two tests for you, Sherlock Holmes is famously depicted as making deductions so do you agree and if so explain what that means in the way he works? Secondly, suppose I have a class of students and I lose something and I ask the students to find it: now explain how they might do it inductively and then how they might do it deductively?

I don't think you appreciate the uselessness of deductive logic if you don't take for granted your assumptions. Go to your local philosophy department, find the logic professor and ask him if it's possible that a deduction can tell you something about the world IF you don't assume something about the world as true

Does it not sound a bit bonkers to put so much trust in induction when we know it is flawed and then tell the world deduction is useless. If I create a deductive argument then of necessity I cannot make assumption about premises I have to be certain they are true - go and ask your professor! Those premises do not have to arise out of what I see they can just be totally the product of my imagination and there are many examples of this - for example the Turing machine, paralleled universes and so on. The process then is to show they are true and hence prove the conclusion. If you can't agree to this explain what deduction is for you and give an example.

I think what you're looking for is the verification principle; a statement's truth can be determined by examining it's truth conditions. It's an old logical positivist's idea. You agree then that no holy book can ever produce such conditions?

I am not sure you do. What I was speaking about was a fallacious reasoning. In the case of typical arguments for the Qu'ran of the form it is linguistically perfect therefore must come from God because God would only produce perfect thing. From a fallacy point of view this would be perhaps false dilemma or far-fetched hypothesis but maybe you have other ideas.

 

[Hugo]

I don't know what facts you are talking about that would be inconvenient, I certainly don't consider any facts to be inconvenient when it comes to this type of discussion. And I doubt that there are many who would sincerely consider others to be bonkers for believing in God; even someone like Christopher Hitchens admitted that a belief in God comes naturally to the human race, he simply wishes that we "outgrow" it or try to keep it private. So whilst there may be many out there who feel that there is no scientific proof or philosophically rigurous arguments for the existence of God, I do doubt that people, deep down, consider believers in God to be bonkers. That's what I think.

Here I meant that we may well have a set of ideas and arguments that look foolproof and then someone comes along with a new angle or idea that punches a hole through the lot. I read you paper and my issues with it is that you seem to have created an impregnable argument in that as soon as someone suggests a test you simply say it does not apply in you case. One often hears for example, of an atrocity perpetrated by a Muslim group but instead of accepting it you (not you literally) argue they could NOT have been Muslim. I see your points but if we as it were box ourselves into or barricade ourselves into a corner of our own making we may not be all that willing to listen to others.

 

[Zafran]

I wouldn't mind explaining why I think those arguments don't work. I guess this thread is fine since it's called 'Truth' and the OP is no longer with us. The one you mentioned was the cosmological argument. The traditional response to the cosmological argument is that it makes an illogical leap from 'everything needs a cause' to 'God is that cause' that is not justifiable. It could just as well have been some unknown property of the universe that created itself. The variation you mentioned about 'if there was an infinite time before us we would never be here' might be true except that there wasn't an infinite time before us; time started at the Big Bang so there's no reason why we shouldn't be here. In fact, time did not exist before the big bang and the common mistake that proponents of this argument make is to assume that there was an infinite time before the big bang.

Not realy I've heard people argue that actual time is finite because of infinite regress - So that somewhere down the line there must have been a first cause - its called the Kalam cosmological argument - same argument but a bit fine tuned.

 

[Lynx]

What bothers me with your absolute certainty here is that induction itself cannot be shown to be true, because according to you, you would have to use induction to do it and as far as I know there have been NO OTHER universes so I have no idea what you mean there by 'previous experience'.

Yeah the problem with induction you mention was first brought up by Hume (or first that I've read). You don't need other universes to create and induction about our universe. Einstein lives in our universe and his data was meant to predict things in our universe and he operated under the following principle that he believed to be true based on inductive reasoning: The universe will not spontaneously change in the next 5 seconds. But Induction works fine. Something that is 99.9% true is good enough for everyone except a Pyronian Skeptic .

Secondly, it seems that you cannot even entertain the idea of deduction, a priori reasoning. Please explain, in the Einstein case what assumptions he could have made and what theorems he used? Of course he used algebra and other theorems in Physics but somewhere a leap of insight or brainwave or call it what you like occurred which could NOT have come from what was known already because the concepts and physical realities he predicted where NOT known and at the time had never been observed.

I understand that Einstein applied deductive reasoning but the theories of physics, the given facts about the universe (like the universe will not magically change tomorrow) is where he was employing inductive reasoning.

I do not dispute that inductive reasoning is possible and for example is used in Law and by Lawyers all the time but more often than not the fallacies we find are common to deduction as well - for example equivocation. If we take your sun rises in the morning example, then obviously you could use an inductive argument to say it will rise tomorrow but I can use the Laws of planarity motion and predict exactly what time it will rise in 2059. No doubt you will argue I have to have some initial measurement much as in the same way if I want the area of a square I have to measure it first so that is NOT induction and I do not rely upon induction I rely upon physics. I think I do understand deduction and induction but do you, so a two tests for you, Sherlock Holmes is famously depicted as making deductions so do you agree and if so explain what that means in the way he works? Secondly, suppose I have a class of students and I lose something and I ask the students to find it: now explain how they might do it inductively and then how they might do it deductively?

How do you know the laws of planetary motion will work tomorrow? Because they've been working uniformally for the past ~10 billion years. Hence induction. Once you've accepted that based on induction THEN you apply deductive reasoning but this is NOT a purely deducitve process. The Root of your theory is induction, and such is the case for all natural sciences. Your Sherlock Holomes argumetn is a great one; Sherlock Holmes operated with a set of premises (his clues) and he works to derive from those set of premise(s) a conclusion. Now anyone who knows about basic deductive logic is that those premises are arbitrary or assumed or theorems (theorem means a statement that has been proven deductively). The induction kicks in when he takes for granted that the world around him will always stay the same and those clues will not refer to something totally differnet in the next milisecond. Now you might be thinking 'that's impossible'; well of course, it's technically possible since it's not logically impossible; you've just used induction (your prior experience of the world) to convince yourself that something I've described is imposisble.

Does it not sound a bit bonkers to put so much trust in induction when we know it is flawed and then tell the world deduction is useless. If I create a deductive argument then of necessity I cannot make assumption about premises I have to be certain they are true - go and ask your professor! Those premises do not have to arise out of what I see they can just be totally the product of my imagination and there are many examples of this - for example the Turing machine, paralleled universes and so on. The process then is to show they are true and hence prove the conclusion. If you can't agree to this explain what deduction is for you and give an example.

No you've made a couple of mistakes here about both induction and deduction. First, it's not crazy at all to put this much trust in induction because, like the example of the Sun, I am pretty confident that my inductive reasoning is going to turn out right tomorrow morning and I will wake up to see the Sun still in the sky. If you had 99.999999999999999..% certainty that the sun will rise tomororw, are you going to lose sleep over it? Don't think so. Induction is how we make sense of the world; it's necessary by evolution (when you touch a fire it hurts, so you learn from that experience not to touch fire again to put simply). Like I said, the reality of induction is not a problem unless you're a Pyronian Skeptic! lol. Second, a valid deduction does not mean the premises are necessarily true; a valid deduction means IF the premises are true then it's impossible for the conclusion to be false. That's why when you study logic all your premises are letters or dummy variables because it does not matter what your premises are in order to construct a deduction. This is valid deduction: All Pigs are humans; all humans are snakes; therefore all Pigs are snakes. That is a deductive argument. Now, it's obviously not true, and how do we know? Well you have to research the first two premises empircally and in that search you're going to end up with inductive arguments because logic on its own cannot yield information about the world. Deduction is just a type of inference.

I am not sure you do. What I was speaking about was a fallacious reasoning. In the case of typical arguments for the Qu'ran of the form it is linguistically perfect therefore must come from God because God would only produce perfect thing. From a fallacy point of view this would be perhaps false dilemma or far-fetched hypothesis but maybe you have other ideas.

Not sure I do what? I agree that what you're saying wouldn't prove the Quran. So what I've asked you twice already is if you think that no holy book can come up with such a test.

 

[Lynx]

Not realy I've heard people argue that actual time is finite because of infinite regress - So that somewhere down the line there must have been a first cause - its called the Kalam cosmological argument - same argument but a bit fine tuned.

If I understand what you're saying it;s just not consistent with our current understanding of Time. The first cause was the big bang.

 

[Hugo]

Yeah the problem with induction you mention was first brought up by Hume. You don't need other universes to create and induction about our universe. Einstein lives in our universe and his data was meant to predict things in our universe and he operated under the following principle that he believed to be true based on inductive reasoning: The universe will not spontaneously change in the next 5 seconds. But Induction works fine.

Hume was perhaps the first to be explicit about induction but many others see it is as a circular form of reasoning and so it does not 'work fine' and nothing is certain. Of course in everyday life being fairly sure is usually fine though troublesome but mathematically we can only have true or false and nothing in between. Induction means "more of the same" so can you explain your line that we don't need other universes - it would be like saying the only car I have is red so all cars must be red? I asked you about proving induction but you said nothing? Of course you can speak of being 99.9999% certain but how can you know that - I gave you a tossing coins example which shows that YOU on an induction hypothesis would conclude that you are 99% certain another head is expected but YOU would be wrong

I understand that Einstein applied deductive reasoning but the theories of physics, the given facts about the universe (like the universe will not magically change tomorrow) is where he was employing inductive reasoning.

Please explain HOW he arrived at completely new knowledge, it never existed before that is what I was asking? I don't know what field you are in but there is a brand new concept called Horava gravity and these new things, created in someone's mind pop up all the time - surely you don't deny this? Is there no room for inspiration in your world? A priori knowledge means that something can be seen to be true immediately, without ANY knowledge of the world - but you as far as I can tell reject that. What fascinates me about science and especially the geniuses within it like Turing or Einstein is that one simply has to stand in awe of such brilliant and original minds.

How do you know the laws of planetary motion will work tomorrow? Because they've been working uni formally for the past ~10 billion years. Hence induction.

One can argue this way of course but I can equally say I now have an explanation, well as far as we know the best explanation so far and we can predict future events, induction cannot give us an explanation can it? But I have no reason to think things will not work tomorrow because now I understand how it all works. But I guess we are now going round in circles so lets agree to differ

Your Sherlock Holmes argument is a great one; Sherlock Holmes operated with a set of premises (his clues) and he works to derive from those set of premise(s) a conclusion.

No you have missed the point. I asked you to say what he would do IF he were deductive and what he would do IF he were inductive. Now unless induction and deduction for you are the same there must be something in his way of working that would differ between these two approaches. If you cannot see a difference then you do not understand one or the other or both.

Now anyone who knows about basic deductive logic is that those premises are arbitrary or assumed or theorems (theorem means a statement that has been proven deductively).

I am not clear here what you mean by a premise being 'arbitrary' as it sounds like you just choose anything and hope for the best. When you said induction kicks in it reminded me of something C.S. Lewis said because he asked how could you prove untrue that someone owns an invisible cat?

Like I said, the reality of induction is not a problem unless you're a Pyronian Skeptic!

You may think that but if someone was building a Nuclear Power station next to you I think you would want to know more than just "it has always worked before"lol

Not sure I do what? I agree that what you're saying wouldn't prove the Quran. So what I've asked you twice already is if you think that no holy book can come up with such a test.

I have stated on many occasions that I know of no test for any so called holy book, including the Qu'ran, that would 'prove' it to be from God. If you have such a test I would like to hear it.

 

[Lynx]

Hume was perhaps the first to be explicit about induction but many others see it is as a circular form of reasoning and so it does not 'work fine' and nothing is certain. Of course in everyday life being fairly sure is usually fine though troublesome but mathematically we can only have true or false and nothing in between. Induction means "more of the same" so can you explain your line that we don't need other universes - it would be like saying the only car I have is red so all cars must be red? I asked you about proving induction but you said nothing? Of course you can speak of being 99.9999% certain but how can you know that - I gave you a tossing coins example which shows that YOU on an induction hypothesis would conclude that you are 99% certain another head is expected but YOU would be wrong

Please explain HOW he arrived at completely new knowledge, it never existed before that is what I was asking? I don't know what field you are in but there is a brand new concept called Horava gravity and these new things, created in someone's mind pop up all the time - surely you don't deny this? Is there no room for inspiration in your world? A priori knowledge means that something can be seen to be true immediately, without ANY knowledge of the world - but you as far as I can tell reject that. What fascinates me about science and especially the geniuses within it like Turing or Einstein is that one simply has to stand in awe of such brilliant and original minds.

One can argue this way of course but I can equally say I now have an explanation, well as far as we know the best explanation so far and we can predict future events, induction cannot give us an explanation can it? But I have no reason to think things will not work tomorrow because now I understand how it all works. But I guess we are now going round in circles so lets agree to differ

No you have missed the point. I asked you to say what he would do IF he were deductive and what he would do IF he were inductive. Now unless induction and deduction for you are the same there must be something in his way of working that would differ between these two approaches. If you cannot see a difference then you do not understand one or the other or both.


I am not clear here what you mean by a premise being 'arbitrary' as it sounds like you just choose anything and hope for the best. When you said induction kicks in it reminded me of something C.S. Lewis said because he asked how could you prove untrue that someone owns an invisible cat?


You may think that but if someone was building a Nuclear Power station next to you I think you would want to know more than just "it has always worked before"lol

I've explained everything a few times already. You might think I don't understand induction or deduction but from where I stand you need to read up on both types of logic. In any case, I have not been able to explain myself to your satisfcation and to save us both time we have to agree to disagree because the responses I have lined up are the same ones I've been articularing in the previous posts, which have failed to convince you. Maybe your discussion with Zafran will be more fruitful.

I have stated on many occasions that I know of no test for any so called holy book, including the Qu'ran, that would 'prove' it to be from God. If you have such a test I would like to hear it.

[/quote]

So your answer to my question is No there's no holy book that can produce such a test. I agree.

goodday

 

[Hugo]

I though we might pursue another line of discussion here by thinking about truth as something that must be explored critically and no questions are barred and this applies to any area of life. From an Islamic point of view this is not encourages one might even say forbidden. For example, in (Dawood) Q5:101-102 "Believers, do not ask questions about things which, if made known to you, would only pain you, but if you ask them when the Koran is being revealed, they shall be made plain to you. God will pardon you for this; God is forgiving and gracious. Other men inquired about them before you, only to disbelieve afterwards.

So can Islam be questioned, can it be critically examined openly by Muslim s or indeed any one - if not there seems no choice but to accept it (all of it, Qu'ran and hadith) as truth blindly or to rejects it because it cannot be examined.