How Much Do Human's Know? How Much Do You Personally Know?

Taken as a percentage, what would you propose is the sum of man's knowledge of the known universe?  If I were to break that down a bit, what do we know about all things outside of earth's domain?  Of all the stars, planets, black holes and other things swirling around out there, what do we human's know?  1%?  Less than that?  .1%?  .0000000001%?  What would you suggest?

Closer to home - Of all that there might be to know about the things in the domain of earth above the ground, what % do we know of what there might be to know?  About clouds, whether patterns, things that might live 5 miles above the earth?  1%?  .1%?  .0001%?  What number would you put on that?

Still closer - Of the things that populate the earth's floor, like animals, plants, rocks, bugs, and other things that are neither in the air or under the earth or water, what % do we know?   .0001%?  more?  less?

What about the percent of our knowledge of things under the ground?  Then what percent of thing under the water?  What % of knowledge do we possess of all the things there are to know about human anatomy, especially the brain?  What % do we know about human psychology?  And what % do we know of human interaction with others, including other animals, plants, and our environment?

What % do we know about the microscopic and invisible things of life.  What % of knowledge do we have about the history of man, life, the planet, the universe?

If man's total knowledge of the things of his world and his universe amounts to some miniscule amount compared to all there is to know, then what percent of all human knowledge do you personally possess?  1%.  .01%.  Much less?  And of what you "KNOW" to be true and what gives credence to your unique understanding?  The ideas and opinions of other men who also know as much as you about all of this, but maybe a bit more about something you don't?  And what is the source of their knowledge?

And yet we are ready to fight, draw blood, destroy lives, and kill over our understanding of how things are or how we think they should be.  Personally, as I sit in my home office and stroke my new kitten, I know for sure that I know a very small fraction of the workings, thinkings, and ways to train and take care of this much studied little animal.  We are fools to think we have any real knowledge, and this is the Christian God's definition of pride.

The Most Brilliant Minds Alive Today Are Either Horribly Dumb or Deceived - Atheist Thinking

In a corollary to my post yesterday on atheists believing they are basically very, very good.  There is also a kind of attitude in the blogs of intellectual atheists that is very derisive towards those who are believers.  Sometimes it borders on smugness or even bordering on snarkiness, but it is rarely very far from derisive.

Thus one is left wondering if this tiny minority of the population has arrived at some special knowledge or insight that is kept from the overwhelming majority of those who are the intellectual giants of, not merely the past, but of the present day. 

On the one hand, we have Christians who are curious as to how one looks around at nature and doesn't see design, and how one cannot feel the presence of God.  Thus some Christians or other believers are not kind towards atheists either, and inclined to see them as crackpots or worse.  It is well said by many atheists that it is unlikely that an atheist will ever be elected to high office.  But in this case a huge majority are experiencing something and intuiting something about the universe that is demonstrably proving itself in their lives to be true and valuable.

On the other hand, atheists are not, to my knowledge, experiencing anything or looking around at nature and seeing chaos or something that is obviously not designed.  Rather the atheist goes out of his way to find any explanation other than God to describe how things are and what things mean.  So how does one become smug believing in the absence of something?  Help me out.

Do Atheists and Agnostics Do Evil Acts or Think Evil Thoughts?

There is a thread of the atheist vs Christian debate that has both sides believing that Atheists don't wish to follow Jesus because they would need to give up their evils ways.  Honestly, most intellectual atheists don't seem to fit that pattern.  On the other hand, practical atheists or nominal believers would commonly fit that statement.  They may be hard party folks, given to sexual sin, desiring to keep lying, cheating on taxes, etc. 

In fact, I would go so far as to say, most atheists I have debated at length are more inclined to think that they are not sinners, and thus would have no need of a savior.  A very close friend of mine has stated that they never lie, cheat, steal, etc.  And from what I know of this person, he/she might be close to correct. 

So, I'm curious to hear from non-believers.  Do you do acts which you consider to be very inappropriate and worthy of judgment by somebody?  Do you fail to do things that you probably should do that if these failings were known would cause others to judge you harshly?  Or do you see yourself as being very, very nice, friendly, unselfish, law abiding, etc.  If yes, is it possible that you project your perfection onto others and believe that were it not for .... fill in the blank .... bad parenting, government, religion, poverty, bad luck, bad friends .... that everyone would be close to perfect like you.   I know this last bit seems a bit "nasty," but I can't think of another way to get the subject on the table.

If you spend a bit of time in the atheist websites, I think you will gather that most atheists see themselves as better than others, much smarter and certainly wiser.  But they also see themselves as not needing anyone to help them make wise decisions.  They would be the "good person" that many of liberal political thought think is the norm.

Where have I gone wrong?

Why Do Humans Act UnNaturally?

Assumption:  Humans are the highest order of all species.
Assumption:  In order to get to the top, humans would need to conduct themselves in a manner that was consistent with both nature and Darwin's evolutionary theories.
Assumption:  In a naturalistic word view, it is impossible for anything to act other than under the laws of nature
Assumption:  A very clear understanding of evolutionary theory is that species will act selfishly and want to replicate themselves.
Exception:  There seems to be an inclination on the part of some life to stop replicating or reduce this natural inclination when they are feeling squeezed by the density of population.
Humans who are not squeezed are purposely reducing replication.  The humans who have the least amount to fear from density, food shortage, shelter issues, are the ones who are most likely to "unselfishly" agree to reduce replication.
Thus this intentional decision to not reproduce would seem to be both unnatural and potentially devastating to the most highly advanced of the most highly advanced.  (Sorry for the eugenics).  The very most successful, regardless of race, or any other observable trait, are the very ones who are most inclined to forgo reproduction.

Separately, the question of why do humans act unnaturally with regard to unselfish behavior of any kind?  Why would very, very large percentages of the human population believe that the unselfish approaches to life offered by Jesus and others would be the "best" way to live.  Even atheists and followers of other religions point to the beatitudes as ideal.

Bayesian inference

One thing that we keep tripping over in these conversations is the nature of "evidence". When can you say that a certain observation is "evidence" for a certain hypothesis, for the superiority of one model over another?

I tend to promote the view that almost anything can be "evidence" for an a-priori belief. If you really want to believe in a kind of system, then anything you observe can be explained in terms of that system (or you can trust that your system will probably have a way to explain it, even if you can't come up with the explanation yourself) and this reinforces the completeness and explanatory power of your system. Now, I don't REALLY believe in this, not as extremely as I make it sound. I offer this position in part to play Devil's Advocate, and in part because it is a view that is woefully under-represented in the theism-atheism debate.

I do honestly believe that, when people say "I see evidence for God" or "There is no evidence for God but there's tons of evidence for naturalism", this shows that they haven't stopped to think about what "evidence" means, or about when it is that you can or can't say that an observation supports a claim.

Instead of deconstructing their argument, or constructing a logically rigorous method for evaluating this kind of thing mathematically, allow me to just give an example to get you thinking and to help us move forwards.

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Say I put several hundred golf balls and ping-pong balls into a box. Some are white and the others are yellow. Say that 70% of the golf balls are white and 30% yellow, and 20% of the ping-pong balls are white and 80% yellow. So, most of the golf balls are white (and the rest of them are yellow), and most of the ping-pong balls are yellow (and the rest are white). With me so far?

Say I mix things around for a while, to make sure everything is evenly distributed. I then reach into the box blindly, and randomly pick up a ball. I tell you that it is yellow. And now I ask: Is it more likely to have been a golf ball or a ping-pong ball?

You might say it’s probably a ping-pong ball, since the chances of a ping-pong ball being yellow (80%) are greater than the chances of a golf ball being yellow (30%).

But that's not necessarily correct. In fact, you simply do not have enough data to answer my question, not even probabilistically. And I can prove it to you.

What if I now tell you that only a tiny fraction of the balls in the box are ping-pong balls? If the box contains a thousand golf balls but only ten ping-pong balls, then three hundred of the balls are yellow golf balls and only eight are yellow ping-pong balls.This means that (despite the fact that the probability of a ping-pong ball being yellow is higher than the probability of a golf ball being yellow) most of the yellow balls in the box are golf balls, since by far most of the balls in the box are golf balls.

So, in this case, my yellow ball is probably a golf ball.

And until I told you how many golf balls there are, compared with how few ping pong-balls there are, you could not have reached this answer. You would just have been guessing (maybe based on the unfounded [and in this case, incorrect] assumption that the total number of golf balls is similar to the total number of ping-pong balls).

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When you understand the thought experiment I just described, we can move on to a more rigorous explanation, and to its implications in the God-vs-no-God debate.

Ready?

Mathematically: Just because X-given-A has a higher probability than X-given-B, this does not mean that A-given-X is more likely than B-given-X.

Ok, maybe I skipped a step. Bear with me.

"A" means "It's a ping-pong ball" and "B" means "It's a golf ball". "X" means "It's yellow" and "Y" means "It's white".

Just because Yellow-given-PingPongBall has a higher probability (80%) than Yellow-given-GolfBall (30%), this says nothing about the relative likelihood of GolfBall and PingPongBall (which could be, say, 99% and 1%, or anything else). This is even true if we know that we have a Yellow ball. The relative probability of GolfBall and PingPongBall is determined by a totally different set of factors (how many of each kind of ball I put in the box) than the factors that determine the probability of the color of each ball (what fraction of each kind of ball is colored each color).

In summary:

Just because Yellow-given-PingPongBall has a higher probability than Yellow-given-GolfBall, this does not mean that PingPongBall-given-Yellow is more likely than GolfBall-given-Yellow.

If we substitute "A" for "It's a ping-pong ball" and "B" for "It's a golf ball", and "X" for "It's yellow" and "Y" for "It's white", we can generalize:

Just because X-given-A has a higher probability than X-given-B, this does not mean that A-given-X is more likely than B-given-X.

Unless you can prove that A is impossible, and unless you can prove that B is impossible, then both A and B are possible. I can't know what kind of ball I have (I can't even know what kind of ball I PROBABLY have) just from looking at its color. The relative probability of A and B simply cannot be learned by comparing the relative probabilities of X-given-A and X-given-B. They can only be learned by taking multiple samples and seeing whether A or B come up more often, or by observing that A is often associated with certain kinds of observations and B is associated with certain other observations (e.g. when I draw a golf ball from this box it tends to be white, and when I draw a ping pong ball from this box it tends to be yellow).

Here's the important part.

You might say "In a world guided by a God, it is probable that intelligent life would be created. In a world not guided by a God, it is extremely unlikely that intelligent life would form". I could dispute both of these assumptions, but let's assume that they are correct for now. (And you can feel free to insert anything you like instead of "intelligent life", such as "beings who believe in God", or "cosmological constants that allow for chemistry").

Saying that the probability of IntelligentLife-given-God is higher than the probability of IntelligentLife-given-NoGod DOES NOT allow you to logically infer that the probability of God-given-IntelligentLife is higher than the probability of NoGod-given-Intelligent life.

In other words, saying “The evolution of intelligence [or any other "evidence for God" you may wish to insert here] is unlikely in a world without God and likely in a world with God, and we see intelligence, therefore God is more likely than No God” is logically equivalent to saying "The ball is yellow, therefore it's probably a ping-pong, ball since most ping-pong balls are yellow". Both statements are fallacious: it's possible that most yellow balls are golf balls, even if most ping-pong balls are be yellow.

This should allow us to see that an evidence-based approach to this God debate is hopeless. No matter how much we learn about the world and the different ways it might have become as it currently is, this knowledge will never tell us about the relative probability of World-given-“God” versus that of World-given-“no God”. All that each person can say is “I don’t need God to satisfactorily explain what I see around me”, or “I need God to satisfactorily explain what I see around me”, both of which are valid depending on what questions you’re asking. (I think that the questions that require God to be satisfactorily explained are not particularly meaningful, but I can see that this is a matter of personal taste).

Holders of different axioms will interpret the evidence so as to make their axioms and models seem, to them, more likely than an opponent’s axioms and models. But as elementary Statistics reveal, this is a fallacy. Besides, the bottom line is, even if it were not a fallacy, it does not deny that the opponent’s set of axiomatic assumptions is still possible, though unlikely. So the opponents can still go on believing what they want.

Human Sexuality and the Evolution Debate

Why is it that other animals don't get sexually transmitted diseases from promiscuous behavior?  What possible explanation from survival theory would have man as the only species that faces the partner during sex?  What would the purpose of the Hyman be?

Campus Discourse Not Open and Free

If science is such a preferred way of doing things, why must it quash debate.  Global warming is decided.  Evolution is decided.  Can't discuss supernatural unless it is a natural kind of supernatural (other universes, other species from other planets.)  Opinions contrary to the current liberal and scientific politically correct way of thinking is booed and hissed and threatened with violence.  The haters of today are primarily unbelievers who hate believers or those who disagree with them and desire to shut them up.  Very likely much of this hate derives from the fear of the unknown, since they may be like my neighbor, who says I'm the only conservative he knows.

Not to say that there have never been haters or bigots in religious circles.  But you would have us believe that science is perfecting man.  Seems like the pride factor is creating a new kind of monster.