Falsifiability and the God Question: Category Error?

[Rhythmcs]

Christians have been struggling with a meaningful lack of evidence for the contents of their faiths since john 20:29 was first constructed to denounce any preference for personal experience.

[Paleophyte]

What are the appropriate epistemic tools for the God-question

Deep and abiding skepticism when it turns out that the "epistemology" and "philosophy" typically employed are inevitably skewed to yield one particular Canaanite deity. Odd how all the Great Minds™ of Christendom are on the exact same wavelength as a bunch of Bronze-Age goat-herders.

[Dexta]

were
Lengthy philosophical wibbling is just not relevant to simple, logical atheism. I for one can't be bothered to get to grips with, or even read the lengthy philosophy wibbling in the OP - there's just no need.

You don't like Steve's attempts at nit picking his god into existence? No way dude.

Germans aren't so bad, met a POWERFUL playful one in the park yesterday. I was worried for a minute they were being too rough with the little spaniels, but it turned out those little pups were ok with it : )

[Gawdzilla Sama]

God = imaginary friend for adults.

[Dexta]

God = imaginary friend for adults.

Internet fora= real friends for adults...minus the flesh.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

? Where's the fun in that?

[Dexta]

l

God = imaginary friend for adults.

If only it were as benign as an imaginary friend. 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Imaginary friends have real friends, and real friends can kill people when the imaginary friends say its "necessary".

[Dexta]

? Where's the fun in that?

There's always the liquor store, or off licence as we call it in the UK...or chess, or music or.....come on man, you ain't done yet.....having said that, maybe I am for now and should go to bed. night night.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

l

God = imaginary friend for adults.

If only it were as benign as an imaginary friend. 

Noah's lot killed everybody on the planet except for them and theirs. Hard to match that.

[1Sam15]

God = imaginary friend for adults.

God = adult pacifier and blanky

[brewerb]

You don't like Steve's attempts at nit picking his god into existence? No way dude.

Germans aren't so bad, met a POWERFUL playful one in the park yesterday. I was worried for a minute they were being too rough with the little spaniels, but it turned out those little pups were ok with it : )

My avatar is not german.

[Minimalist]

Belgian?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Wa

[SYZ]

...And how do we know who is right or who is wrong? Do you think that falsifiability has anything to do with it? What methods of acquiring knowledge of something are legitimate for that type of knowledge? You certainly can't prove your universal negative so how do you get there?

LOL... It's obvious that Steve simply doesn't understand
the concept of falsifiability—Karl Popper proposed that ideas
could be regarded as legitimate science if they could be
falsified—that is, if a test proved the idea to be wrong.

The ancient Egyptians believed that unicorns existed, but
that idea cannot be falsified, just as the notion of God or gods
can't be falsified.



"Proving" unicorns exist(ed) is impossible, as it is with other
mythological figures such as gods—and of course angels and devils etc.

Steve repeatedly falls back on his claim that "you can't prove a
universal negative".  Russell's teapot [Is There a God? -1952]
illustrates that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person
making empirically unfalsifiable claims, as opposed to shifting the
burden of disproof to others.

[SteveII]

A test...framework-level claims are claims that (a) say something about the most general structure or ground of reality, and (b) help fix what even counts as an admissible explanation downstream.

HOWEVER, for the purposes of my argument, I don't think I need a precise decision procedure that classifies every metaphysical claim as "framework-level" or not. It's enough that there is a recognizable difference between claims that shape our overall picture of reality and more local, downstream claims within that picture. At this point I'm more interested in comparing how different epistemic standards handle those kinds of claims than in endlessly refining a label.

Well, then let me ask you this.  Is it sufficient for your charge of a category error that a question is metaphysical, or is it only framework-level metaphysical questions for which you are claiming a category error?  If the former, than we can dispense with the extra terms and just deal with the more basic question; if specific caveats apply as a result of the metaphysical questions' position in some hierarchy of metaphysical questions, then that can be adjudicated on a case-by-case basis.  If it is the latter, then the vagueness will not suffice as any claimed difference may or may not be real, and any claimed category error that results is then either real or not depending upon the specifics, and we are once again dealing with case-specific issues.  I think you've bitten off more than you can chew.  And candidly, I suspect the extra verbiage is primarily geared towards providing wiggle room around any difficulty you encounter prosecuting your claim.  You implied in your response that you had posed a clear question.  In hindsight, the question you have posed is clear as mud.

Fair questions; let me simplify and narrow the scope.

On the category-error claim: I'm not saying "any metaphysical question whatsoever" automatically makes falsifiability irrelevant. There are some metaphysical-ish claims that are pretty local and empirical in flavor (e.g. this house is haunted, that particular recovery was a miracle) where something like falsification or empirical testing might well be appropriate.

What I had in mind are global metaphysical claims that function as a picture of reality as a whole: e.g. "reality is purely physical," "a necessarily existent God is the ultimate ground of reality," "there is an external world, minds," etc. Those are the sorts of claims I was calling framework-level, but if that label is more distracting than helpful, I'm happy to drop it and just talk in terms of global vs local claims.

My charge of category error is aimed at using Popper-style falsifiability as a necessary condition for the rational admissibility of those global metaphysical claims. Popper’s criterion was designed for local, testable hypotheses about contingent states of affairs; global pictures of reality don’t typically work that way, which is why we usually assess them instead by coherence, explanatory power, fit with science and experience, and so on. That’s the core of what I'm getting at, independent of any particular label.

If you think that falsifiability can sensibly be made a necessary condition for those global claims—say, for example, that the A-theory of time (or the B-theory) is straightforwardly falsifiable—I'd be interested to hear how you'd spell that out. Otherwise, I'm content to let my original post stand as my current attempt to articulate the concern.

[SteveII]

And how do we know who is right or who is wrong? Do you think that falsifiability has anything to do with it? What methods of acquiring knowledge of something are legitimate for that type of knowledge? You certainly can't prove your universal negative so how do you get there?

You're making an awfully bold claim about what I can or can't do for a person who doesn't know how I would do it.  I've already told you of at least two methods of acquiring knowledge...but you didn't want to talk about them and/or your god is a special snowflake that can't be approached by logical and evidentiary means.

OFC that's only a problem for your knowledge, and not mine.  You can't know by reason or evidence that your god claim is true but I can know by reason and evidence that it isn't.  Quite the fucking conundrum.

We are still talking past each other. I want to know the rules--not your conclusions. Are the following epistemological frameworks valid ways to arriving at some level of truth about metaphysical questions?


Reliabilism
A broadly reliabilist theory of knowledge is roughly as follows: Given that p stands for any proposition (such as, the sky is blue), then one knows that p if and only if p is true, one believes that p is true, and one has arrived at the belief that p is true through some reliable process. A broadly reliabilist theory of justified belief can be stated as follows: One has a justified belief that p if, and only if, the belief is the result of a reliable process. Note: Reformed Epistemology is a specific externalist approach, influenced by reliabilist ideas, which holds that belief in God can be "properly basic" and warranted even without being inferred from explicit arguments. (Wikipedia)

Bayesian Epistemology
Traditional epistemology and Bayesian epistemology are both forms of epistemology, but they differ in various respects, for example, concerning their methodology, their interpretation of belief, the role justification or confirmation plays in them and some of their research interests. Traditional epistemology focuses on topics such as the analysis of the nature of knowledge, usually in terms of justified true beliefs, the sources of knowledge, like perception or testimony, the structure of a body of knowledge, for example in the form of foundationalism or coherentism, and the problem of philosophical skepticism or the question of whether knowledge is possible at all.[2][3] These inquiries are usually based on epistemic intuitions and regard beliefs as either present or absent.[4] Bayesian epistemology, on the other hand, works by formalizing concepts and problems, which are often vague in the traditional approach. It thereby focuses more on mathematical intuitions and promises a higher degree of precision. ...Bayesianism...has focused on the role of evidence for rationality: how someone's credence should be adjusted upon receiving new evidence. (Wikipedia)

Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) – aka the everyday logic
IBE is the pattern of reasoning where, given a set of competing hypotheses, we are epistemically justified in believing the one that would, if true, provide the best overall explanation of the data--where "best" is judged by criteria like explanatory power, simplicity, coherence, and fit with background knowledge. Beyond each one of us employing this reasoning every day of our lives, this is a central part of actual scientific practice whenever scientists infer unobservable entities or mechanisms because they make the observed data less surprising than rival explanations.

[SteveII]

I understand you want to talk about something you feel you have better footing on. I want to talk about what I wrote.

This is what you wrote. It isn't our fault that you can't accept the consequences of your silliness and that your OP is unsupportable.

Are you going to address any of my points I made in my reply?

We did. I know that you're surprised that we aren't all falling down to agree with you, but that's because you're manifestly wrong.

We cannot have the 'discussion' you want because we are not working from the same understanding of what counts as knowledge and how we arrive at it. We will talk past each other for the thousandth time.

Yup. And the reason for that is that, for the thousandth time, you're coming here and demanding that we carve out an evidence-free preserve from basic epistemology just so your peculiar belief doesn't go extinct in the wild. Let's keep this brief for you:

• Falsification aside, there's no good reason to believe in your god. There's no evidence for it whatsoever.
  
• You've failed to provide a single good reason for creating this falsification-free zone that you so desperately need.
  
• There's no good reason to believe that you intend to provide this special status for anything other than your personally preferred branch of Christianity. Any discussion of Allah, Brahma, Mbobo, Pele, or Atum will be as laughable to you as your god is to us, and for exactly the same reason.
  
• This is all just copy-N-pasta from the last dozen times you've babbled on incoherently about how we need to redefine evidence, epistemology, and knowledge in order to properly understand your fanfic. Zero original content.
  

You aren't arguing for some vast, over-arching philosophical truth. You're arguing for your own peculiar brand of Christianity. This isn't philosophy, it's apologetics, and treating us as if we were stoopid enough to believe that lie is insulting. You're going to talk past us for the thousandth time because you have no interest in talking to us unless we're agreeing with you.

Like I said to Rhythmcs, I am interested in discussing the rules foundational to epistemology and only then could you construct a framework on what constitutes evidence for a metaphysical claim.

[SYZ]

My charge of category error is aimed at using Popper-style falsifiability as a necessary condition for the rational admissibility of those global metaphysical claims. Popper’s criterion was designed for local, testable hypotheses about contingent states of affairs; global pictures of reality don’t typically work that way, which is why we usually assess them instead by coherence, explanatory power, fit with science and experience, and so on...

ROFL... so now poor old Steve is reduced to posting
this sort of unintelligible bullshit.  Which further proves
he simply doesn't—or can't?—comprehend what the
true meaning of "falsifiability" is.  Which is of course
because it totally shoots his notions of imaginary or
supernatural entities or paranormal phenomena out of
the water.

He's typical of the many rabid theists who just can't
afford—for their own peace of mind—to even for a
moment consider their uncritical religious beliefs could
be without substance, or lacking (as they do) in any
empirical evidence.

      Maybe it's true?  Religious beliefs can atrophy the human brain?

         https://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl...ne.0017006

[Paleophyte]

Like I said to Rhythmcs, I am interested in discussing the rules foundational to epistemology and only then could you construct a framework on what constitutes evidence for a metaphysical claim.

And as I said to you, I'm interested in discussing the rationale and need for mucking about with said rules. Feel free to persuade me otherwise, but it would seem that you are interested solely in carving out an exception from reason solely for your Christian deity, and a very specific version of it at that. You'd sooner have your teeth ground off by dragging them over concrete than engage in philosophy that had the slightest chance of proving that any other deity exists rather than yours. That bias is why it's blindingly obvious that you're practicing apologetics rather than philosophy and why nobody's eager to engage with your bullshit.

Prove me wrong. Make your case for Pele and Her Eternally Bubbling Pool of Lava here.

[Paleophyte]

An Epistemic Defense of Pele, She Who Dwells in Fire

Falsifiability is a tool designed for isolating repeatable, inert phenomena under controlled conditions. It is therefore categorically unsuited to entities whose nature is agentive, contextual, and relational. To demand falsifiability of Pele is to misunderstand what sort of being she is. Pele is not a hypothesis about matter; she is a lived explanatory framework that integrates ontology, phenomenology, and moral reality.

Consider the following:

Epistemic Limits Are Not Epistemic Failures
All human knowledge is mediated: by perception, language, culture, and fallible cognition. If one insists that only falsifiable claims are meaningful, then one must discard not only theology, but ethics, aesthetics, and much of metaphysics. Since we do not, the criterion is self-undermining.

Volcanic Phenomena Resist Reduction
Volcanism is not merely mechanical. It is episodic, temperamental, creative and destructive in ways that defy purely predictive models. Even where models succeed, they do not explain why creation and annihilation are so intimately entwined. Pele does.

Personal Encounter as Primary Evidence
Knowledge of Pele is not propositional but relational. Those who live near her domain experience patterns of warning, mercy, wrath, and renewal that are intelligible only within a personalist framework. Dismissing this as “subjective” simply privileges one epistemology over others without justification.

Explanatory Power Without Reduction
Pele accounts simultaneously for:

• The emergence of land from chaos.
  
• The moral demand to respect place and balance.
  
• The intelligibility of destruction as generative rather than meaningless.
  
• Competing naturalistic accounts fragment these into unrelated domains.
  

Selective Skepticism Is Arbitrary
If epistemic uncertainty disqualifies Pele, it equally disqualifies any God whose actions are mediated through history, testimony, and interpretation. One cannot exempt a particular tradition without smuggling in cultural preference as epistemic necessity.

Therefore, given that:
   Falsifiability is an inappropriate criterion for agentive metaphysical beings, and
   Pele uniquely integrates physical reality, moral meaning, and lived experience,
It is rational—indeed epistemically responsible—to affirm Pele’s reality.

Those who deny her do not do so on epistemic grounds, but because they do not live where the ground itself remembers her footsteps.

[SteveII]

Like I said to Rhythmcs, I am interested in discussing the rules foundational to epistemology and only then could you construct a framework on what constitutes evidence for a metaphysical claim.

And as I said to you, I'm interested in discussing the rationale and need for mucking about with said rules.

What are the rules? How do we decide what counts as knowledge or rational belief? I outlined three methods in the OP. Are these good, bad, what? If you don't understand these concepts as they apply to my beliefs, then I can easily ignore you--because you quite literally don't know what you are talking about.

[SYZ]

...What are the rules? How do we decide what counts as knowledge or rational belief? I outlined three methods in the OP. Are these good, bad, what? If you don't understand these concepts as they apply to my beliefs, then I can easily ignore you--because you quite literally don't know what you are talking about.

Oh dear... this sort of patronising hypocrisy is also endemic to theism.

For Steve to claim that a theist—or any theist—doesn't know what they're
talking about shows just how blinded he is to the real world;  the one
beyond the simple fantasy world he comfortably lives in.

And I do note how Steve has studiously ignored my comments here for
a long time now.  This is what people tend to do when they're backed into
a corner with nowhere to go LOL.

[Paleophyte]

What are the rules?

As others said back on page one:

Provide Evidence

Or STFU

Evidence is that which may be examined by one and all, not a privileged few. Evidence is not arguments. Do you have any? If not, then you're asking for a ground-level reworking of epistemology solely to accommodate your fan-fiction, and that simply isn't warranted. This seems simple enough.

How do we decide what counts as knowledge or rational belief? I outlined three methods in the OP. Are these good, bad, what? If you don't understand these concepts as they apply to my beliefs, then I can easily ignore you--because you quite literally don't know what you are talking about.

I understand them quite well thanks. I just discount your abuse of them.

• Your deity fails at Reliabilism so breathtakingly that you should never utter the word again. One of three criteria.
  
• Bayesians are inapplicable where certainties are involved, and you've said as much on that very topic in the past.
  
• Your Best Explanation is nothing more than an invalid appeal to "common sense" that you fail regardless of the fallacy. Common sense dictates that any epistemology that repeatedly converges on the same Bronze-Age mythology is suffering from fatal bias, and you'd agree with that wholeheartedly if it produced the name of any other deity. Your arguments don't pass the IBE sniff test.
  

That's how these concepts apply to your beliefs.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Evidence is that which may be examined by one and all, not a privileged few. Evidence is not arguments. 

And just to add though I now you're cognizant already -- anecdotes and opinions aren't evidence.