Special Pleading
ianvass and I are revisiting a previous post about God as egocentric personal opinion, in which a study found that people who claim to know God's will are really just introspecting. Evaluating their own opinions and saying they're God's opinions.
He notes that "as I was not one of the people in the study, you are over-generalizing. You cannot say that my personal connection with God is illusory. That may be your (unprovable) opinion, but for all you know, I've seen Him, talked with Him, walked with Him, and He's shown me stuff that would blow your mind". I started writing a response, which turned into a jumping-off point for some larger issues, which became this new post.
For starters it's entirely fair to extrapolate the results of a study to individuals or populations outside the the study. It's the principle of uniformity and induction which is both the foundation of science and a building block of basic cognition. It is not just pragmatically productive and epistemologically valid, but unavoidable. That's the whole point of a study - the reason why you do it. Knowing something about some stuff gives you information which can be applied to similar stuff.
As for "proof", all knowledge is probabilistic, tentative, and subject to revision. Accoring to EPA tests it's probable that my new Prius will get 50mpg, but possible that it will be somewhere from a little better to a lot worse depending on manufacturing flaws or driving conditions. 50mpg is tentative knowledge because it can and probably will be revised with information from followup or replication studies. The probabilistic/tentative/revision approach to knowledge is valid in everything from hard and soft sciences to religious dogma. The Although religious groups consider it probable that birth control, polygamy, or eating fish on Friday are sins, it's possible that these things are fine but jellybeans are sinful. They might disagree, saying that these beliefs are absolute, but there are many cases where new information causes dogma to be revised.
It's a mistake to confuse possibility with probability. "Since either outcome is possible it's a 50/50 chance." An even bigger mistake is special pleading. Considering what is possible is important in contingency planning and risk analysis. It's worth considering what if the plane crashes, or the earth is struck by a large meteorite. But it's another thing to confuse means likely because it's rhetorical convenience.
So "for all we know" - from all evidence available to either of us - it's fair to tentatively state what appears most probable based on reasonable assumptions of uniformity and inferences from current evidence. Of course it's possible that I'm wrong, and that you've got a direct line to God. It's possible that you're not just in touch with God, but Jesus himself. It's possible that hundreds of people are Jesus. But the evidence that we have points toward a better explanation which we can't simply ignore out of personal conviction or rhetorical convenience.
"All scientific work is incomplete, whether it be observational or experimental. All scientific work is liable to be upset or modified by advancing knowledge. That does not confer upon us the freedom to ignore the knowledge that we already have, or postpone action that it appears to demand at a given time." - Dr. Austin Bradford Hill
He notes that "as I was not one of the people in the study, you are over-generalizing. You cannot say that my personal connection with God is illusory. That may be your (unprovable) opinion, but for all you know, I've seen Him, talked with Him, walked with Him, and He's shown me stuff that would blow your mind". I started writing a response, which turned into a jumping-off point for some larger issues, which became this new post.
For starters it's entirely fair to extrapolate the results of a study to individuals or populations outside the the study. It's the principle of uniformity and induction which is both the foundation of science and a building block of basic cognition. It is not just pragmatically productive and epistemologically valid, but unavoidable. That's the whole point of a study - the reason why you do it. Knowing something about some stuff gives you information which can be applied to similar stuff.
As for "proof", all knowledge is probabilistic, tentative, and subject to revision. Accoring to EPA tests it's probable that my new Prius will get 50mpg, but possible that it will be somewhere from a little better to a lot worse depending on manufacturing flaws or driving conditions. 50mpg is tentative knowledge because it can and probably will be revised with information from followup or replication studies. The probabilistic/tentative/revision approach to knowledge is valid in everything from hard and soft sciences to religious dogma. The Although religious groups consider it probable that birth control, polygamy, or eating fish on Friday are sins, it's possible that these things are fine but jellybeans are sinful. They might disagree, saying that these beliefs are absolute, but there are many cases where new information causes dogma to be revised.
It's a mistake to confuse possibility with probability. "Since either outcome is possible it's a 50/50 chance." An even bigger mistake is special pleading. Considering what is possible is important in contingency planning and risk analysis. It's worth considering what if the plane crashes, or the earth is struck by a large meteorite. But it's another thing to confuse means likely because it's rhetorical convenience.
So "for all we know" - from all evidence available to either of us - it's fair to tentatively state what appears most probable based on reasonable assumptions of uniformity and inferences from current evidence. Of course it's possible that I'm wrong, and that you've got a direct line to God. It's possible that you're not just in touch with God, but Jesus himself. It's possible that hundreds of people are Jesus. But the evidence that we have points toward a better explanation which we can't simply ignore out of personal conviction or rhetorical convenience.
"All scientific work is incomplete, whether it be observational or experimental. All scientific work is liable to be upset or modified by advancing knowledge. That does not confer upon us the freedom to ignore the knowledge that we already have, or postpone action that it appears to demand at a given time." - Dr. Austin Bradford Hill