Thursday, October 31, 2013
Evidence and Theism
In response to Demea and Philo's attack on reason in Part I, Cleanthes proposes a principle that he thinks should be applied to any belief, including belief in God's existence. He proposes that believers "proportion their assent to the precise degree of evidence which occurs" (9). In other words, we are justified in believing something if and only if we have evidence -- and the degree of our belief should be calibrated to the strength of the evidence. Is that true in every case? What about regarding our belief in God? Pascal, for example, proposed in his famous wager argument that, assuming there is no strong evidence either way, it is in our best interest to believe in God. Given the importance of accepting or rejecting theism for one's life values, is it ever permissible to believe (or disbelieve) in God on flimsy evidence?
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Demea and Philo argue that students should be taught the disciplines first to see the limits of reason. With this in mind, education would not be important, since all the disciplines in school are evidence based. In today’s world, education is seen as the gate to success and economic stability. If reason Human reason is weak there is no reason to have an educational system. Obviously, this is not a good idea. Education has helped made the human experience easier. It is fallible argument for Demea and Philo to claim the human reason is weak, because they wouldn’t actually say that education is pointless. A remark from Cleanthes basically states that one knows the difference between a window and a door based on experience-based evidence; hence one wouldn’t leave a room through a window, because they know that the door is the better way. It is true in every case that evidence/reason should be used to come to a conclusion.
ReplyDeleteIt seems hypocritical for religion to be the only exception to the rule for evidence-based conclusions. Reason is good enough to use in education, and it must be good enough to use in religion too. Religion isn’t the only way to have a moral life style. Religion gives people security and a reason for living. It isn’t permissible for anyone to believe in god based on poor evidence. Since there is no concrete evidence either way for the existence of God, agnosticism is the best option until there is further evidence. Religion isn’t the only way to have a moral life style. Religion gives people security and a reason for living. Agnosticism doesn’t take away the hope for a creator; it only gives a possibility that it isn’t true. In my opinion, religion is all about being hopeful since many religions recognize that there isn’t a lot of concrete evidence to prove that God exists. I would even argue that at the foundation of all beliefs, everyone is an agnostic whether they identify with that category or not since no one knows the truth.
I think that it does not matter whether or not we have a great deal of evidence for a belief because we humans have such limited perspective that our evidence is rarely true evidence. Our evidence could be incorrect, or we could only be aware of a very small portion of the evidence that actually exists. Thus, the evidence we have will never be sufficient to argue for anything because there is such a great possibility that we are wrong. There are, however, some types of evidence we can more or less establish. We can all establish evidence in the physical world because we can agree on what we perceive. For example, we all agree that limes are usually green. We also sometimes establish evidence in the world of thought based on mathematical evidence. For example, people can agree on the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of a survey on people’s political views based on what questions were asked, what numbers were recorded, etc. While all of this evidence can be incorrect, it at least has practical applications in the world around us.
ReplyDeleteWe can use neither of these methods to establish evidence for God. God is not a physical thing, and God has little to do with mathematical evidence. Therefore, any evidence we have for God has to be wildly inaccurate because this evidence is based neither on perception of the physical world nor on the realm of thought we can prove. We can of course use evidence to argue for or against God, but this is little different than arguing for God by speaking gibberish. If we were to believe in God based on the strength of the evidence, then we would all have to be Agnostics because we have no evidence either way. This lack of evidence is also true for Pascal’s wager that it is best to believe in God, because we have as little evidence for God’s desires as we do for God’s existence. We have no evidence that if there was a God it would want us to believe in it. In fact, it could prefer us not to believe in it. Therefore, Pascal could be just as wrong as he is right.
Since it is impossible to prove God’s existence or non-existence, all beliefs that God does or does not exist are based on flimsy evidence. People seem to lives their lives more or less well despite the fact that they have no evidence for their beliefs, so I say that people can believe whatever they want about God because it does not matter one way or the other.
I do not agree with Cleanthes assertion that we can only believe something if and only if we have evidence that it is true. With that being said I believe it is necessary for me to provide my own definition of what a belief is. I believe that a belief is anything that a person accepts to be true. Cleanthes’ assertion is not true in every case because if something does not have evidence to prove it, they must also not have evidence to disprove it. For example, if I say that I believe in Santa Claus a person would be unable to definitively say that my belief is incorrect. The same argument can be made for God. There is no evidence proving God’s existence but there is also no evidence disproving God. Therefore by Cleanthes’ assertion neither the belief in God nor the disbelief in God would be valid beliefs.
ReplyDeleteIt is permissible to believe in God because for almost any argument that does not have enough evidence to prove, the other side of the argument probably does not have enough evidence either. As previously stated, I could replace a belief in God with a belief in Santa Claus. One would not be able to argue with me if I were to say that I believe in Santa Claus because there is not enough evidence. I also would not be able to argue for the existence of Santa clause either because of lack of evidence. This however does not mean either belief is invalid by my definition but by Cleanthes’ assertion both arguments would be invalid.
I think that although Demea’s statement might prove to be true in many cases, it cannot be applied to all beliefs. We obtain our evidence through two ways – observation and thought. Evidence through observation is based on experience, in that if no one has ever seen a rabbit suddenly start flying through the air at 50 miles per hour, it is safe to assume that rabbits are not able to do so. Evidence through thought is how we apply critical thinking to our observations; it’s pretty obvious to tell when someone’s claim is brutally false just based on common sense. These are the two types of evidence available to humans, and neither one is reliable. There is always the possibility that your observations are false, or the assumption you make based on these observations is false. Also, common sense is not always reliable; if it were, no one would ever make any mistakes because everything would just be obvious. So, because our evidence is never truly correct, it is hard to say that belief should be proportional to evidence.
ReplyDeleteAnd further, the existence of God does not have readily available, strong evidence in either of these two categories. There is no physical representation of God or his actions, aside from the Bible, which is a telling of the stories and is not necessarily accurate. And as for common sense, there are several arguments that attempt to prove God’s existence via this type of evidence, but many fall flat. An example of this is Pascal’s wager. He says that there are four outcomes – God does not exist, and you chose to believe in him; there are no consequences for your belief – God does not exist, and you did not believe in him; there are no consequences – God does exist, and you did not believe in him; there are definitely some consequences for this – God does exist, and you did believe in him; positive outcome! So, based on probability, it appears to be reasonable that believing in God can never be bad, only irrelevant or favorable. The problem with this is that it assumes there is only one religion and one God in the entire world. You could extend Pascal’s wager to all of the Norse gods and the Greek gods, because hey, what’s the problem with believing in them? There aren’t any downsides (other than spending a lot of time praying)! Basically, because there is no solid evidence for the existence of God, it is very hard to believe in him. For any other argument or belief, the burden of proof is placed on whoever makes the claim, so why should religion be exempt from this?
I do agree with Cleanthes with him when he says that we are justified in believing in something only if we have evidence. It is possible for anyone to have a belief, but in order for that belief to be justified, it must have evidence to back up and support it. However, I do not agree with Cleanthes when he says the degree of our belief should be calibrated by the strength of our evidence. What one person might believe is a strong piece of evidence another might find to be weak. Who is the one who judges the strength of evidence for a belief? For example, some think the evidence for the existence of God are strong and others think that it is weak. A religious person might turn to a religious writing, such as the Bible, and say that all the evidence needed to prove the existence of God is in that book. However, those who don’t/might not believe in God, atheists and agnostics, might question how valid that evidence truly is. If the evidence cannot be proven to be very valid, then, in their eyes, the evidence cannot be strong. Just because the evidence is not strong doesn’t stop many people from being very passionate about their belief though. Therefore, the degree of the belief cannot be measured by the strength of the evidence. For both sides, there is not strong evidence that can guarantee the truth in them. However, the lack of strong evidence doesn’t seem to affect peoples’ way of going with their life either way, so it is ok to believe or disbelieve in God with flimsy evidence.
ReplyDeleteWhen Cleanthes says that believers should “proportion their assent to the precise degree of evidence which occurs, I have trouble agreeing 100%. I do agree, however, that this principle can be applied to many different practices of life, such as the range of sciences and mathematics, but not to everything. And evidence itself is a very subjective term. Consider the age of Galileo, when the world was convinced of an Earth-Centric solar system, in which everything rotated around us. The people believing things also believed that they had all the evidence they needed (the sun seemed to rotate around the earth in the sky, and the same with the moon and changing positions of other stars). However, Galileo came along and disproved that theory with further evidence. The human understanding of evidence itself is a constantly changing concept as we slowly learn more and more about the universe we live in.
ReplyDeleteOn the concept of god, we have no evidence to prove that a celestial being could not exist, which is exactly why it is discounted in the scientific community. Whether or not it is beneficial to believe in god is where the interesting discussion lies. I personally believe that there is no downside to believing in god. If you’re wrong, then basically all you’ve been doing is believing in a coping system for the world around you and getting explanations for things you don’t understand in a way that you can. If you’re right, then your own personal afterlife comes true and you reap all the benefits of that. The only real downside to believing in religion comes in religious fanaticism, which I don’t count as the true belief in religion because it often ignores many of the basic principles of the faith. Overall, I don’t think that Cleanthes’ theory can be applicable to everything, especially not something that we can’t feasibly disprove, and there is not really any downside to religious beliefs.