The evolution of an atheist.

Analogise it. Let's say that a known figure appeared in your home town/city - make him a pop star. He does a gig to 10,000 fans. That night he ODs on smack and dies.. Three days later he appears in the town centre and gives a little accoustic gig to a few hundred people.
Does the word of this spread like wildfire? You bet it does.
Would they hear of it in Rome? Yep, and in the rest of the world as well.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

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So I have to ask, are you assuming that the Gospels are actually correct and therefore Tacitus must have noticed this event and connected it to the Christians of his day ?

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If the gospels are fiction then I would say that Jesus wouldn''t have been noticed by anyone and Tacitus would probably have mentioned him as you propose. However if the gospels are made-up then this whole conversation becomes a bit moot doesn't it? We would be spending time discussing a minor 1st century nobody...

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(If so, I'd like some evidence that Tacitus did notice similar events in the same timeframe). If not, and if you are assuming that Jesus was not so significant doesn't it support my point that Tacitus likely did not get his information on the execution from Roman records ?

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Well...he mentioned many events in Judea in these years - I gave a list on the previous page somewhere near the top I think....
Here you go..just retrieved it:
26AD: protest to Pilate about icons
c30AD: protest to Pilate about use of Temple funds
c30AD: prophetic claims of John the Baptist
35-55AD: banditry of Eleazar
36AD: prophetic claims of 'Samaritan Prophet'
40AD: protest to Petronius about statue in Temple
45AD: prophetic claims of Theudas
45AD: banditry of Tholomaeus et al
50AD: protest to Cumanus about soldiers' impiety
50AD: banditry near Beth-horon
c55AD: prophetic claims of unnamed prophets
c55AD: prophetic claims of 'Egyptian Prophet'I think several of those would rank as similar .... and they must surely have come from Roman records....Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

I did read it and thought it was excellent.
That doesn't mean I have to agree with every point and this is one where I am not sure. I take all the points that are made about errors in the description - there are actually a couple more to boot.
I'll respond in a bit more depth later...got to go now for a while...

Yes you are correct - I'm mixing up my Josephus and my Tacitus - those are indeed all attributed to the former not the later...my mistake, mea culpa.
Looks like I may have to change position on this one and accept the position that Tacitus used later Jewish sources - it does indeed seem that this is the best explanation.
That means going back to Josephus again.
Your position seems to be that the accounts of the passover entry into Jerusalem are probably exaggerated (at least) and that perhaps the tales of the appearance after the crucifixion are also a bit questionable. Would that be fair?
That is pretty much my own position - I was playing devils advocate by assuming the gospel accounts were accurate in an attempt to show that if they were, it isn't consistent with the 'jesus as low key character' theory.

No, I'm not conceding it. I simply say that my own opinion at present is that there might have been a person upon whom the later myth is based, and that I find it probable - not certain, definitely NOT conceded as fact. I don't think that is an unreasonable position. I have a similar position with regard to Socrates, for whom there is also little or no contemporary historical evidence (unless you count the dramatic stories by Plato et al, which I don't think are meant as historical reference and cannot be read as such).* It is just an opinion, not an assertion, and I would be quite happy to change my opinion if I could - but I have to be honest to myself at least, As an atheist it is probably easier to believe that there never was such a person, but I try to apply the same sceptical consideration to my own beliefs as I do to those of others, and than means also giving the same benefit of the doubt where I see such doubt...* Though I should be clear - the evidence for Socrates is greater by some margin than that for Jesus.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

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The world does appear to be designed. I believe that this implies a designer. I cant prove that to be the case but my fallible reason leads me to this conclusion. It makes sense to me that any designer (s) would have an on-going interest in what he/she/it/they created. Now that Ive gotten this far Im inclined to believe that seeing as how I have the ability to reason and the imagination to contemplate the nature of this designer I believe that it is reasonable to believe, (I know thats a lot of believes‘ ), that I can at least learn something of the nature of the designer.

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I thought we had established that the laws of physics account quite nicely for the earth, and the 'laws' of biology in the form of evolution account for us. Is that now not your view?

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There does seem to be an underlying code in our lives. We seem to instinctively recognize fairness and justice. We obviously can and do ignore this code out of self interest, but I think that most of us recognize that there is something there that calls us to something other than a life that is completely about self interest.

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But this is all explicable using the basic evolutionary paradigm - there is no need to complicate the picture with extra entities. Occam and his razor are the friends of the thinking man, don't be afraid to use them.

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So when you say that there is no way to tell whether a particular theology is better than another one I suggest that this is a good place to start. Which religion has the premise that best promotes an altruistic life style and to what degree. Which religion eschews power for the sake of power? Also of course it doesnt mean that any one religion has a lock on all truth and that the others are all wrong. I think that that all modern religions advocate altruism to one degree or another.

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That is a terrible way to decide. No religion is followed to the letter by people for the simple reason that ALL religion is ambiguous. If religion were a set of rigorous statements about how to live an ethical life then it would be empirically testable and we wouldn't have any debate. No religion even gets close to that. The nearest would, IMHO, be Buddhism. Christianity is MILES away. Look honestly at the OT. You see a vicious, sadistic, narcissistic monster of a God. That is part of the heritage of the religion, so you are on a looser right there, since you then have to do some quick sidestepping or reinterpretations to put that to one side and say that the real message is in the NT. Hence we get the 'new covenant' (when in fact Jesus is quite clear that not one letter of the 'law' (OT) shall be put aside).Then, of course, we have the ambiguities in the NT which leave it so open to interpretation that we have...how many?...hundreds? thousands? of often competing, sometimes mutually exlusive, and always significantly different religious sects claiming to have the true interpretation of that single set of scriptures.Finally we have the empirical test - are Christians more altruistic, more ethical/moral than non-Christians? The only fair answer to that is - not on your life matey.If you want a simple, fairly unambiguous maxim/creed/doctrine then I'll give you one.1) Causing welcome good to others is always a moral/ethical act.
2) Causing unwelcome harm to others is always an imoral/unethical act.
3) All else is amoral/neither ethical nor unethical.There you go. Stick to that and you have your altruistic ethical perfection. It is called the universal ethic and is the basis of many forms of secular humanism.PS - I reckognise quite a bit of Polkinghorne in what you say, so I would have guessed that you had read him. Personally I find him very unpersuasive - he simply argues that atheism leads to an impovrished view of the world (subjective and wrong IMHO) therefore lets have religion. Everything else follows from that and is a classic case of post-hoc reasoning and begging the question, rather than scientific enquiry. He is quite honest about some things, but I find he is incredibly (or deliberately) 'naive' (to be generous) on his understanding of morality, ethics and aesthetics.
Finally I find his use of the reverse argument from ignorance troubling (ie the fact that we can understand much about the universe means that there has to be a designer, because otherwise our simian brains could not be expected to have grasped quantum physics, relativity etc). That is a very dodgy argument for anyone to attempt, let alone a scientist, and it demonstrates some profound misconceptions IMHO.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

The problem is actually built-in. Although we call the 'discipline' Theology, that is simply a result of our chauvanism. There is no such thing in practice. There is Christian Theology, Jewish Theology etc. Few if any people are general theologians, all have a primary focus.
I actually feel quite strongly that 'theologian' should not be granted the respect it currently is - we frequently have theologians or clerics called in whenever there is an ethical issue in the news. Why? They have no special expertise and the notion that their studies of their scriptures in some way qualifies them as general experts on matters of ethics is entirely bogus IMHO.
They are experts in nothing other than a particular scriptural source and its interpretations - and I would question even that.
I also do not like the fact that we are willing to grant Doctorates and Masters degrees in the 'subject' which allows theologians to consider themselves academic colleagues of real academics.

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I can't imagine anything less interesting than talking about what words mean,

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I think you are very wrong on this. It isn't a semantic issue, it is an ontological issue. It is the very question you say is most important - what is 'real'? What you perceive as real is not real. You know that on an intellectual level but then what actually IS real? Science can give you some facts about electron cloud distributions and quantum superposition, but what does that actually mean to you? If you want to understand what is actual, real, objective (and just as importantly - whether such a thing exists, which is highly debatable) then you cannot avoid philosophy. If you don't care and you are content to work on the illusion presented by the senses and the machines which feed them data, then I would say that talking about 'reality' is something you cannot do.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

Again I could not agree less.
Let's talk cases:
a) Hume realised long ago that the whole basis of science was dodgy. It depended on induction. A has happened 99 times therefore A will happen next time. Very dodgy. It took a philosopher to sort it out and to give a PRACTICAL method of solving the problem. Don't prove, refute. If Popper had not done his thing, then scientists might well be still trying to prove their theories right, and by so doing making fundamental errors.
b) Quantum physics. You cannot even begin to talk sense about quantum physics without immediately getting into philosophy. What is the nature of the wavefunction collapse? Is it real? Are the Copenhagen crew right or is the Many Worlds interpretation right, or is there a hidden variable solution - all these are philosophy, not science, which is why we call the various standpoints interpretations not theories - the science is what the science is for all of them, but what that means is different for each and will determin what you should next be prodding away at. If you are a Copenhaganist then you will not be prodding away trying to find some underlying mechanism to the collapse, because there isn't one. If you are a realist like Penrose then there must be something 'bigger' than the collapse so you must look for that - he looks for it in quantum gravity.That is just to consider two cases. I could develop this further in many directions and show how philosophy is inerlinked with science right through and through.I think you are pissed-off with the relativists and the philosophers who devote careers to extremely esoteric branches of the subject. All I am saying is that philosophy is not defined by those, it has a real, functional and crucial role which sits alongside science.

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Seriously? What are you talking about?
Why can I not avoid philosophy to come to an agreement with anyone that a table is real in an actual, objective sense?

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You can, in just the same way that you can agree that God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.
So then when I ask you whether this piece of wood I have is a table, do you have another quick meeting and all agree that yes, it is a table, or no, it is a ruler? No, of course not. You formulate general ideas of what a table is and is not. Immediately you are into philosophy. The science of the wood concerned is the same...and you can use the physics to make your decision, but the decision itself is not a scientific one.

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I don't need to talk electrons or even science.
Perhaps the table isn't "totally, 100% solid", maybe it's nothing more than fields interacting with each other, maybe it's God's will holding it together... maybe so, but who cares? This is all irrelevant in determining if the table is real in an actual, objective sense. The table's existance could depend on one of these, all of these, or some combination... that has no effect on the fact that the table exists independantly of the observer.

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It might have a very big impact on whether the table can perform as a table. It also has an impact on whether it IS a table - because, as you have previously said this 'fact' is actually a matter of consensus, not physicality. What happens when there is no consensus...some say it is a workbench, others a sculpture, others a table...what now? Is it a table or not?You say 'observable sense' - what then of the atom. Is that real?
Do you believe what you observe is real? It is not some dopey question designed to fool people - it is a real practical question. Because if you do then you end up convicting people on eye-witness testimony which is real to the testifier, but completely unreal in any objective sense that we can define. And that is what we did for years and years, until we realised .. oops..we are actually crap at observing things and even worse when it comes to recalling them. We constantly fool ourselves that we have seen something which we haven't, heard something which we didn't.
You might find this vid entertaining and I hope it also gives a hint of what my point is:
http://bikerman.co.uk/media/beliefs-sherman.isx

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In order to determine if the table is real in an actual, object sense... all that is required is to have all other rational, reasonable people agree that it exists. Most likely because they can see it and bump their hips into it as easily as I can.]

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But that is a terrible basis for deciding on what is real. Millions of rational reasonable people think God is absolutely real.

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Bringing theoretical possibilities into the picture such as "universe-wide mass hallucinations/illusions" is irrelevant.
If such things occur on the scale of the universe then they're still actually, objectively real for as long as we remain within this universe.

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So does the photon exist? Does everyone agree on that? Does it exist in the same place and time for all observers? Can everyone look at see a photon at position x,y,z and time t? Nope. What you see is not what I see.

History is filled with scientists affirming the consequent.
Take the great Galilleo:

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a large vessel of water placed in an elevated position; to the bottom of this vessel was soldered a pipe of small diameter giving a thin jet of water, which we collected in a small glass during the time of each descent, whether for the whole length of the channel or for a part of its length; the water thus collected was weighed, after each descent, on a very accurate balance; the differences and ratios of these weights gave us the differences and ratios of the times, and this with such accuracy that although the operation was repeated many, many times, there was no appreciable discrepancy in the results.

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One of the greats, but falls straight into the trap of affirming the consequent rather than trying to refute.
Even as late as last century we see it - General Relativity was widely considered proven after Eddington's observations of the eclipse.Or take the obvious example - one of Popper's targets - Freud. Freudian analysis was widely considered scientific in the 19th century despite the fact that it only ever affirmed the consequent.I understand that most scientists are pragmatists and don't give a monkey's about philosophy but they come up against philosophical questions all the time whether they like it or not. The root axioms of science are philosophic - the assumption that there is some reality to be discovered, the notion that things will work the same pretty much everywhere (aside from specific local variables).
How does the Head of Physics or the awarding body decide where to focus his researchers in the department? Philosophy comes in - should grants be given to researching the hidden-variables hypothesis. No, say most, because there are non.Don't forget the work of Steven Gould - everyone knows his scientific work on evolutionary theory, but his philosophical work was important in underpinning it.
This view of science: Stephen Jay Gould as historian of science and scientific historian, popular scientist and scientific popularizer - PubMedAs for Penrose - I actually agree. I think he got entranced by the notion of quantum consciousness and sucked-into formulating an hypothesis in search of a problem. He then defines the problem as non-computability al la Godel, which any computer scientists will tell you is naive in the extreme, considering that neural networks have been around for some time and don't use an algorithmic method....
But I don't think you can criticise his work on quantum gravity - which is also motivated largely by philosophical considerations (in that he doesn't accept the standard idea of the objective reality of the wavefunction collapse. In fact research into quantum physics is heavily dependent on philosophical considerations - probably more so than any other field of science I can think of. OK the scientist at the bench/cyclatron/LHC is concerned with his/her bit of the latest proton smash and entirely focussed on tracing the particles on the printout - I talk regularly with a couple of them on my home forum, but what are they expecting to find? Some of that is pure science but others - the possibility of support for extra-dimensions for example- arises from conjectures and hypotheses which are as much philosophy as science - like supersymmetric string/m-theory.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

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The naturalistic explanation for the scientifically determined fine tuning of the universe seems to be the anthropic principle. There seem to be various ways of dealing with this including a multi-verse theory. These are all theories and may or may not at some point be proven. However, if you want to follow Occam's razor it seems to me that this simplest explanation is that God did it. It would simply answer all the questions instead of theorizing the idea of many, if not infinite parallel universes exist, and we just happen to be in the right one. (That is my understanding so if I have it wrong I have a hunch you'll feel free to correct me. )

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Not really. God is an infinite entity. Introduction of any infinity to a solution is at least as complex and normally more complex than any possible alternative and rarely actually addresses the issue. In the case of fine-tuning there are many hypothesis which are much less complex in terms of introducing additional entities and which are therefore favoured by the good old occy's razor. Examples would include:
a. the Evolutionary universe hypothesis from Lee Smolin - which is a theory with much beauty and symmetryb. variations of the anthropic principle.
b1. Even the straight (weak) anthropic principle - the universe must be as it is because we are here to observe it - introduces less assumptions/entities than the introduction of an infinite deity, but there are alternatives:
b2. Had the physical constants been different and a universe resulted with different physical laws then that simply means it may have evolved different life. The assumption that this universe is fine-tuned for life is not necessarily the case, and our existence is basically explained by the golf analogy*
b3. The assumption of fine-tuning is actually not valid - the assumption that this universe is friendly to life is clearly untrue - it is just the opposite, very unfriendly. The FT argument rests on the assertion that significant differences in the constants would not lead to a stable universe, but this is supposing that the variables are free to vary in such ways, which is unevidenced, and that there would be no synergy between the changes resulting in an unforseen result (ie normally we change one constant and show that this results in the electron smashing into the nucleus and that is that. What we should do is model several changes and look for mutual interactivity which might support a stable universe with new physics - I don't think this has been done, or at least done in any systematic and comprehensive manner.*The golf analogy:
a pro golfer typically drives a ball 300 yards plus or minus 20 yards. Within the 40 yeard margin of error there are 13,000,000 blades of grass. The pro hits the ball and the ball lands. Wow, he says, the chances of me landing that ball on this blade of grass are 13 million to 1.PS - we could argue about whether the universal ethic is derived from the golden rule - it isn't IMHO. Do unto others is a different rule if you think about it - the universal ethic is more specific and rules out many poor outcomes of the do unto others Golden rule (eg a masochist might do things unto others that they would not enjoy at all..)
The universal ethic is entirely derived from secular principles. I could give you a long explanation but instead I'll just give a link:
http://www.foldvary.net/works/ue1.htmlEdited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

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That is, that God doesn't know what I am going to have for lunch tomorrow. I guess the best metaphor would be our own raising of kids. We know about them now and in the past but we don't know what their future holds. We relate to them in the now. Polkinghorne has convinced me that this is also true for God's relationship with us. Gerald Schroeder also views it this way as near as I can understand but from a Jewish perspective.

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So he rejects an omniscient God? This creates problems as well as solving some of the obvious ones (problem of human free will being the most obvious, and I suspect this position is actually largely because of the free-will problem - which seems to me to be intractable for any omniscient being).OK so God is just really smart:1) He must have been smart enough to know the outcome, 13.7 billion years in advance, of a virtually infinite number of interactions possible after BB t=0, and KNOW the outcome of probabilistic events (otherwise he could not have known we would evolve). This implies a knowledge of all possible physical law, at least as it relates to non-biological systems. It also implies a knowledge of biology, evolutionary mechanisms, animal psychology (we could go on...basically he has to know that once abiogenesis occurs that the result will be us). So he knows all of possible physics and all of the rest of the goey biological stuff. The only thing that leaves is knowing what we will do. That sounds like a case of special pleading to me. He knows what the apes will do (he would have to, otherwise he couldn't possibly foresee humans appearing), and what every other animal will do, just not us. Again, that really does sound like very special pleading to me.If God did not have this knowledge then the fine tuning argument is multiplied many times and fired right back at God - how could he know we would evolve and without that knowledge why make the universe in the first place. On the other hand to possess all that knowledge and not be able to make the tiny weeny leap to knowing out future along with the rest of the universe over the last 13.7 billion years....that is one hell of a stretch.2) Comparing God to a human parent is a bad analogy unless you also grant that the human parent forsaw the birth of their child from the time they themselves were born (or from at least a time when they were mature) and further that the human parent had the power to influence everything around them from the time they entered the scene.Nonetheless...let us now attack this with some rigour, starting with infinities and the paradoxes therein:i1) We don't know if this new version of God is omnipotent or just very powerful. If the latter then the immediate question I would ask is 'why the hell call him God? He is just ET writ large'.i2) One thing we do know is that he must exist outside this spacetime (having created it). Now. given that he is not omniscient and possibly not omnipotent are we to believe he is eternal (or at least infinite into the past if not the future) ? If the answer is no then the obvious question follows - who made/created him? If the answer is yes then many paradoxes follow. eg
Any being infinite in historical extent must have knowledge of prior events which itself is therefore infinite - therefore God has infinite knowledge but doesn't know about the future of men...paradox. We can illustrate this as follows: Any being infinite in historical extent can be analogised by an infinite library - a library with an infinite number of books. Such a library must, by definition, contain a book with my entire life story written in it, and indeed the life story of every human who ever lived and who ever will live.

I am perfectly happy to continue my attempted defence, but I am aware that we are now well into material that is properly, I think, the subject of a thread unto itself. Can I suggest, that in the interests of leaving the extant discussion to continue, we move this to a separate thread with the help and consent of the moderator? It is quite demanding defending against a two or three party attack - whilst also being quite stimulating - but I'm running the risk of confusing myself, let alone others, with this thread running through the other one I'm trying to have...
Is this agreeable to you both and to the mod?

Nono you misunderstand me. I meant defend in an entirely non-aggressive manner and I wasn't trying to imply you were doing anything nasty or even unusual. Normally I just use the words attack/defend to refer to someone defending a proposition and someone else trying to defeat it. I can see how that might suggest I'm complaining or crying foul, but really, that it not the case...