M: Zack in ... I have no idea where you're calling from, it looks like a weird ...
D: Is this Indiana? M: Is it Germany?
Z: No, this is from Idaho. D: Idaho?
Z: Hagerman.
M: Oh, okay. There's a slash in it, so I thought it said Hag/german, ID.
M: Hagerman, Idaho. Z: Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Z: I've been listening for a little while,
seen some of the videos and stuff since about probably 2013, 2014.
This is the first time I've called in.
D: And what have you got for us?
Z: I think that the idea that faith cannot be a valid mode of knowledge is ...
Z: I guess I disagree with that idea.
M: Is there anything that you couldn't believe
and attribute it to faith?
Z: Is there anything that I couldn't believe ...?
M: Is there anything that one could not believe
and just attribute to "I'm taking this on faith"?
Z: I guess not. I'm not sure ... M: If that's the case,
M: could somebody believe something that is false
and attribute it to faith?
Z: They could attribute it to faith. M: Sure.
M: So, if somebody says, I believe this, and their attribution is faith,
how do we tell whether or not it's true?
Z: I don't think we can as outsiders. I don't think ...
M: I'm going to take it on faith that
when I let go of this bottle of Coke Zero,
that it's going to fall to the table. Z: Right.
M: It's either going to fall or it's not.
Z: Right. I'd say that's not something that's taken on faith, generally.
Z: But I mean if somebody says, they're going to take that on faith,
we don't have any mechanism
for determining whether or not that's valid.
M: Sure we do. I can let go, it falls. Z: Let me explain what I mean by that.
M: That's how we find out whether or not something is true.
M: By investigation. Not by faith. Z: Right. That's through evidence.
D: But Matt's earlier point is
if you can believe anything on faith,
then it doesn't give you a guide to what's true or not.
Z: Right. You could believe everything on faith.
Z: I think that we're using "faith" in two different terms here.
Z: When a lot of believers talk about faith,
they use it as you guys have described
and as I've heard other callers sometimes describe
as, you know, the evidence for things unseen, that sort of thing,
and just take that on faith.
Z: But I want to look at it in a slightly different light,
like as sort of another sense experience,
or another possible sense experience. If you look ...
M: The problem, Zack, we're going to run into --
and I'll let you do this.
M: But now we've got two different definitions of faith
which are fundamentally different.
M: One you're going to describe as a sense experience
and the other one is belief in the absence of evidence.
Z: Right. And I think these two are often confused,
and I think that they're often ...
Z: often people use it that way and ... M: Why call ...
M: Zack, why call a sense experience "faith",
if "faith" is used in another way
and we already have the term "sense experience"?
Z: Because I don't think that that's ...
Z: Because I think often when people hear the word "faith",
sometimes they can think evidence,
you know, reason for belief in the absence of evidence.
Z: And other times when they hear it,
they can think this sort of other sense experience
of possibly spiritual realities.
M: What is this sense experience
and how do you know that it's real?
Z: Well, the same way we could know
any sense experience is real M: Cool.
Z: and is as valid as any other sense experience.
Z: You know, to the person who has it
it's as valid as ... M: Not cool! Not cool at all!
M: You just said we could validate it
the same way we could any other sense experience,
and we validate no other sense experience
by merely taking the person at their word
at their understanding what sense experience is.
It's independent verification that validates the reliability.
D: This is like ... there's the idea [of] ESP
and that's been well tested and found to be bogus.
Z: ESP, sure. I agree with that. D: So, how is this different from ESP?
Z: I'm not talking about the ... explaining it to another person,
being able to have some sort of shared belief in something.
D: How do I describe ... M: Then I'm absolutely not interested.
M: I'm not interested in claims to personal truth. Truth is truth.
M: The way we validate things is by independent confirmation
because the person who is suffering from delusions
who we have to lock up,
they have what they're going to call their personal truth.
M: If we're not going to care about the facts about a shared reality,
I don't know why we're wasting time discussing it.
Z: Okay. But let me ask you this:
Z: If everybody is, 90 % of the world, is blind
and 10 % saw, would it be valid, -- or even less than that,
say one in a million or something like that -- were able to see,
M: Okay. Z: would it be valid for those people
Z: to claim that they had knowledge of something that the others didn't.
Z: Not to convince them, not to convince the blind people,
but would, for the person who believes it, or for the person who sees,
would it be valid for that person to say he sees?
M: First of all, I'm not keen on using the word "valid" here
because it has a specific meaning in logic.
M: But can they be rationally justified
in believing that they can see? Yes.
D: And the blind people can be validly justified in not believing it
D: until they have evidence.
M: And they can engage in particular with other people who can see
to validate that they're seeing correctly.
And this is something that you can teach and demonstrate
to people who cannot see.
Through empirical evidence.
Z: You can demonstrate, you know,
things like being able to perceive things,
at a distance and things like that,
you can't explain colour to a person who can't see.
Z: There's no ...
M: So, first of all, I'm not convinced that that is true.
M: What you're getting to is this notion of qualia,
which there's something experiential about it.
There's something that we can describe and demonstrate.
For example, I can identify colourblindness in people
and I can find out who's not colourblind
and we can consistently demonstrate
that some people are not colourblind.
It doesn't change if the people
who are colourblind are totally blind.
The way to demonstrate this doesn't change.
It's about being able to consistently produce results.
Is this possible using the faith sense, sensus divinitatis,
whatever it is you're getting to?
Z: Probably not in the same way.
M: Then why are we talking about it?
M: Because you said you weren't interested
in whether or not other people believed it,
so it becomes a matter of personal experience and personal truth.
And yet, when we talk about these other senses,
we're talking about independent verification
and how might demonstrate it
to somebody without those senses.
And we've pointed out already
that those things are possible with other senses.
So what is it about your special faith sense
that even remotely compares to the things we discussed?
Z: I have to say, like, with colourblind tests and stuff like that,
there's no reason for a blind person to suspect
that a person actually can see colour
or that a person can't. I mean ...
M: Yes, there is. There is the evidence for it.
D: We could render a spectrogram and a Braille, for example.
M: There's a cool experiment with a tribe.
They can see a distinction between two different colours of [green]
that I can't see a distinction between.
Z: Oh, yea. The tetrachromatics.
M: I'm willing to accept that they can see that distinction
because the evidence consistently demonstrates
that that's the case.
M: I don't have to be able to see that distinction
to be convinced reasonably that they can. Z: Alright.
M: If people of faith, even if they want to consider it a sense,
wanted to, if their faith was a path to truth and understanding --
first of all, we wouldn't have thousands of denominations,
all appealing to faith, but if they wanted to demonstrate reliably
that they have access to some truth that the rest of us don't,
that is at least theoretically possible.
And yet it doesn't happen.
What we get is varied revelations that are in conflict.
Z: Okay. We could see ... We could imagine a sense experience,
maybe not colour, but I don't know, some sort of sense experience
that can't be independently verified.
M: OK, if we ... First of all, we can imagine whatever the hell we want,
but if there was a sense experience
that couldn't be independently verified,
how could you ever have warrant to trust it?
M: How is it distinguishable from a delusion?
If you can't independently verify it,
it is indistinguishable from a delusion.
Z: Okay. I guess that's true. But I mean, if we have ...
Z: So you're saying that if we had those kind of sense experiences,
if people actually had those kind of sense experiences,
they would not be able to ...
they would not be rationally justified
in actually trusting those experiences?
M: Yes. Because, for example, if I see a vision appear in this room
and I'm the only one who can see it,
I have to question my own sanity,
whether I'm seeing a vision
or my brain is playing tricks on me.
If there's no way for me to investigate
to determine if I've actually seen something real
or if I've just perceived this,
then I cannot have evidential warrant to believe that I saw it.
I can believe that I had an experience, because I did.
The properly basic thing is that I had some experience.
But whether or not my mind's understanding of that experience
maps to something about reality,
that requires independent verification.
Z: I see, I see. Alright then, I ...
M: That's why we end up locking people up
M: because there are some people who experience strong delusions
that to them, based on the reports and the studies,
are as functionally real as almost anything else they experience.
Yet these things are not perceptible to the rest of us.
We've identified in some cases problems of the brain
but sometimes we don't know why
but we do know that they're dangerous,
so we put them in protective custody.
Z: I see, I see. M: So, for example, if god talks to you
M: and people say god talks to them all the time --
I usually ask, did they hear it audibly
or is this a feeling or an impression,
if something happens in their brain.
But in all of those, if god talks to you and tells you something,
how can you be sure that god spoke to you
and that this wasn't just a creation of your brain?
Z: I don't have an answer for that right now.
Z: I'm going to have to consider that M: I don't, either.
Z: and call you guys back next ... D: I'm reminded of, you know,
D: when you go read about comic books
and Spiderman gets a special power of some sort,
then the first thing he does is he tries it out a bunch of times
and makes sure it's real, and then at some point
he starts to use it and starts to benefit by it
and starts to go off and do things.
And the fact that he is out saving the world or whatever
becomes evidence that other people can see.
D: So, that might be ... Z: Right, I mean like if ...
D: That might be a path, right. Z: But I mean if Spidy had ...
Z: some sort of sense of something that is happening beyond the ...
Z: horizon of the ... universe. M: But Spidy has the Spidy-....
M: Spiderman has Spidy-sense.
M: The sense of danger in a number of the comic books.
And the way that we know it's reliable
is he consistently finds the danger that he sensed.
Z: Right. Because there's actual ... M: Okay, if any religious ...
Z: You can compare it to other senses in a respect.
Z: You can validate it by appeals to D: Yes.
Z: things that happen around us and things we can affect.
D: Right, but be aware of confirmation bias.
M: I'm in complete agreement. I just need to ...
M: If there was some religious sense,
it would need to have some demonstrated reliability and a mechanism ...
D: That would be step one. M: by which we could confirm it.
M: And so far, I've got nothing.
Z: Okay. Alright. M: Thanks, Zack.
Z: That's, I guess, all I had.
Z: I'm going to think about what you guys have said
and possibly call back. M: Sure. Thanks, Zack.
Z: Bye.
As a reminder, anybody who wants, atheist or atheist-friendly person,
who wants to join us for dinner, we're going to Star of India.
We're on the air for another 20 mins or so
and then we'll be heading over. You're welcome to join us.
M: It's fun. D: Yea.
M: When I hear these things, in religious philosophy
there's this thing called "sensus divinitatis", the divine sense,
it essentially relates to getting direct revelations from god.
And what some people --
Zack didn't do this, I'm not going to fault him for it --
but some people talk about -- he did start to go down this road of,
hey, there's one in a million people who aren't blind --
[they] can verify with each other
but he seemed to imply that they couldn't verify anybody else,
and that's just not true.
Let's say that only Southern Baptists
are actually getting information from god
and that information that they get from god,
with god being perfect, is accurate.
That would be easy to demonstrate.
Most of these religions think that prayer,
intercessory prayer, is useful.
And yet we've tested it.
Intercessory prayer works at the rate of chance,
or I should say, doesn't work
at anything better than the rate of chance.
It's exactly what you'd expect.
There wouldn't be tax breaks,
they could just go with the lottery every time they want money.
M: Not only that.
If there was a single Christian denomination or --
I'll just stick with Christian --
that had access to the truth and the power of god,
the world would be fundamentally different.
This would be easy to demonstrate.
Either there is a god that interacts in reality
in some demonstrable, detectable way,
or there's not.
And if there is not,
I think you'll find that the world we live in
is exactly what you'd expect if that god doesn't exist.
People have asked me to defend the hard atheist position
that there are no deities,
and I will do it with very specific definitions.
But the book that I'm working on
is fundamentally about how this world
is exactly what we'd expect if there is no god.
We would expect confusion,
people who believe things
but cannot offer evidence for them.
We would expect people making appeals
to special ways of knowing
that they couldn't reliably demonstrate,
we would expect conflicting revelations
that tend to agree with the person, the biases and prejudices
that they have.
And we would expect, if there was a god,
for a god to perhaps step in and correct all this,
"Hang on a second, you guys have got it all wrong,
and this is important, so let me get you the correction."
But if we live in a world without a god,
that doesn't happen.
As far as I can tell,
that doesn't happen.