A Plausibility Heuristic

I think I've come up with a weighted ranking scale heuristic for scoring the plausibility of claims derived from government, business and theoretical criteria and I'd like to put it out here for critique. This weighted ranking scale could be used for the bible, literature, science, history, news articles etc... and we could compare them. Worksheet

I suspect that the score for a history text book would be much higher than the bible, the average historical fiction would be somewhat higher, and your average folklore tale would be about the same as the bible.

here's how it goes.
the number by the metric is its relative value.

0. an unsupported claim.
1. a claim has witness testimony
2. a claim that has a verifiable precedent
2. a claim has support of physical evidence
2. a claim that can be reproduced

for example lets take the simple claim that
"Yesterday, the ice in Jans drink melted before she finished it"
- I have seen this happen
- I can put ice in a drink and let it set till it all melts, therefore it has a verifiable precedent, it has support of physical evidence, and it can be reproduced.
So it gets a score of 7.

Now lets take the claim
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
- I have not seen this happen
- there is no physical evidence that this happened.
- There is no evidence that this has ever been reproduced
- there is a witness
therefore it gets a score of 1.

Therefore the more plausible claim of these two is that Jans Ice Melted.

Here are some more examples to test the heuristic with thanks to Jeff Carter over in the comments section at Exploring Our Matrix.

1. Mary loves me
2. John is thinking of the theory of relativity
3. James is happy or sad or afraid
4. David has faith in me
5. Greg wants to go to the store

"1. Mary loves me"
assuming the claim has a one to one relationship to a real world event ....

1. are there witnesses?
yes
2. a claim has a verifiable precedent?
people have reported feelings of love, I have experienced love and people that love each other, yes
2. a claim has support of physical evidence?
Love's all in the brain: fMRI study shows strong, lateralized reward, not sex, drive, maybe some other outward signs, rapid heartbeat, flushing skin, fast breathing, yes
2. is it a claim that can be reproduced?
does it happen to her again? yes

I give it a 7

"2. John is thinking of the theory of relativity"
assuming the claim has a one to one relationship to a real world event ....

1. are there witnesses?
maybe not
2. a claim has a verifiable precedent?
someone thought up the theory of relativity, yes
2. a claim has support of physical evidence?
when asked to explain it, he does, yes
2. is it a claim that can be reproduced?
when asked to explain it again, he does, yes

I give it a 6

"3. James is happy or sad or afraid"
assuming the claim has a one to one relationship to a real world event ....

1. are there witnesses?
yes
2. a claim has a verifiable precedent?
self-evident, yes
2. a claim has support of physical evidence?
Implicit perception of fear signals: An fMRI investigation of PTSD. The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry,5, 135 and if there are outward signs , yes
2. is it a claim that can be reproduced?
when given the same stimulus it happens again, yes

I give it a 7

"4. David has faith in me"
assuming the claim has a one to one relationship to a real world event ....

1. are there witnesses?
have people observed that his behavior is consistent with having faith in you? yes
2. a claim has a verifiable precedent?
self-evident, yes
2. a claim has support of physical evidence?
if there are outward signs, when asked he says yes, so yes
2. is it a claim that can be reproduced?
the behavior is independently verified on some other occasion, yes

I give it a 7

"5. Greg wants to go to the store"
assuming the claim has a one to one relationship to a real world event ....

1. are there witnesses?
maybe not
2. a claim has a verifiable precedent?
self-evident, "the store" implies that the identity of the store is understood further implying that Greg has been there before, and also other people want to go to the store otherwise the store would be unsustainable, so yes
2. a claim has support of physical evidence?
if there are outward signs, when asked he says yes, so yes
2. is it a claim that can be reproduced?
the behavior is independently verified on some other occasion, yes

I give it a 6, stipulating that the data recorder does not count as a witness

I think the real stickler here, would be quality of evidence. I think a quality heuristic for evidence is needed and possibly exists.

In any case, plausibility is not certainty, and since sometimes decisions need to be made using plausibility as a consideration (for example legislation related to womens rights, civil rights, Invitro fertilization, cloning, homosexuality, stem cell research, abortion, participating in war, etc) a plausibility ranking would come in handy.

A Plausibility Heuristic

I think I've come up with a weighted ranking scale heuristic for scoring the plausibility of claims derived from government, business and theoretical criteria and I'd like to put it out here for critique. This weighted ranking scale could be used for the bible, literature, science, history, news articles etc... and we could compare them.

I suspect that the score for a history text book would be much higher than the bible, the average historical fiction would be somewhat higher, and your average folklore tale would be about the same as the bible.

here's how it goes.
the number by the metric is its relative value.

0. an unsupported claim.
1. a claim has witness testimony
2. a claim that has a verifiable precedent
2. a claim has support of physical evidence
2. a claim that can be reproduced

for example lets take the simple claim that
"Yesterday, the ice in Jans drink melted before she finished it"
- I have seen this happen
- I can put ice in a drink and let it set till it all melts, therefore it has a verifiable precedent, it has support of physical evidence, and it can be reproduced.
So it gets a score of 7.

Now lets take the claim
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
- I have not seen this happen
- there is no physical evidence that this happened.
- There is no evidence that this has ever been reproduced
- there is a witness
therefore it gets a score of 1.

Therefore the more plausible claim of these two is that Jans Ice Melted.

Here are some more examples to test the heuristic with thanks to Jeff Carter over in the comments section at Exploring Our Matrix.

1. Mary loves me
2. John is thinking of the theory of relativity
3. James is happy or sad or afraid
4. David has faith in me
5. Greg wants to go to the store

"1. Mary loves me"
assuming the claim has a one to one relationship to a real world event ....

1. are there witnesses?
yes
2. a claim has a verifiable precedent?
people have reported feelings of love, I have experienced love and people that love each other, yes
2. a claim has support of physical evidence?
Love's all in the brain: fMRI study shows strong, lateralized reward, not sex, drive, maybe some other outward signs, rapid heartbeat, flushing skin, fast breathing, yes
2. is it a claim that can be reproduced?
does it happen to her again? yes

I give it a 7

"2. John is thinking of the theory of relativity"
assuming the claim has a one to one relationship to a real world event ....

1. are there witnesses?
maybe not
2. a claim has a verifiable precedent?
someone thought up the theory of relativity, yes
2. a claim has support of physical evidence?
when asked to explain it, he does, yes
2. is it a claim that can be reproduced?
when asked to explain it again, he does, yes

I give it a 6

"3. James is happy or sad or afraid"
assuming the claim has a one to one relationship to a real world event ....

1. are there witnesses?
yes
2. a claim has a verifiable precedent?
self-evident, yes
2. a claim has support of physical evidence?
Implicit perception of fear signals: An fMRI investigation of PTSD. The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry,5, 135 and if there are outward signs , yes
2. is it a claim that can be reproduced?
when given the same stimulus it happens again, yes

I give it a 7

"4. David has faith in me"
assuming the claim has a one to one relationship to a real world event ....

1. are there witnesses?
have people observed that his behavior is consistent with having faith in you? yes
2. a claim has a verifiable precedent?
self-evident, yes
2. a claim has support of physical evidence?
if there are outward signs, when asked he says yes, so yes
2. is it a claim that can be reproduced?
the behavior is independently verified on some other occasion, yes

I give it a 7

"5. Greg wants to go to the store"
assuming the claim has a one to one relationship to a real world event ....

1. are there witnesses?
maybe not
2. a claim has a verifiable precedent?
self-evident, "the store" implies that the identity of the store is understood further implying that Greg has been there before, and also other people want to go to the store otherwise the store would be unsustainable, so yes
2. a claim has support of physical evidence?
if there are outward signs, when asked he says yes, so yes
2. is it a claim that can be reproduced?
the behavior is independently verified on some other occasion, yes

I give it a 6, stipulating that the data recorder does not count as a witness

I think the real stickler here, would be quality of evidence. I think a quality heuristic for evidence is needed and possibly exists.

In any case, plausibility is not certainty, and since sometimes decisions need to be made using plausibility as a consideration (for example legislation related to womens rights, civil rights, Invitro fertilization, cloning, homosexuality, stem cell research, abortion, participating in war, etc) a plausibility ranking would come in handy.

How Accurate Is The Bible?

Accuracy is verifiable, quantifiable and measurable.
How much inaccuracy are you willing to invest in? 0%? 10%? 25%? 50%? How accurate do you want your road map? How accurate do you want your Scripture? All Christian Arguments can be reduced to the dependence on the presumption that the Bible is accurate to some degree. Accuracy is verifiable, quantifiable and measurable.

A Map is a model of the real world.
It is made to represent the world to some degree of accuracy decided upon before it was ever made. We can make value judgments about the map using whatever criteria are important to us. One criteria that should be important (because it is the purpose for the map) is how accurate it represents whatever it is that it is supposed to represent.

If we have to go somewhere and we are uncertain about how to get there, we can use a map. A map eliminates uncertainty to a degree because it represents a model of the world that we can use for planning. It gives us the ability to make choices and decisions that not only translate into success, but how comfortable it is to get there. We can see where the towns are in relation to one another, make rough guesses about the best route at a glance, make decisions about time and resources based on what resources are found along the path, we can make value judgments about those resources ahead of time. All in all it gives us the ability to form a strategy for the trip that probably has a high degree of likelihood for success. So a successful outcome for the trip really does reduce to the degree of accuracy of how well the map models the real world, and to what degree we are willing to tolerate and overcome whatever inaccuracies there are in the map.

The Bible is like a map.
Jesus describes himself as "the way" and goes on to further describe himself as a kind of "Model" to show what God is like.

John 14:6-11
6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.
7 "If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him."
8 Philip said to Him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us."
9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?
10 "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.
11 "Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.

Jesus confirmed the Old Testament was the word of God by referring to it as such and referring back it frequently.

- Matthew 1-1:21, judgment of Tyre and Sidon
- Matthew 5:18, validates scripture
- Matthew 12:3, verifies Davids actions
- Matthew 12:39ff, verifies Jonah and the whale
- Matthew 15:3, validates scripture
- Matthew 15:6, validates scripture
- Matthew 15:7-9 He refers to the first part of Isaiah's work (Isaiah 6:9), verifies only one Isaiah
- Matthew 19:1-6, verifes Adam and Eve
- Matthew 19:8, 9, Moses wrote the Pentateuch
- Matthew 21:16, validates scripture by citing Psalm 8:2
- Matthew 22:31, validates scripture
- Matthew 24:15, verifies Daniel was a prophet
- Matthew 24:37, verifes Noah and the Global Flood

- Luke 4:17-21, He cites Isaiah 61:1, 2, verifies only one Isaiah
- Luke 11:51, the murder of Abel by his brother Cain
- Luke 17:29, 32, the destruction of Sodom and the death of Lot's wife

- Mark 12:26, calling Moses
- Mark 12:29-31, Moses wrote the Pentateuch

- John 6:31-51, manna in the wilderness
- John 7:19, Moses wrote the Pentateuch
- John 10:35, validates scripture

So how accurate should we expect the Word of God to be?
If we use a weighted raking we can get a rough idea. God is perfect, and man is not. So we can expect that man will be less accurate than God, but if God is helping man, then man should be more accurate that if he were working alone.

1. God is more accurate than man
2. Man is less accurate than God but more accurate with help from God
3. Man alone is less accurate

That should serve as a rough guideline and the first metric in an attempt to quantify the accuracy of the Bible.

Jesus intended us to use himself and, by extension, scripture as a model or a map for how to live our lives.
He intended it to reduce uncertainty about how to live a righteous life. Scripture was intended to eliminate uncertainty to a degree because it represents a model of the world that can be used for planning. It was intended to give us the ability to make choices and decisions that not only translate into success, but how comfortable it is to live with them. We can see where our goals are in relation to one another, make rough guesses about the best choices at a glance, make decisions about how to spend our time and resources based on what resources are found around us, we can make value judgments about those resources ahead of time. All in all it gives us the ability to form a strategy for our lives that probably has a high degree of likelihood for success. So a successful outcome for life really does reduce to the degree of accuracy of how well scripture models the real world, and to what degree we are willing to tolerate and overcome whatever inaccuracies there are in scripture.

Accuracy is verifiable, quantifiable and measurable.
How much inaccuracy are you willing to invest in? 0%? 10%? 25%? 50%? How accurate do you want your road map? How accurate do you want your Scripture? All Christian Arguments can be reduced to the dependence on the presumption that the Bible is accurate to some degree. Therefore, the probability of the likelihood that their conclusions are correct depend directly on the degree of accuracy of The Bible as a representation (or model) of events in the world past and present.

How Accurate Is The Bible?

Accuracy is verifiable, quantifiable and measurable.How much inaccuracy are you willing to invest in? 100%? 90%? 75%? 50%? How accurate do you want your map? How accurate do you want your Scripture? All Christian Arguments can be reduced to the dependence on the presumption that the Bible is accurate to some degree. Accuracy is verifiable, quantifiable and measurable.

A Map is a model of the real world.
It is made to represent the world to some degree of accuracy decided upon before it was ever made. We can make value judgments about the map using whatever criteria are important to us. One criteria that should be important (because it is the purpose for the map) is how accurate it represents whatever it is that it is supposed to represent.

If we have to go somewhere and we are uncertain about how to get there, we can use a map. A map eliminates uncertainty to a degree because it represents a model of the world that we can use for planning. It gives us the ability to make choices and decisions that not only translate into success, but how comfortable it is to get there. We can see where the towns are in relation to one another, make rough guesses about the best route at a glance, make decisions about time and resources based on what resources are found along the path, we can make value judgments about those resources ahead of time. All in all it gives us the ability to form a strategy for the trip that probably has a high degree of likelihood for success. So a successful outcome for the trip really does reduce to the degree of accuracy of how well the map models the real world, and to what degree we are willing to tolerate and overcome whatever inaccuracies there are in the map.

The Bible is like a map.
Jesus describes himself as "the way" and goes on to further describe himself as a kind of "Model" to show what God is like.

John 14:6
6Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

7"If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him."

8Philip said to Him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us."

9Jesus said to him, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?

10"Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.

11"Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.

Jesus confirmed the Old Testament was the word of God by referring to it as such and referring back it frequently.

- Matthew 1-1:21, judgment of Tyre and Sidon
- Matthew 5:18, validates scripture
- Matthew 12:3, verifies Davids actions
- Matthew 12:39ff, verifies Jonah and the whale
- Matthew 15:3, validates scripture
- Matthew 15:6, validates scripture
- Matthew 15:7-9 He refers to the first part of Isaiah's work (Isaiah 6:9), verifies only one Isaiah
- Matthew 19:1-6, verifes Adam and Eve
- Matthew 19:8, 9, Moses wrote the Pentateuch
- Matthew 21:16, validates scripture by citing Psalm 8:2
- Matthew 22:31, validates scripture
- Matthew 24:15, verifies Daniel was a prophet
- Matthew 24:37, verifes Noah and the Global Flood

- Luke 4:17-21, He cites Isaiah 61:1, 2, verifies only one Isaiah
- Luke 11:51, the murder of Abel by his brother Cain
- Luke 17:29, 32, the destruction of Sodom and the death of Lot's wife

- Mark 12:26, calling Moses
- Mark 12:29-31, Moses wrote the Pentateuch

- John 6:31-51, manna in the wilderness
- John 7:19, Moses wrote the Pentateuch
- John 10:35, validates scripture

So how accurate should we expect the Word of God to be?
If we use a weighted raking we can get a rough idea. God is perfect, and man is not. So we can expect that man will be less accurate than God, but if God is helping man, then man should be more accurate that if he were working alone.

1. God is more accurate
2. Man is more accurate with help from God
3. Man alone is less accurate

That should serve as a rough guideline and the first metric in an attempt to quantify the accuracy of the Bible.

Jesus intended us to use himself and, by extension, scripture as a model or a map for how to live our lives.
He intended it to reduce uncertainty about how to live a righteous life. Scripture was intended to eliminate uncertainty to a degree because it represents a model of the world that can be used for planning. It was intended to give us the ability to make choices and decisions that not only translate into success, but how comfortable it is to get there. We can see where our goals are in relation to one another, make rough guesses about the best choices at a glance, make decisions about how to spend our time and resources based on what resources are found around us, we can make value judgments about those resources ahead of time. All in all it gives us the ability to form a strategy for our lives that probably has a high degree of likelihood for success. So a successful outcome for life really does reduce to the degree of accuracy of how well scripture models the real world, and to what degree we are willing to tolerate and overcome whatever inaccuracies there are in scripture.

Accuracy is verifiable, quantifiable and measurable.
How much inaccuracy are you willing to invest in? 100%? 90%? 75%? 50%? How accurate do you want your map? How accurate do you want your Scripture? All Christian Arguments can be reduced to the dependence on the presumption that the Bible is accurate to some degree. Therefore, the probability of the likelihood that their conclusions are correct depend directly on the degree of accuracy of The Bible as a representation (or model) of events in the world past and present.

Religion As A Logic Puzzle

Here is a logic puzzle. You are walking down a road to a town. You come to a fork in the road. Standing there are two men. You already know that one of them always lies and one of them always tells the truth. What one question can you ask one of them that will give you the information you need to choose the right road?

The answer is "which road would he tell me to take?" and when you find out, you go the other way. Now lets add three more liars for a total of four liars and one truthful. At this point, it becomes unsolvable. How can you determine who is telling the truth and who is not?

Now Imagine we replace the town with Heaven, and replace the men with a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Jew, a Christian and a Muslim and add a road for each. How can you determine who is telling the truth and who is not? All you can do is just pick a direction and go. That doesn't seem like something that was set up by the supreme intellect in the universe. That strategy violates the principle of minimizing as much uncertainty as possible to increase the likelihood of a successful outcome. That is a strategy that wasn't thought out very well.

Gen. 2-3, Normal-form Game Matrix Shows That God Chose The Worst Outcome

When presented with a choice of outcomes the rational decision maker will choose the outcome with a positive payoff, but not God.

- God is Omnipotent
- God made the universe
- God made the world
- God made Adam and Eve.
- God is Omniscient.
- The best way to understand something is to build it.

God must have known the properties and tolerances of everything he created, just like a baker and just like an engineer. Since he is omniscient and has a plan, the events that played out in the Garden Of Eden should have come as no surprise to Him.

DECISION AND GAME THEORY
Decision Theory and Game theory were developed to help make predictions about outcomes and analyze how certain outcomes come about. It is used heavily in economics and evolutionary biology. Using one aspect of them, we can assign relative values to events, organize them in a matrix, iterate through all the possible outcomes and derive a value that is equal to the relative value of the outcome. The outcome with highest value is the "dominant strategy", any outcome lower that that dominant strategy is called a "dominated strategy".

"Stochastic Dominance: If action A has a better payoff than action B under each individual state of nature, then we say that action B is stochastically dominated by action A. If the payoff matrix truly represents every thing the decision maker hopes (or fears) to receive from the decision in question, then no rational decision maker will ever choose to perform action B."
Whalen, Thomas. "Payoff Matrix and Decision Rule", Whalens.org. Date of Internet Publication Unknown. Sponsoring organization unknown. 07 Sep. 2008. [http://www.whalens.org/Sofia/choice/matrix.htm].

OTHER RELATED LINKS
- Wikipedia, Stochastic Dominance
- Answers.com, Stochastic Dominance

IF ADAM HAD GOTTEN SICK AND DIED AFTER EVE HAD GOTTEN PREGNANT, THEY PROBABLY WOULD HAVE LEARNED THEIR LESSON AND ADAMS OFFSPRING WOULD HAVE POPULATED THE WORLD ANYWAY.
Adam and Eve are like a cake. The Baker knows what it takes to make them turn out a certain way. God must have known what it takes to make Adam and Eve turn out a certain way. For example if god had made the fruit smell like week old road kill with maggots living in it, chances are they would not have eaten the fruit or would have gotten sick and died. If they had gotten sick, threw up and one of them died, then that probably would have taught them the lesson God wanted them to learn without any ambiguity, but since the fruit was fashioned in a way that appealed to them, they ate it. In fact god built desire into Eve and therefore into Adam (since Eve was derived from Adam) and since she didn't know the difference between good and evil, she couldn't know that disobeying god was evil. However, she did have the desire and an agent telling her what she desired and liked to hear (1, 2, 3). Liking something is neither right or wrong, good or evil, it just simply is. Separate the "like" from what is right and wrong. Good and Evil, for the most part, are cultural judgments. They underwent some sort of transformation which caused them to realize they were naked, good from evil and introduced sin into themselves and therefore indirectly to the world.

KEY EVENTS IN THE FALL OF MAN RELATIVE TO THIS ARTICLE
- God made the man
- planted the garden
- then made the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil grow in the garden
- and placed the man in it
- warned the man about the tree
- by telling him he would die using the word die in an ambiguous non-standard way.
in that order.

2:7 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

2:8 The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed.

2:9 Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

2:15 Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.

2:16 The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;

2:17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."

DERIVING THE NORMAL-FORM GAME / PAYOFF MATRIX
To derive the Normal-form game payoff matrix, we use analytical schemes (AKA "thinking tools") known as a Time-line chart, a weighted ranking matrix, a causal diagram and an event tree. It would take too much time and space to do some of them here, but I have already done some of them in my other articles referenced below. However, since they aren't very complicated, we can do them in our heads for now and create the matrices. We broke the events down and sorted them chronologically. Then we made an event tree, a causal diagram and then assigned values to them in the weighted ranking scale.

In the weighted ranking, it is necessary to place a value on events relative to each other. In other words, an obedient Adam in the garden is more valuable than a disobedient Adam in the garden, so the Obedient Adam gets a higher value. Systematically iterating through the possible combination's yielded the weighted ranking scale shown below.


Now we derive the columns and rows based on the causal flow diagram and the event trees to create our Normal-form game / Payoff Matrix.



In the first row and first column cell, we can see that the combination of "No Adam" ( equivalent to 0 according to our weighted ranking) and the "Tree in" [the garden] (equivalent to 1 according to our weighted ranking) results in a score of 0, 1 for a total value of 1. In the second cell in that row, we get a score of 0, 0 for a total value of zero. The chart below reflects the total value with regard to Adam in each row. As we can see, God clearly chose the worst outcome for Adam in his plan.



The question we are left with after thinking this through is "why?". Some possible reasons are

- that the story is folklore
- that god artificially created a problem so he could solve it as Jesus

I'll explore more of them in my follow on articles.

REFERENCE AND FURTHER READING

Articles supporting Non-Historicity of Adam and Eve
A. Disqualifying Adam And Eve

Articles supporting Internal Inconsistency in the story of the Fall of Man
1. Gen. 2:16-3:24, Adam And Eve Were Mentally Incompetent
2. Gen. 2:7-3:6, God Should Have Known That Adam Would Disobey
3. Gen. 2:7-3:6, Adams Sin Was An Emergent Behavior
4. Gen. 2:6-9, God Ignored Adams Admonishment Option

PRIOR COMMENTS FROM FIRST POST DATE
This post was reformatted and the comments were lost. It was reposted and the comments were included as part of the text.

bahramthered said...
How many times are we going to debate the graden around here?

Lets move onto something new before people start moving onto new blogs.
3:47 PM, September 07, 2008

oliver said...
While I do appreciate the use of Game Theory, we have to realize that Game Theory will only convince those who are Game Theorist (i.e. not people like my mother who will read the Genesis account and then tell me a beautiful story about why it's bad to disobey God.)
4:20 PM, September 07, 2008

charles w. said...
Thanks for another useless post, Lee.
4:25 PM, September 07, 2008

xxxx said...
No one is forcing you to do anything, and I recommend that you read other blogs to make you a more well rounded person. Are blogs mutually exclusive? If you don't understand the significance of something, just ask.

I'm writing for the fence-sitter and casual believer.
There's no point in preaching to the choir is there?

do me a favor. Write out romans five (so you understand it as well as possible), then cross out all references to adam and tell me what you have left over.

FYI, I have a plan and a strategy for this argument that takes me out to thanksgiving if I do one a week. After that I'll move on to Cain and Abel and keep on until I get to the end of Gen. 11.

So I guess I won't be your favorite blogger.

In my opinion christianity is never going to be debunked until the source is discredited. Fighting a battle on multiple fronts, rarely succeeds. Debating hard to grasp concepts that leave wiggle room for christians, in my view, is not going to do it, especially when some of them don't get that fact that god having a plan and being omniscient negates free will.

Adam is at the root of christianity. As long as there is credibility for adam, there is credibility for christianity.
4:36 PM, September 07, 2008

xxxx said...
forewarned is forearmed.

Just so you know,
here is my plan for "the fall of man" articles for the coming months. the date in brackets is the estimated publish date, the name of the article follows along with its viewpoint.

[20080914] Blaming the Victim, psychology related

[20080921] God Caused The Problem of Sin so He could Solve it, psychology related

[20080928] Talking Snake, humor, paleontology related

[20081005] God Was Not Omniscient in the Garden, Logic Related

[20081012] Comparing The History Of The Needle, anthropolgy related

[20081019] Comparing The History of Agriculture, anthropology related

[20081026] Sex and Death, You Can't Argue With Success, psychology related

[20081102] Adam and Eve are FOLKLORE, summary of the previous articles

[20081109] Analyzing Romans 5, argument analysis, informal logic related
4:49 PM, September 07, 2008

xxxx said...
Hi Oliver,
I'm not a game theorist either, but if I get it, so will other people.

I think that you do a dis-service to your grandmother by underestimating her.

people surprise you when you think you know what they're capable of, which weakens your position.

the take home is that we can see by thinking it through, that the outcome was what was intended. Now we have to figure out why.

and besides that, I'm trying to introduce some tools of thinking and demonstrate how to apply them to real life problems.
5:12 PM, September 07, 2008

richard said...
This theory and the post in general is nonsensical to say the least!
6:23 PM, September 07, 2008

xxxx said...
Hi Richard,
well, you did say the least,
so why is it 'nonsensical'?
6:33 PM, September 07, 2008

stan, the half-truth teller said...
I'm just guessing, but perhaps Richard thinks it nonsensical because he doesn't get it?

Perhaps he doesn't understand how it could be that god's alleged decision to create this world is worse than choosing not to create anything at all.

Perhaps he doesn't realize that because he chose to create (assuming the existence of god for the sake of argument), god is culpable in both the successes and failures of his creations (if he is omnipotent and omniscient).

Perhaps, rather than any of this, he is lazy and a fool.

--
Stan
8:42 PM, September 07, 2008

bahramthered said...
Lee; I like this blog since I've been here I've learned a lot. New arguments and such.

But still on the garden I havn't learned anything in the last two posts and honestly am starting to get bored with it.

I don't know about anyone else but I don't have time to keep coming back to blog that's not exploring something new.

But it's your blog (among others).
8:48 PM, September 07, 2008

xxxx said...
Hi Bahram,
what topics would like to see explored?
brainstorm a little bit, give me some topics.

maybe i have something in draft that I can finish up post for you. I have lots of scraps of ideas and notes in my googledocs.
12:20 AM, September 08, 2008

tigg13 said...
I say, keep it up Lee!

Providing several arguments from different sides of the question only solidifies your position.

And providing alternate arguments just makes those of us who find ourselves crossing swords with christians better prepared.
1:26 AM, September 08, 2008

xxxx said...
tiggers are wonderful things!
your check is in the mail.
;-)
6:42 AM, September 08, 2008

bahramthered said...
Tig; last couple of these feel the same, just explained differently. Least to me.

Lee;

So far your adam theory been intresting I just think it's kinda beating a dead horse at this point.

Topics I'd like to explore;

Why the bible is so pro slavery.

God's war with the egyptian gods (I only know a little based on a couple semi factual movies)

Some of the more ridiculous genisis claims (always fun). Mainly what happens after the ark (Like a drunk Noah cursing one of his kids into slavery forever and god backing him on it)

And exactly how god reconciles the claim that witchcraft (the wiccan kind) is evil
7:25 AM, September 08, 2008

xxxx said...
Hi bahram,
if you want to see what has been written on DC about a topic, you can use the search field in the top left of the screen.

- here is a link to all the articles with a "slavery" label
- I've never heard of gods war with egyptian gods, maybe you could be more specific?
- I plan on doing an article on why the noahs ark is folklore, but you can see what my schedule is so it'll be a while
- do a search for witches in the search field.

another option is that you can research one of these topics on your own and submit an article to us for publishing. If you're interested in that, I'll give you an email address to submit it to.
8:15 AM, September 08, 2008

rich said...
Hi Lee,
I wanted to explore a possibility that the assigned values for Adam in obey and Adam in disobey. If these values are based on a payoff, then what payoff do you base these values on? It seems as though they are placed on Adam obeying and remaining in the garden and disobeying and being kicked out. So if that is the payoff then I would agree with the values. But if the payoff is something further down the road then the garden, maybe it changes things.
First you must realize that I am looking at this from LDS doctrine, which differs a bit from evangelist doctrine with regard to the fall. I did post a link to another blog article in one of your other posts that I hope you had time to read.
LDS say that Adam was in a state of innocence in the garden, didn't know good from evil, they wouldn't have a reference to understand joy and sorrow, maybe some other differences. They would remain in this state until they gained knowledge of good and evil. I also began to argue before that they didn't understand that they were naked, which is a key factor, in having offspring. I would agree that at some point they could figure out how to have kids but then the kids would be in the same innocent state.
In the plan of salvation that I know, our goal is to become like God. We have to have the knowledge of good and evil, be able to make choices and learn through those choices that consequences come of all choices, good or bad. As we make bad choices, we see the negative consequences and make changes. If we make good choices we see good consequences. We gain a working knowledge of good and evil, through the choices we make here. If we succeed in learning to make good choices and correct the mistakes, then we can become perfect, eventually, like God is. So if we are left in the garden in a state of innocence without the knowledge and experience necessary to progress.
You spoke before about your dogs. I also have dogs, and I leave them inside when I am not home. I hate coming home and cleaning piles up. Lots of people told me to use the old newspaper rub their nose in the pile method to train the dogs. I don’t like that because I doubt the dog wants poop on his nose. Instead when I come home and find a pile, I give the dog no attention, completely ignore it, since he likes to play and have my undivided attention, this is not desirable to the dog. When I come home to no pile, I over emphasize my attention and play time with him. It wasn’t very long before I had no stinking piles to clean up when I got home. This is true freedom to the dog, he can roam around the house when I am gone, doesn’t have to be locked in some room, and I can trust that he will want to please.
Now in your dog story, you effectively removed your dogs from the kitchen of Eden, and keep them from entering the kitchen, some might even suggest that you force them out because they have no choice in the matter, so they won’t put their nose on the table of life. I’m not proposing that I am a better dog God than you, but your dogs are restricted in their behavior, being removed from the room, and they have no choice but to chew toys or sleep until you grant them access to the kitchen again. I’m sure you would rather have the dogs free to come and go as they please and choose not to put their nose on the table. Once again, true freedom to the dogs.
God would like the same from us, being able to have every choice available to us and be trusted to always make the right choice. Coming here, removed from his presence, to learn the consequences of our choices is our time to learn from our mistakes, keep our noses off the table and piles off the floor because we choose to.
If this is correct then I would swap the two values because being innocently oblivious to the knowledge of good and evil means we would never be able to become like God, which would be more desirable than existing in a garden forever without experiencing joy.
3:11 PM, September 08, 2008

rich said...
Just a note I thought of, the same trick hasn't worked to keep my dog of the furniture while I'm gone.
3:13 PM, September 08, 2008

xxxx said...
Hi Rich,
welcome back,
It sounds like you are a better Dog God than I am and a better Dog God than god is.

How does the way you handle your dogs compare to the way god handled adam?

It sounds like your dogs get the extended version of the prisoners dilemma, they get a chance to react to subsequent encounters. Like a training phase or something. Or have I misunderstood?
4:28 PM, September 08, 2008

xxxx said...
doGs will be doGs won't they? what to do, what to do?
4:45 PM, September 08, 2008

anonymous said...
I think the problem here is that virtually every mainline religion that maintains the Hebrew scriptures regard this story as allegorical? I always thought that the main idea here is that there is that we are imperfect and incapable of perfecting ourselves. I rather like that "lesson".

If you are off arguing with the crazies about a literal reading of the Old Testament, I can think of a billion other ways to spend time productively. On the other hand, if you can read a literary myth for its intrinsic worth, perhaps you'd contribute something useful.
9:37 PM, September 08, 2008

evan said...
Anonymous ... you're simply wrong.

40% of AMERICANS believe the earth is less than 10000 years old.

That means a majority of Christians in the US (about 75-80% of the US population is Christian) believe in the literal story of Genesis.

If you think we ought to argue against a minority position rather than target overtly crazy beliefs that are held by the majority of Christians, you don't understand the purpose of this site.
11:08 PM, September 08, 2008

xxxxx said...
anonymous,
yea, what evan said,
and moreover you didn't read this comment above
"do me a favor. Write out romans five (so you understand it as well as possible), then cross out all references to adam and tell me what you have left over. ....Adam is at the root of christianity. As long as there is credibility for adam, there is credibility for christianity."

if you cross out all references to adam, what you have is an empty assertion that the killing of Jesus had some mystical meaning.

If you've ever worked in security, crowd control, you know that, theoretically, to handle a riot, you have to take out the leaders. That was a tumultuous time in jerusalem, the romans needed to maintain control, and so when jesus showed up with his gang of merry men carrying swords, the authorities caught him and hung him out to dry.

Paul used some pre-existing biases to create this rationalization out of cognitive dissonance that created a nice neat frame put Jesus in for the rest.

does that clear it up for you?

Its not about arguing over myths, its about stopping FRAUD.
11:30 PM, September 08, 2008

richard said...
Bahramhered,

Yes, I agree. To quote Einstein, "Insanity means doing the same thing over and over expecting different results."
12:21 AM, September 09, 2008

xxxx said...
Richard,
of course you would because you have no rebuttal to my argument so you just attack me personally.

typical christian strategy.
Might makes right. Biblical principle.
12:24 AM, September 09, 2008

richard said...
Ha, ha, do you honestly believe that you can disprove the God of the universe by using a silly game matrix?
12:43 AM, September 09, 2008

xxxx said...
Hi Richard,
bad move #2,
ridicule.
Got any rebuttals handy?
1:21 AM, September 09, 2008

xxxx said...
oh and richard,
in case you didn't get the memo,
"disprove" presumes there is something proven. No one has proven any "god of the universe", but feel free to try your hand at it. Maybe you can get him to roust me out of bed in the morning.
3:57 AM, September 09, 2008

xxxx said...
Triablogue has a response to this article. They really seem to have put a lot of work into it, but in the end its really only nay-saying.
Heres the link to it.
However it is a good example of an argument from ignorance premised by a conclusion drawn from unverifiable sources.
I recommend you go take a look at it and see what I had to say about it.
9:40 AM, September 09, 2008

Adams Sin Was An Emergent Behavior

The best way to understand something is to build it.

In my recent articles I have been facilitating discussion on Adam and Eve and I have been collecting explanations about how Adam came to disobey god. This article identifies the parts of those arguments and diagrams one of them, and tries to tease out whether Adam could in any reasonable way be held accountable by his maker for his transgression and the resultant overall negative result that emerges from Gods Creation. However if we take Adam and God out of the equation, then the properties that emerge from nature are what we should expect once we understand them, and labeling them "good" or "bad" outside of any context becomes meaningless.

Emergence

Wikipedia says that the term “Emergence” was coined by G. H. Lewes. Its an old concept recognized as far back as Aristotle.

Basically it is self-organization or a property or behavior of a thing that results from the combination of all its other properties and its interaction with its environment.

Some examples of Emergence from Wikipedia and some I thought up.
Feel Free to suggest some more in the comments.

NATURE
- Hurricanes
- Termite "Cathedrals"
- Patterns in plants in nature
- Color
- Patterns in Clouds
- Friction
- Classical Mechanics
- Statistical Mechanics
- Weather
- Patterned ground
- Temperature
- Convection
- Physics -> Chemistry -> Biology -> Psychology
- Flocking
- Herds
- Patterns that birds make when they fly together
- Fractals

CULTURE
- Traffic Patterns
- Forming Lines
- Cities
- Political systems
- Economics
- The Stock Market
- The World Wide Web
- Placement of pathways in building complexes

MATHEMATICS
- Mobius Strip
- Chaos theory
- Clustering in Probablity

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE [link to an AI Lab where they depend on emergence to build robots]
- Self-assembling robots, [video] [more links]
- Morphological properties of components for locomotion

HUMAN BEHAVIOR
- Emotions, Fear, Joy, etc
- Some actions, scratching and itch, catching a ball,
- Unconscious Decision Making (AKA Intuition)
- and in my opinion, the SUPERNATURAL emerges from the poor reasoning schemes of an untrained mind.

Emergence is highly efficient and economical. That is exactly what should be expected from a perfect being. If a perfect being created something, we could reasonably expect the perfect being to build is so that it would be self-organizing, efficient and economical meaning that additional properties would emerge from the raw material.

If that is the case then the way the world is, is the only way it could have turned out, which means that Adams transgression emerged out of the way he was made.

While I haven't yet got a Christian to put any culpability on God for anything that supposedly went on in "the fall of man", they do accept every premise up to the conclusion, and circle back to the fact that "Adam made the choice" while affirming that God knew what was going to happen and the fact that it was predestined.

Comments from an article accumulated from two Christians

In the discussion below, the components of the arguments are labeled with initials.
HP. stands for Hidden Premise. A Hidden Premise is a premise that the argument depends on but is not explicitly stated. The commenters did not state these premises but they were understood as a dependency.
P. Stands for the premise. Premises are effectively data, or conclusions of other arguments used to support the inferrence to the conclusion.
C. The conclusion is derived from the inferrences made from the premisses.

xxxxxxx said...
Yes, I agree, that according to scripture,
HP1. God is omnipotent
HP2. God is omniscient
HP3. God made adam
HP4. God has a plan
P1. God knew that Adam would disobey,
P2. and not only knew it, but predestined it.
C. Scripture says that this happened so that the second Adam (Christ) would come into the world to accomplish what Adam failed to do and to redeem his people from the curse of sin.

In the Diagram below, the Hidden premisses HP1, HP2 and HP3 collectively support the premise that God knew that Adam would disobey. HP4 supports the premise that adams transgression was predestined. The two premises explcitly stated support the conclusion.
<

Diagram for the Argument Above
The Best Way To Understand Something Is To Build It

The arguments that follow are restatements and variations of the argument above from Christian comments

xxxx said...
I agree with most of the article.
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. I think that God not only knew Adam would transgress,
P. he counted on it and
C. that was part of the plan of salvation.

xxxx said...
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. The way this seems is that God had a plan,
P. he put it into action and
P. put Adam and Eve here to start, the first two people out of the gate failed
C. so he had to go to plan B. If it wasn't planned, there would be no need to label Christ as the redeemer from the foundation of the earth.

xxxxx said...
I would disagree that God had a plan B.
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
C. God has one plan and one plan only and it always comes to pass.

xxxxx said...
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. Not to mention that it is said that he failed, except he was part of a plan that played itself out.
C. So it seems that the failure on Adams part would have been to not eat the fruit. I never see anyone give him the opportunity to be a part of an infinite atonement.

xxxxxx said....
My intent is to agree with much af what Lee has brought up in his post. I don't think Adam is a villian,
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. he did exactly what he was suppose to do,
P. and just like every single other person who makes a mistake,
P. he was forgiven of his sins
C. just like we can be.

xxxxx said....
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. Adam's transgression separated us from God,
C. which left us the ability to be able to choose for ourselves between the recently aquired knowledge of good and evil.

Reconstructing Gods Plan From What We Know

1. Gods plan was to make Adam and Eve,
2. give them free will, desire, speech, cognitive bias, but not the knowledge of good and evil.
3. put them in the Garden, wait long enough for Adam to Disobey (disobeying a God that you can have a discussion with is insane in itself)
4. then use that as a reason to kick them out of the Garden,
5. introduce sin into the world,
6. kill everyone in a worldwide flood because they were so sinful,
7. make a covenant with Abraham, who had strong reasons not to disobey
8. impregnate a virgin with his holy seed, without giving her a choice
9. occupy the body of a sinless human who had compelling reasons not to disobey, effectively compromising any free will he had
10. come into jerusalem on the passover,
11. have one of his disciples report him, who may or may not have know the consequences, had no choice since he was key player in the plan and consequently died a horrible death
12. get crucified as a human sacrifice during the passover so that he could meet the ritual requirements,
13. take all the sins of the world onboard,
14. become resurrected in three days,
15. and take off to disappear into heaven.
16. And leave us with the free will to believe all this on meager evidence or not.

So now lets look at the results and see what has emerged from this plan.

Lets asign some values to some things and see how they play out.

God = 0, because he is perfect.
Christ = -1 because he was god but tainted by man
Adam = -2 because he was not perfect and sinned and he was not god

Please follow along in the chart below. The left side represents the values for God, Jesus and Adam and the bottom represents the timeline from creation to 3000 CE. I projected past today's date since Jesus is probably not coming anytime soon.

God Operating In The Red.

Diagram showing the resultant prolonged negative value over the course of 6000 years, projected beyond the current date to 3000 CE.
So now god creates Adam and things go to -2.
That's counter-intiutive in a perfect being.

Now we need a Christ to set things right so we subtract -1 and we are back to -1.

Things aren't perfect but hey, god can be imperfect if he wants to because because he can do anything.

God created just so he could create an overall negative? This is not very efficient or economical. There is a lot of wasted resources built into this plan.

If god was like the Greek gods, which seems to be the case throughout Genesis 1-11, then this would be more coherent. But he's supposed to be perfect which means that he should not need anything, even company. Creating this mess was worse than not creating.

However, if we take Gods plan out of the equation, we can reasonably deduce that it probably wouldn't be any worse than this.