But given that agreement spells death for discussion, it may appear complacent and possibly even defeatist to say I’m glad we agree on most things. The fact is I believe we do.

It remains for me to thank you for the weight and quality of your contribution, for now and to close with the indelible words of Dave Allen.

“And may your god go with you.”

Ken Allans last blog post..Reflecting on what I’ve learnt so far

I could challenge the somewhat solipsistic-sounding “your problem is your problem entirely, like the air you breathe” (I paraphrase) comment, and counter that the air I breathe, if toxic, is not only my problem in any pragmatic sense.

But I sense you’re talking on a more abstract level?

As for talking about the same Jesus, I’m not sure. “The” Christ is a title applicable to anyone who has achieved the same insights Jesus allegedly did, and thus have “the Christ” in them. Jesus “the” Christ is in this view not part of any holy Trinity, not a god, but simply one of many other philosophical types throughout history that realized that “the Kingdom of Heaven is within us.” So that Jesus is a person, and a teacher of Good News that has nothing to do with believing he’s God and died so the rest of us could die and go to heaven.

Anyway, not too many words in me tonight. (And being an American mongrel, I have the blood of the Irish and probably just about every other race you can imagine in me. We Americans are mutts. But I am a lover of words, for sure, as you are.)

‘Til next time.

You said that you “have no problems at all, at all, with long comments”. Do I detect an Irish dialect? Or does your keyboard have a stammer?

I acknowledge that a civilised question deserves a civilised answer. Your question was anything but uncivilised.

The ‘it’ you refer to is ‘the idea that a parallel could be drawn between the wave-particle duality in physics and the concept of knowledge being either a thing or a flow’. I took the trouble to insert the explanatory parenthesis “(not the paradox, but that the parallel was drawn)” in order to clarify this. I apologise for not being explicit enough.

In your 2nd bulleted argument, the point of my exposition of the word ‘problem’ was an attempt to convey the relationship between the belief that a problem may exist and the problem as defined by the person who thinks that it is a problem.

I have no disagreement with your contextual definition “as a situation in which the confusion between knowledge and belief causes less than optimal consequences in society’s attempts to effectively handle problems (social, environmental, political, more)”.

I must admit that the way you express this tends to verify what I’d assume about your use of an Irish dialect and possible related idiosyncrasies – that you would not say something in 100 words if you could express it in 101.

I also agree with your expanded elucidation, though I feel that it is expedient to stay nearer the point rather than explore sinuous ramifications of it.

You said that in your belief “(c)limate change, poor public works, and disease and illness” qualify as problems. At the same time you raised the point that perhaps I meant otherwise.

No Clay. I certainly do not suggest that any problem you perceive could be anything other than your problem. Nor would I dispute the ownership of such a perceived problem. The problem belongs entirely to you, as does the air you breath.

I did not use the description “Jesus the Christ”. But I do recognise that by using it in your discourse to exemplify the existence of a hierarchy of orders of belief, you needed to draw some distinction between Jesus the Christ and my less specific description. I believe that you and I are taking about the same person here.

Your commentary in parenthesis which immediately follows, seems to confirm what I said about verifiability, whether from the standpoint of religion or not. In this regard I wonder at your need to clarify what I meant by “Jesus Christ”.

I am not suggesting otherwise that “(b)elief contrary to the evidence is no argument.” In fact, you have underlined my conviction that belief could indeed be construed as sophistry.

Your point about the need for me to clarify the ‘science’ is well taken. You say you are a humanities specialist with a background in the history of ideas, not a scientist. I am a specialist in philosophy with a background in science. It seems that the overlap of our respective backgrounds and understanding is considerable.

And so I agree with you. The child’s belief, that it is scientific to use the result of 18 tosses yielding 18 consecutive heads, would be naive. I would not go so far as to describe it as pseudo-science. I’d reserve that description for someone who had more knowledge and experience than a child and who believed it was scientific to use that sort of result as certain proof of the outcome of the next toss being a head.

In essence, the scientific method is simply one where a hypothesis is put to the test. This is done by drawing together as much reproducible observational evidence as possible in support of that hypothesis.

But it does not finish there. There also has to be some way the hypothesis can then be used to predict some hitherto unobserved, but nevertheless observable phenomenon (or outcome).

Verification of the hypothesis becomes strengthened when observations are made that show the prediction to be correct. This is an iterative and exhaustive process which, in fairness to those who dispute the scientific method, can never provide certain, unequivocal proof. Good scientists know this.

That the sun rises tomorrow is implicit in all that is known and understood about the sun, the earth and how these bodies appear to behave with respect to each other. The knowledge of this can be, and usually is, diverse in the extreme and can originate from a wide variety of seemingly unrelated disciplines. That this is so simply shows the verifiability of the hypothesis that the sun rises tomorrow – nothing more.

As you say, true scientists go back to the drawing board to improve their understanding of everything they thought they knew. They do this when they are confronted with new evidence that puts their original and seemingly verifiable hypothesis into dispute.

I’d say we were well matched on the weigh-ins. I look forward to the next bout.

Ka kite
from Middle-earth

I’m having a hard time following your points, though. Help me out.

1. What is the “it” referring to in the last line of your first long paragraph? And which, if any, of the three metaphors are you suggesting is the (most?) correct one?

2. What is the point of your exposition of the word “problem”? I define it, in this context at least, as a situation in which the confusion between knowledge and belief causes less than optimal consequences in society’s attempts to effectively handle problems (social, environmental, political, more).

To expand on that, as responses to global warming, scientific answers seem preferable to faith-based shoulder shrugs that “it won’t matter when we’re in heaven” (and yes, thank Goodness, some green types from the Abrahamic traditions interpret “dominion” as a call for “stewardship” of Nature and earth, and even the Pope recently decreed energy waste a “sin”); as a response to hurricane defense, science and engineering are more reliable than prayer; similarly, in the case of illness and disease, a trip to the physician is a more reliable solution than a trip to the faith healer.

Climate change, poor public works, and disease and illness qualify as “problems” to me. Are you suggesting otherwise?

The question of whether Jesus the Christ – important, that “the” – ever walked the earth is a “problem” of a lower order, though belief in it has secondary effects in problems of a higher order, like the examples I just named.

(By the way, historians have long been aware that there is very little compelling evidence that the Jesus of the Gospels, who performed miracles and rose from the dead, ever did exist. Priest, theologian, and New Testament professor Tom Harpur’s The Pagan Christ extensively catalogs all the evidence and arguments of historians and theologians against the existence of an historical Jesus, and Earl Doherty’s The Jesus Puzzle includes much of this online.

For the record, there are counter-arguments such as the “argument from embarrassment,” so I’m not saying the question is closed. Most people, though, don’t seem to realize it’s open.)

My point, though, is that I can’t see how your response helps us with pragmatic questions of historical and natural “fact.” Did Jesus walk the earth? Do I? Does Ronald McDonald? We can seek evidence to “know” the answer. “Belief” contrary to the evidence is no argument. If you’re suggesting otherwise, how is that not sophistry of the least helpful sort?

Given that a finite probability exists that the child may succeed in tossing 18 heads in a row, such results could seriously be construed as being definite proof that the 19th throw shall return a head like all the rest. The child may well believe that this is a true and correct scientific way of going about verifying it, and after proving it, may see no reason to attempt to verify it again.

I’m a humanities specialist with a background in the history of ideas, not a scientist, and that preface is necessary before I respond to this last argument. Maybe a more qualified specialist in science can weigh in here.

My response is this: The case of a child tossing 18 heads in a row could by no means be “seriously construed as … a definite proof” of anything. That’s naive pseudo-science that omits the most vital elements of any real scientific verification, namely: peer review, duplication of the experiment, and falsifiability. The species-wide community of scientist would repeat the experiment, get different results, and put that child’s theory to rest.

(I’m talking about the coin-toss, not the sun “rising” – two wildly different examples that don’t belong in the same argument, but interestingly, if the earth ever DID stop spinning, thereby giving evidence that the sun does NOT always rise, scientists would be the first to say, “Back to the drawing board, boys. There’s more to this rotation and momentum of the earth thing than we ever knew, so we have to study it afresh.” We may as well add that as soon as evidence surfaces that Jesus definitely existed or the fossil evidence has been misinterpreted, true scientists – humble and respectful before evidence, wherever it leads and whatever sacred cows, scientific or otherwise, it flattens in its course – true scientists, as I say, would go back to the drawing board to improve their understanding of everything they thought they “knew” in light of this new evidence.)

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That’s about as much as I have in me right now. Please let me know if I’ve misunderstood you, and thanks for taking the trouble to weigh in.

Clay