Advice from believers is demonstrably worthless

I think the answer to Number 3 is that the evidence for the laws of logic and the axioms of mathematics is that they work in practice, and if you don't believe it, just try living without them.

Logic tells me that I shouldn't stick my hand in a vat of acid. If you don't believe in logic, stick your hand in that vat and tell me how it works for you.

It's a bit like concern trolling: the helpful faith-head erects a squad of five straw men which he'll then kindly offer to demolish from us to clear the illusions from our eyes.

*nod* Mulherin's 5 points misrepresent atheists, while concern trolling is an attempt to mislead atheists in representing ourselves poorly.

Plus, I don't understand the connection between lack of belief in a deity and believing anything in particular about free will, cause and effect, morality, or the evidence of the senses. Why couldn't an atheist be on either side of any of those issues?

Well, at least he didn't put "atheists believe that life has no meaning, and that nobody has any value" into that god-awful mix.

When people believe things which they themselves suspect are irrational, they will always try to play a tu quoque fallacy -- "I know you are, but what am I?"

Even the playing field, and insist that everything is faith. Everything reduces down to a matter of clueless, random, personal preference and choice, with no belief being more reasonable than any other belief. They can't prove that Jesus rose from the dead, sure -- but can you prove that the sun is in the sky? I mean, can you prove it if I remove every method of rational inference and logic and empirical experience? No? Then they're the same.

You're no better, than me. I win.

And what I win is a foundation which gives me a higher playing field, than you.

In some sense we "believe" in cause and effect in the classical (not the quantum) realm, because correlation never conclusively yields causation. And we really only have correlation in empiricism.

Hume and all that. Kant gave a tolerable answer (we understand "causation" to happen in a fairly consistent manner, whether it's true or not), and others have improved on that.

Something close to this goes for logic as well, which needn't be "true" in the least, it only needs to work for us. Axioms are empirically known, basically.

Importantly, whatever the status of "that which cannot be shown by science," these things are important to our "intersubjective" knowledge about the world. It's not anything that an "atheist" believes, it's what anyone believes who deals coherently within our society. That's what the theist Kant pointed out.

Always the dolts trying to make non-believers out to believe in something extraordinary, when it's what any philosophically sound person believes, theist or not. It's just that the non-believer doesn't suspend these reasonable pre-suppositions in order to save a prior belief system.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p

that looks far more like a list of things Christians believe: they believe god gave them free will, that god caused everything, that there's an universal moral standard given by god, and that their personal experiences are reliable "proof" of god.

It's extremely annoying to be told by a delusionist precisely what beliefs I must hold because I'm an atheist, when I don't.

This is one of the most annoying things goddists do to us. "You're an atheist therefore you must believe in the following: [list of stuff having nothing to do with atheism]." Mulherin has a lot of gall to insist we believe in things which are not only wrong (as PZ demonstrates so well) but which don't require a lack of belief in deities.

So, Mulherin, if we don't believe as you mandate we do, what happens? Do you arbitrarily defrock us as atheists?

Logic tells me that I shouldn't stick my hand in a vat of acid. If you don't believe in logic, stick your hand in that vat and tell me how it works for you.

I've got 40% acid on my finger right now, does that count?

/warts suck

Shorter Mulherin: Blah blah blah, cause and effect, blah blah blah, free will, blah blah blah. Therefore, Yahweh.
What an original piece of thinking. I'm almost positive I haven't seen that argument at least 17,000 times.

2.) I suspect you might be missing his point here. Sure science is used to correct false impressions of fallible human sense and logic, but as he says, it really can't get off the ground without some trust of the senses and logic, (ie. the senses used to observe the results of experiments). My guess is that he's shooting for the old "atheists have to have faith too" angle, which quite frankly is true on some small level. Peronsally, I would defend by noting that atheists take for granted only what is absolutely necessary (memories, senses, logic) to act and survive, and the religious take for granted much more and sometimes ignore being consistent in favor of clinging to certain held beliefs, which atheists do not aspire not to.

Maybe I put him to sleep.

Do you want to upset the children?? Just say you "sent him to live on a farm."

@Sastra:

Well, at least he didn't put "atheists believe that life has no meaning, and that nobody has any value" into that god-awful mix.

He also forgot my personal favorite: that atheists "believe in the god of the self."

I'm one of the people discussing this in the comments section of the ABC blog.

Chris comes across as sincere, and he's discussing rather than resorting. I admit I don't really understand what he means by 'unscientific truth' and I'm more than baffled how you get from 'scientists are human beings and have to take at least some things on trust' to 'therefore Christ died for our sins'. The list is, as a variety of people have pointed out, not a terribly good one.

But I think he has a sincere desire to understand, and the patience to explain his own position. Ask him a question, he answers it. So I'm finding the process constructive. There's a lot worse than that, on the theist side.

Why are assumptions about morality prerequisites for doing science? Even a racist, planet destroying, chauvinistic pedophile can discover something true.

Science does rely on assumptions that can't be formally proven, but to say that we don't have significant rational justification for believing those things reeks of deductive totalism (a common fallacy even among professional philosophers). Where is the rational justification for religious beliefs?

Not to get too philosophical, but 1-3 are warranted in foundational epistemology because they are the products of evolution.

I think you misunderstood what he meant on number 3. He meant your senses more generally than you do. As in, "the only way we get experiential data". Meaning, that you could not do science without this.

On number 4, I would say that the theist has misunderstood the foundation for morality. Since altruism is warranted (because it is a product of evolution), the language we use to talk about morality can be completely culturally relevant and we still have a strong foundation for saying something is good or bad.

On 5, I tend to side with Dennett and be a compatibalist. Just because "free will" is philosophical bullshit, people are not alleviated from their responsibilities.

As per the previous, I must protest that "free will" is not "bullshit". See Dan Dennett's "Freedom Evolves".

Free will is not what you feel is free will on the inside, but the objective reality gives you everything you could coherently describe as free will in another person without reference to their subjectivity.

And, as per Dennett, even if we were totally determined automatons in a completely deterministic universe there would be free will.

(Determinism is NOT predestination - Turing's Halting Problem shows that beyond trivial complexity even a completely deterministic universe cannot be pre-calculated).

As there is fuzz in us and fuzz in the universe it is even easier to see that we are evolved *adapters* to changing circumstances. Our ability to change our policies towards externalities in response to both internal and external changes in state are what we experience, both in ourselves and others as free will.

-- TWZ

Mulherin is an arse. He thinks that both science and religion are based on faith and thus equivalent. I agree that he's worse than Ablett or Ham or whoever. He's a pompous git who's learned just enough philosophy to be a sophist and provide cover for irrational faith. I thought the way he glibly said bad things are done in religions name but religion's good shows the problem with believers like him. How much child rape, misogyny, discrimination against out groups do you need before you stop glibly saying that they pain you and then proceed to extol the virtue of what pains you?

I have to say that I find the term ethics encompasses those values that the non-religious embrace and morality (Christian morality, Jewish morality or name-your-religion morality) suitably encompasses what that religious group embraces. There is no single set or universal set of ethics so some effort need be taken to distinguish what is being discussed.

The ethics of any given society were arrived at by the processes of evolution and human adaptation. Over time we have all decided that certain behaviors are ethical and positive to the common good, and those that are corrosive to the common good. Religions add their own bits to that and try to tell us that is where they come from, but the truth is that evolution and adaptation gives us the basics.

Community ethics are essential for survival on this planet. Religion? not so much. Social or community ethics were in use long before religion. Religious morality is a fixed set of community ethics with extra and unnecessary laws and restrictions for "gold card members". Many of them stealth their way into 'thought police' territory. I have not yet seen a set of religious morality laws that was not corrosive to society and the common good.

As soon as someone tries to suggest that I am agreeing with morality, I point out the differences as quickly as their ears will allow. As you say, it is quite Darwinian. I prefer ethics to thought police anytime.

To say that the language of morality cannot be reduced is a kind of laziness. Of course it can. Down to the final choice: I choose to participate in these community values, or at least those I find acceptable.

In religion, if one does not agree with its particular notions about God, its leaders don't hesitate to burn the indivual alive and get banished to hell as it just to be the case.

@tylerofmanyminds

"common" indeed - maybe you can elaborate?

there are a handful of beliefs that are picked up simply because the alternative precludes us from knowing anything about anything. (ie. how do you know your memory is reliable, how do you know the universe is consistent / problem of induction)

i'm not saying the religious are just as rational or anything. but i am wondering if you intended to include "we believe this because we can't do anything if we don't" as "rational justification" or not.

if not, i'd think i'd have to disagree about all of our foundations having rational justification.

3. The axioms of mathematics and the laws of logic are true.

I must have missed something. My recollection (refreshed by Wikipedia is that an axiom is merely a starting point from which other statements can be logically derived. As a result, it would make more sense to say that axioms of logic and mathematics are assumed, rather than that they are true (see, e.g., different axioms used in Euclidian and non-Euclidian geometry).

On the other hand, it's not entirely surprising that Mulherin's argument confuses assumptions with facts, given the subject matter of the article and the position Mulherin takes.

Plus, I don't understand the connection between lack of belief in a deity and believing anything in particular about free will, cause and effect, morality, or the evidence of the senses. Why couldn't an atheist be on either side of any of those issues?

I believe the 'reasoning' runs something like this:

-If ebil scientists believe that we are just collections of base matter, and
-If base matter merely acts according to physical laws, then
-One must conclude that we have no free will.

The 'faithful', of course, assert that the 'soul' is that thing inside our poor, doomed shells of meat that allows us to transcend the mere physical and therefore have free will. Presumably, therefore, all atheists must reject the notion of free will.

This line of thought is, of course, crap.

I was going to say exactly the same thing as William Morriss (#22) so I'd better add something original...

Mathematical axioms can't be demonstrated, and sometimes (as in the famous case of non-Euclidean geometry) you can negate them and still go somewhere. But I think it is extremely revealing that this Mr Mulherin got so wrong on this particular point. In his views, axioms are nothing but articles of faith (if you take them as truth without any proof). So science rests on faith, like religion ; thus, it can't claim to be stronger.

This line of reasoning is of course weak and false, but for rhetorical, anti-scientific purposes, it sometimes considered useful by a few people.

Number 3 is required; specifically equivalents-or-strong for Wolfram's Axiom, Axiom of Extensionality, Axiom of the Unordered Pair, Axiom of Subsets, Axiom of the Sum Set, Axiom of Infinity, Axiom of Replacement, and Axiom of Foundation. (The Power Set Axiom and Axiom of Choice are both take-it-or-leave-it so far for Science.) Refutation may be taken on any of these, but then you end in philosophically inconvenient positions - particularly that first, since it means you can't believe in NAND, making Refutation (X NAND X) more difficult.

Number 1 is sloppy, for other reasons besides what PZ noted; for example, there are certain weird things in QM which can be interpreted as effects preceding causes. What science does assume is that there is pattern. (Formally: pattern recognizable with ordinal degree hypercomputer... although degree zero is usually used.) One can take refutation on that, too... and end up stuck on the wrong side of Hume's problem of induction. (With the assumption, the problem is to limited degree resolvable.)

Number 5 is wrong, which brings up a particular example of QM weirdness: the Conway-Kochen theorems. Essentially, some details of the state of the present are underspecified by the state of the past, and only exactly specified by including the state of the future. Even without that, sufficient complexity levels much higher than P and NP tend to preclude time-efficient prediction-- you may be able to recognize a result, but possibly only long after the fact; and you may not be able to produce the answer by any means faster than "wait and see".

Number 2 is not required in the stated strength. We do not need to "trust" the evidence of our senses; rather, we assume there is SOME pattern to experience (including those senses). Similarly, human rationality need not be trusted in general; for human rationality to have a tendency to correctly make certain types of inferences (specifically, inferences via the aforementioned axioms) with p>0.5 is sufficient. From there, other degrees of rationality result as inferences.

Number 4 is irrelevant. Not all atheists even hold it; while they are comparatively rare, there are nihilist atheists who reject the validity of OUGHT metrics, and moral relativist atheists who think all OUGHT metrics are personal. Those aside, one can construct bridges across the IS-OUGHT divide, whether or not the path that results is self-consistent or not. One can even use science to examine the OUGHT bridges humans use to try and infer common properties, without necessarily inferring there is a God.

The worst thing about this is the conflation of science with atheism. Does it really needed to be pointed out that while science can inform philosophical positions, that atheism itself is not a scientific position?

christophe-thill.myopenid.com: So science rests on faith, like religion ; thus, it can't claim to be stronger.

Unless, of course, all the axioms taken by science are also taken (either explicitly or implicitly) by religion. This can put religion in a tight corner, since refutation of (or failure to assert) some of the axioms can leave you without ability to tell hawks from handsaws (lacking an inductive principle from experience to IS), without adequate language (since other consistent languages can be represented mathematically), or without the ability to form one idea from another (since this requires some manner or propositional logic).

However, if you start asking the religious whether they accept the Commutativity of Logical Inclusive Disjunction and such, it tends to raise eyebrows.

Kel, OM #26 wrote:

The worst thing about this is the conflation of science with atheism. Does it really needed to be pointed out that while science can inform philosophical positions, that atheism itself is not a scientific position?

If atheism is taken as a working theory (because the hypothesis of theism failed to meet the criteria one would expect it to, given the nature of the claim), then I think that atheism could be considered a reasonable scientific position.

Conflating science with atheism, then, would be like conflating science with evolution, or, perhaps, conflating it with the rejection of vitalism. There's science proper as the epistemic approach; there's also science as shorthand for "the current body of knowledge."

Given that "God" is a failed hypothesis, it is in the savvy theist's best interest to tie themselves boldly to the claim that both atheism and theism are philosophical positions outside of anything science can rule on. Unless it looks like you found a niche to hide it in, in which case you can wax eloquent about how modern science now "hints at" or "points to" or "suggests" or, more modestly, "leaves room for" -- God.

Science blogs should have a "like" button. :)

If atheism is taken as a working theory (because the hypothesis of theism failed to meet the criteria one would expect it to, given the nature of the claim), then I think that atheism could be considered a reasonable scientific position.

Perhaps. Though in cases like this, the straw-man is scientism, and so instead of attacking the argument they attack the field of inquiry itself. Which is why I think it's important to point out that it's scientifically-informed philosophy than a pure scientific position.

In practice I don't think there's much difference, that the underlying philosophy is assumed and that the epistemic limits of empiricism are well known. But the misunderstanding that seems to prevail is that instead of that being assumed knowledge, it's a foundation in and of itself. It's perceived epistemic ignorance which is leading to the scientism straw-man.

Of course the mirror image of 4 is the fact that the existance of an all power sky father doens't have ANY relevance in the determination of "absoloute value" unless the entire basis of your morality is "sucking up to the powerful," and "doing whatever the fuck it tells you."

Speaking about different subject matter, Hitchens made a good point that we don't need better politicians, we need better journalists. Not that Chris Mulherin would be necessarily classed in the worst 50% (in deference to Steve Jeffers #13 who, unlike I, is joining in that discussion).

does this work now?
I like the conclusion reached by Z
in regards the the reasoning or lack there of
"This line of thought is, of course, crap."

this all reminds me of a bit by Jim Henson and his "Muppets"I saw on the Tonight Show many years ago. the rub sees the hipster boppin along thinking abstract thoughts which we see. but when he tries it he becomes hopelessly tangled until I think he nearly collapses wish I could see it again it was very funny
believers should stay away from abstract thinking
uncle frogy

"truth" is an outcome of logic and math

I want to point out one small truth about logic and math. Lots of math is totally non-physical. In addition, lots of physical theories do not reflect the reality of our universe. The reason that the well-found physical theories we use are so good is because we've essentially culled out all the theories for the same phenomena that don't produce effective descriptions. This is why there are limits where Newtonian mechanics breaks down and Relativity or Quantum become better descriptions.

To say that "truth" is an outcome of logic and math is completely neglecting what happened historically to give us the math that is best suited to describing what we see, and ignores the fact that new results in the future will amend our theories. This is why theorists are constantly prowling around looking for "symmetry breaking" in observational data. Physics works exactly like the rest of the sciences.

The axioms of mathematics and the laws of logic are true..

By definition... you can not prove the truth of an axiom... An axiom is asumed to be truth, because we can deduce usefeull things form it.

All (usefull) logic is based on axioms, but logic can not prove itself...

You can even declare an axiom false... for example.
Euclides asumed that the two parallels never cross (but he could not proove it.)... and create flat geometry,

Lobachevsky in the XIX century asumed that parallels do cross and he created geometry of curve space, which Einstein found it can describe better our universe.

So Axioms are asumed truth... if they comform to our view of the world. In a sense, axioms are empirical...

The laws of logic (matematics) evolve. Today we considered aristotelic almost useles, (some en declare it false) and we have better logic.

So we asume the laws of logic are true becuase they help us to understand our world... we could create logic systems that do not comform with our world, so we could declare them false,while mathematically they could be correct.

The universe is governed by the law of cause and effect.

This... is an empirical observation, but only works at the macro level, as we aproach the quantic level this rules brokes...

This "law"... is governed by the uncertain principle of Heissenberg.

But more important.. the aristotelic "causes" from the greek philosphy have been trown out as usseles.

Oh, dear, oh deary me. So few paragraphs and so many things wrong.

1)The universe is governed by the law of cause and effect.

Provisionally true in most cases at the macroscopic level, but by no means necessary, as quantum mechanics has shown.

2) We can normally trust human rationality and the evidence of our senses.

I suppose that is why we need transmission electron microscopes to show us atoms, probability methods to keep our eyes from fooling us, and on and on. Does this guy know any scientists?

3) The axioms of mathematics and the laws of logic are true.

Again, provisional at best. At least some aspects of mathematics are empirical--e.g. discoveries of groups, the Incompleteness Theorem... That's why the positivists were wrong.

4) Moral language makes sense and cannot be reduced to personal preferences. and Blah, Blah Blah!

It couldn't have anythig to do with the fact that we are social animals that depend on a complex interdependent societal structure for our individual and genetic survival, could it? Nah!

5)Humans have freewill and are not totally determined by the laws of science.

Uh, Nope. Nowhere does science require that any of us have free will--although maintaining the illusion of free will might be a good idea for maintaining sanity.

Strike, uh, Five.

#5 is a huge debate, however, I think that Mulherin would find, if he ever did read philosophy, that if god can have any knowledge of the future, you end up with basically all of the same issues as physicalist determinism, just with 'god' replacing 'rules of material universe'. There are really three big positions here, the most common of which, amoung philosophers, is compatibilism, the idea that a completely determined universe is compatible to free will. The next most common one is 'hard determinism' which is determinism and no free will. The third most popular is the position that there is genuine indeterminism and free will. I suppose someone could also believe in indeterminism and no free will, but I don't know anyone who does. Of a group of ten philosophers, you'll probably get one hard determinist, one indeterminist, and eight compatibilists. Still, the minority positions are not considered ludicrous ones.

Okay, let's tackle the rest:

1. PZ got that pretty well

2. "We can normally trust human rationality and the evidence of our senses." Well, those are two very different things. Our senses, clearly not, because we have all sorts of silly little optic and auditory tricks that can tell us otherwise. Rationality-I don't see a better alternative. The religious alternative is just to believe without question what some other person told me, which is a much worse method of going about the universe than trying to use rationality.

3. "The axioms of mathematics and the laws of logic are true." That is an assumption, but I would love to see someone take on the project of trying to come up with some even marginally credible view wherein they are false. Religious people accept basic logic perfectly well in day to day life, they just cry about it without any actual decent attempt at refutation when they want to defend bizare religious ideas. The only logical law you actually need as the basis for most formal logic systems is modus ponens (If A then B. A, therefore B) and a few basic defintions and less than four truisms. That is a pretty tiny assumption and you have to show that your axioms are consistent with later results in the system as well. Most people make more assumptions than that before they get out of bed.

4. "Moral language makes sense and cannot be reduced to personal preferences." That's a burden for any moral realist, including theistic ones. 'Moral language makes sense' I think you can get that much from the mere fact that we all have a good understanding of the intended meanings of the words. We understand the word 'unicorn', this means that linguistically, it makes sense, though it does not prove that the concept exists in reality. As to the second part, there is a great deal of work on the matter, from Socrates to utilitarians to Kant. Still, remember that moral realists who are theists make the exact same assumption and have to reconcile ethics with the problem of evil.

2) We can normally trust human rationality and the evidence of our senses.

I'd argue that this now is an empirical view. Maybe 400 years ago such an argument was consigned to philosophy, but now in the 21st century there's a scientific framework that underpins our sensory data. And beyond that we can see where the limits of sensory evidence is through experiment.

Can someone reword PZ's #5 response for me? Beyond the first sentence, I can read it several ways, none of them conclusively. (Free will is a philosophical exercise; but "which" is clockwork?)

PZ - Totally agree with your views, but I don't think this is a GAC blog; it appears to be on ongoing faith-based blog hosted on the ABC site, as on of the many components of the community reflected by the ABC. I don't like my tax dollars being used for such things, but that's another story.

As #41 suggests, this blog sits in the ABC's Religion Department, one of the various arms of that organisation. Its reporters are either religious or broadly sympathetic to religion.

I think it is a pity that the ABC chose them to cover the conference but at least they are putting up conference talks and engaging in discussion.

Like Steve at #13, I have visited and commented - as Michael. You will see that the comments reflect a quite different range of views to the ABC's chosen bloggers - most pretty similar to comments here.

Chris Mulherin is writing a doctorate on scientific and religious knowledge - sounds a bit Templeton Prize-ish. He may be testing his ideas in this blog. If he is attempting to smuggle in a foundation for religious beliefs by paltering about scientific "faith", we can hope he is disabused by his correspondents.

@35
Yes, Mulherin's number 3 only demonstrates he's willing to display his embarrassing ignorance in the foundations of math. Even the system of logic used are subject to reason and/or the scientific process to see if they work in real life. L.E.J. Brouwer's intuitionist campaign illustrates this, for example.

What is meant by 'scientific faith' ??
I mean, really....

There is no faith in science. Things either work or they don't. Not a lot of gray area here.
If it's not understood, then data is collected. If it's still not understood, then theories are argued and more data is collected.

Heck, I can't even think of a good metaphor to even try to make a statement that says science has to have faith in anything.

Maybe it's just me... my take on 'faith' is that it is a catch-all term for things that one may believe (in) yet that has no provable basis in what most if us call- reality. The Easter bunny pops to mind.

That item 4--

wow-- you mean I'm not, at best, a product of my parents' morals ?? Surely, I have changed over the years and developed a lot of my own stuff, but I learned moral basics from observation, trial and punishment. I came up knowing what right and wrong were based on my parents ability (and sometimes lack thereof) to point me correctly-- in their beliefs. BTW, no religion in our house !
When I eventually got exposed to religious dogma it didn't really make much sense to me at all. I couldn't understand why I had to be under a threat of 'hell and damnation' in order to 'be good'. Being 'good' was just a natural state of being after being raised in my family.

It would be a wonderful world if folks could be good without having to be blackmailed to it.

The axioms of mathematics and the laws of logic are true.

I'm not completely in agreement with the earlier responses on this.

As previously mentioned, there is an inherent tautology here: Axioms are used to derive more complex statements using logic which are known to be true in the context of the same axioms and logic - but this is all just, well, logic or a thought exercise. There are no perfect, inelastic spheres on an infinite Cartesian plane.

So why is mathematics used by Scientists?

Possibly the most amazing thing observed about the universe is that it so closely follows mathematics. In some cases, the mathematical predictions are in agreement with nature to the order of 15 or more significant figures (sorry, I forget which constant this is).

The predictive power of mathematics is the driver for research - gazillions of dollars have been spent building giant machines looking for particles predicted by the formulae, and those very particles have been found.

In other words, mathematics is and has always been useful to scientists. The resulting findings are empirically staggering and one that tends to confirm that the physics is, shall we say, going in the right direction. We should compare this to the predictions of The End Of the World that have been made so often in the past 2000 years by the Sky Fairy clan.

But do physicists actually believe the formulae are actually true? No. Many formulae are known to break down when inputs are outside specific ranges - for example Newtonian physics did not make sense when velocities get close to the speed of light, and when a lot of matter gets too close to one another the formulae predict an infinity instead of the structured object we know as a black hole.

The big difference between rational and irrational behaviour when confronted by a discrepancy is that science went off to resolve the discrepancy and ended up discovering Special Relativity and Hawking Radiation. Many Sky Fairy worshippers made good their prediction of The End Of The World by committing suicide. Embarrassing, really.

Looking at it another way, if a scientist's treasured new hypothesis is shown to be mathematically wrong, that hypothesis can be quickly discarded and another proposed in its place.

My (somewhat uninformed) take is that: Matter has to obey 'rules' in our Universe otherwise there could not be order and, consequently, life and, consequently, life intelligent enough to start understanding nature. However we clearly are only part way on this journey and are far from discovering the complete set of axioms and logical rules in nature, even if this were possible.

The axioms and rules we have uncovered so far, even while admitting that they are only an approximation to nature, have so far proven to be fantastically fascinating. Some are almost inconceivably complex, non-intuitive and almost capricious (eg QM), but what joy in the discoveries!

So, far from saying that the axioms and laws of mathematics are true (except in the pure abstract tautological sense), Science says that they are among the most useful tools in its armoury, their value having been tested empirically countless times.

These 5 points really just sound like "before we can do anything, I'll need you to agree with me first - at least on the stuff that I don't really understand".

I don't think I understand the concept of free will and why so many scientists seem to believe in it. Is it something from nothing? Is it some kind of supernatural influence that controls our brains? If it is, then aren't we lucky that it makes us choose things according to our mood, emotions, needs...

"2. We can normally trust human rationality and the evidence of our senses."

To call this statement into question sounds like that sort of extreme skepticism that says that since we can't really know anything at all with perfect certainty, then no belief is any better than any other belief. Which is total nonsense, of course, But used sometimes by people with indefensible beliefs.

That is how it appears to me anyway.

What skeptical seeker said.

Plus 2 has an unstated premise that goes against theism

Theist statement
a) even very likely observations/axioms have a level of doubt/probability
b) Therefore my unlikely belief is as valid due to doubt

True statement
a) even unlikely observations/axioms have a level of doubt/probability
b) What is unlikely is still as relatively unlikely to a likely thing even with the chance of error/doubt put in
c) regardless of the ultimate doubt...the unlikely thing is still proportionately just as unlikely as our likely comparison.

example

A

Whoa....I put an equation there and it somehow translated into bold...wtf?

This also reminds me of a Dilbert axiom "DO not trust the advice of successful people...they may not seek company"

Modeler: Possibly the most amazing thing observed about the universe is that it so closely follows mathematics.

No; what's amazing is how much of it seems to follow SIMPLE mathematics.

Mathematics is so general, it has means to describe almost anything. (Showing this was a key and now oft overlooked part of Godel's "On Formally Undecidable Propositions" paper.) Thus, the only question is not whether mathematics describes it, but which mathematics describes it... and thereafter, whether the description is simple enough for humans to make use of it.

abb3w

No; what's amazing is how much of it seems to follow SIMPLE mathematics.

I agree with much of what you said - especially about how so much seems to be simple mathematics.

To me, though, the response to Q5 from the original topic is that Scientists do not believe that mathematics is an axiom of science or an 'article of faith'. It is a logical system that exists outside Nature and it happens that some of it is the most incredible reliable tool for creating predictions of Nature. It doesn't have to be simple to achieve this.

Actually, PZ, I have to disagree with you here. On an appropriately nuanced reading, all of these propositions are indeed true, and moreover I hold them and so do you.

The problem with the argument is not that these are presuppositions---for they are---but that they are the sort of presuppositions that any rational being must make in any possible universe. Without them one cannot even be sane.

1. The universe need not be completely deterministic, but it must be to some extent orderly and predictable. Otherwise rational behavior is impossible. We must presume this in order to do anything at all, but once we have presumed it we find that it works extremely well. Indeed, science discovers new and more precise causal laws in nature every day. Quantum mechanics is important precisely because it does not undermine this fundamental order; in fact it extends it to domains of precision far beyond what was ever thought possible.

2. Any rational being that could actually exist is a boundedly rational being---with limited sensory, memory and computational capacities. Yet nonetheless we must presume that our senses are not completely random, that our memories are not totally worthless, that our reason is not completely unreliable. Once we presume some degree of reliability we can then experimentally test this reliability and find cases where it fails to apply (and much of cognitive psychology is dedicated to this pursuit), but without the presumption it is impossible to make sense of anything at all.

3. The truth of logic and mathematics is a necessary truth of any possible universe, and among the most certain knowledge any possible being could ever possibly have. We have no need to be ashamed of presuming that logic is true, for logic quite literally could not not be true. It is infallible and undeniable. (It's also omnipresent and arguably omniscient... is logic God? Well, logic doesn't seem to care who I have sex with, so I guess not.)

4. Do not confuse moral claims with moral facts. The majority of moral claims are indeed based upon personal distaste and caprices of culture, (as are the majority of claims about other subjects, such as science; this is why there are Creationists) but moral facts are and must be universal truths about the world. Without some objectively normative limits on our behavior, it is impossible to make sense of rationality, or science, or indeed anything at all. Even the principle, "You ought to believe what is true because it is true and disbelieve what is false because it is false" is a fundamentally moral principle.

This does nothing to support theism, because theism is in fact no source of objective normative claims at all (see also Euthyphro), but it does force us to carefully consider what we mean by moral claims and how we can evaluate them rationally.

5. Free will in the classical Christian sense is indeed nonsense. There is no extra "soul", no mysterious "spirit" that exists outside the brain and pulls the strings of a puppet body. We are embodied beings, minds made of stuff---and indeed, I don't really see how we ever thought there was another possibility besides that! Yet, there is a sense in which "free will" is real, and indeed necessary to understand any kind of rational behavior. We must have the capacity to make conscious volitional decisions, in at least some domains, at least some of the time. Without this there is no point even talking about our beliefs, goals, interests, or desires, because such things could never affect the behavior of mindless automatons. One cannot even speak about rational behavior in an asteroid or a quasar or a river; if rationality is to mean anything for humans and other animals, it must mean that we have some capacity to use cognitive processing to influence behavioral outputs. This is all the free will we have, all we need, and probably even all anyone could ever have.

Actually, PZ, I have to disagree with you here. On an appropriately nuanced reading, all of these propositions are indeed true, and moreover I hold them and so do you.

The problem with the argument is not that these are presuppositions---for they are---but that they are the sort of presuppositions that any rational being must make in any possible universe. Without them one cannot even be sane.

1. The universe need not be completely deterministic, but it must be to some extent orderly and predictable. Otherwise rational behavior is impossible. We must presume this in order to do anything at all, but once we have presumed it we find that it works extremely well. Indeed, science discovers new and more precise causal laws in nature every day. Quantum mechanics is important precisely because it does not undermine this fundamental order; in fact it extends it to domains of precision far beyond what was ever thought possible.

2. Any rational being that could actually exist is a boundedly rational being---with limited sensory, memory and computational capacities. Yet nonetheless we must presume that our senses are not completely random, that our memories are not totally worthless, that our reason is not completely unreliable. Once we presume some degree of reliability we can then experimentally test this reliability and find cases where it fails to apply (and much of cognitive psychology is dedicated to this pursuit), but without the presumption it is impossible to make sense of anything at all.

3. The truth of logic and mathematics is a necessary truth of any possible universe, and among the most certain knowledge any possible being could ever possibly have. We have no need to be ashamed of presuming that logic is true, for logic quite literally could not not be true. It is infallible and undeniable. (It's also omnipresent and arguably omniscient... is logic God? Well, logic doesn't seem to care who I have sex with, so I guess not.)

4. Do not confuse moral claims with moral facts. The majority of moral claims are indeed based upon personal distaste and caprices of culture, (as are the majority of claims about other subjects, such as science; this is why there are Creationists) but moral facts are and must be universal truths about the world. Without some objectively normative limits on our behavior, it is impossible to make sense of rationality, or science, or indeed anything at all. Even the principle, "You ought to believe what is true because it is true and disbelieve what is false because it is false" is a fundamentally moral principle.

This does nothing to support theism, because theism is in fact no source of objective normative claims at all (see also Euthyphro), but it does force us to carefully consider what we mean by moral claims and how we can evaluate them rationally.

5. Free will in the classical Christian sense is indeed nonsense. There is no extra "soul", no mysterious "spirit" that exists outside the brain and pulls the strings of a puppet body. We are embodied beings, minds made of stuff---and indeed, I don't really see how we ever thought there was another possibility besides that! Yet, there is a sense in which "free will" is real, and indeed necessary to understand any kind of rational behavior. We must have the capacity to make conscious volitional decisions, in at least some domains, at least some of the time. Without this there is no point even talking about our beliefs, goals, interests, or desires, because such things could never affect the behavior of mindless automatons. One cannot even speak about rational behavior in an asteroid or a quasar or a river; if rationality is to mean anything for humans and other animals, it must mean that we have some capacity to use cognitive processing to influence behavioral outputs. This is all the free will we have, all we need, and probably even all anyone could ever have.

Strange, that posted twice. I did not intend this.

pnrjulius,
One need not reduce these to assumptions

1)can be accepted provsionally, subject to evidence

2)likewise

3)the past century demonstrates that at least to some extent mathematics is an empirical science (c.f. Incompleteness Theorem, discovery of Extraordinary groups...)

4)morality has more to do with the fact that we are social animals than with any sort of religion

5)Free will is not essential at all--though the illusion of it is.

He's every bit as worthless as expected - the follow up post(s) makes no sense either, and he doesn't actually answer questions.

moral facts are and must be universal truths about the world. Without some objectively normative limits on our behavior, it is impossible to make sense of rationality, or science, or indeed anything at all. Even the principle, "You ought to believe what is true because it is true and disbelieve what is false because it is false" is a fundamentally moral principle. - pnrjulius

You are eliding the distinction between normative and moral. The former is much broader, and normativity can be completely amoral as in (at least the conventional understanding of) Machiavelli's The Prince, where he advises what a ruler should do if they want to retain and increase their power. Similarly, "You ought to believe what is true..." can be purely pragmatic - believing falsehoods will obstruct you in obtaining most goals. What are these alleged "moral facts" that are universal truths, and where do they come from, in your view?

moral facts are and must be universal truths about the world. Without some objectively normative limits on our behavior, it is impossible to make sense of rationality, or science, or indeed anything at all. Even the principle, "You ought to believe what is true because it is true and disbelieve what is false because it is false" is a fundamentally moral principle. - pnrjulius

You are eliding the distinction between normative and moral. The former is much broader, and normativity can be completely amoral as in (at least the conventional understanding of) Machiavelli's The Prince, where he advises what a ruler should do if they want to retain and increase their power. Similarly, "You ought to believe what is true..." can be purely pragmatic - believing falsehoods will obstruct you in obtaining most goals. What are these alleged "moral facts" that are universal truths, and where do they come from, in your view?

The universe need not be completely deterministic, but it must be to some extent orderly and predictable.

No, it really doesn't. Fortunately, and up until evidence to the contrary comes in, it seems that it is.

Yet nonetheless we must presume that our senses are not completely random, that our memories are not totally worthless, that our reason is not completely unreliable.

No, we don't need to. We can gather evidence about that before making the assumption - most people seem to manage it when they're in the baby to toddler stage.

The truth of logic and mathematics is a necessary truth

Nope, they're defined truths. The ones we use are the ones that correspond to reality.

Do not confuse moral claims with moral facts.

Please provide a list of moral facts.

This is all the free will we have, all we need, and probably even all anyone could ever have.

Since free will is never defined, the statement is meaningless. With the author's further postings I don't think I'd agree with his statement, as I suspect he has a personal definition of free will that I wouldn't necessarily agree with.