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Your comment was in defense of the rationality of believing that a god, specifically the Christian god, planted fossil evidence in order to test our ability to
by sofal 8y ago
Your comment was in defense of the rationality of believing that a god, specifically the Christian god, planted fossil evidence in order to test our ability to discount it entirely. Now you're saying that this God character doesn't follow from this "purpose" and that invoking that idea is suddenly a straw man outside of this discussion?
Purpose is not something that exists outside of the minds of creatures that can harbor intent. It is inherently subjective, and is often intersubjective. We generally agree on the purpose of the specialized tools we create, but not because the purpose is an inherent property of the tool. Even if the universe was created by a race of gods or pixies or what have you, the purpose they had for it would not necessarily be shared by us.
Actually physical laws are just descriptions and models. To whittle them down you must remove additional assumptions, not add. The fewer assumptions needed to explain the evidence, the better the model. There may be additional data out there that ends up poking holes in our models, in which case we respond by revising the model. Some of the better models we've come up with have actually made surprisingly accurate predictions.
It is rational to base your beliefs on consistent and verified observations, rather than our fanciful imagination.
- lisper 8y ago> Your comment was in defense of the rationality of believing that a god, specifically the Christian god, planted fossil evidence in order to test our ability to discount it entirely. That's right. > Now you're saying that this God character doesn't follow from this "purpose" and that invoking that idea is suddenly a straw man outside of this discussion? Yes, but you left out a very important caveat: I would restate this and add one word: "... this God character doesn't necessarily follow from this "purpose" ..." I'm not taking a position on whether or not God does follow from teleology, only that he might. Sorting out whether he does or not is a very thorny problem which is ridiculously beyond the scope of an HN comment. All I'm saying is that, because God might follow from teleology, you cannot (rationally) dismiss out of hand someone who believes in God as being irrational no matter how irrational their conclusions may seem to you at first glance. Quantum mechanics is pretty frickin' bizarre too. It is possible that they have come to their beliefs in a perfectly rational manner, but starting from an assumption (like teleology) that you simply do not accept despite the fact that you can't actually prove that it is false, at least not rationally :-)
- sofal 8y agoI’m saying that teleology without a mind(s) to hold the purpose is not a coherent concept because purpose is not an intrinsic property of objects. Even if it was a coherent concept, you seem to have decided that it is unfalsifiable, and for some reason you think that makes it rational to believe in. Do you think that all unfalsifiable ideas are perfectly rational to believe in merely because by definition they can’t be proven wrong?
- lisper 8y ago> purpose is not an intrinsic property of objects Can you prove that? Can you falsify it? > it is unfalsifiable, and for some reason you think that makes it rational to believe in No, it is (at least potentially) rational to believe in it despite the fact that it is unfalsifiable, not because it is unfalsifiable. We should merge this thread with: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18053609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18053609