Tertullian & Popper

Reply to Agent Smith You've misquoted Tertullian twice. :halo:

Reply to 180 Proof :snicker:

What 180 says is right. See https://aeon.co/ideas/i-believe-because-it-is-absurd-christianitys-first-meme

Reply to Wayfarer Reply to 180 Proof

I'm just amazed at how Tertullian or whoever first said "certum est, quia impossibile" and "credo quia absurdum" antcipated Popperian science. Surely, if someone claims something that's highly improbable or the impossible, s/he can't be lying. We can so easily falsify such lies that there would be no point to being mendacious. Ergo, Jesus did exist and he did fee 5000 with 5 loaves and 2 fish, he did walk on water, the resurrection was real too.

You’re confusing your food processor with your word processor again, Smith.

Quoting Agent Smith

I'm just amazed at how Tertullian or whoever first said "certum est, quia impossibile" and "credo quia absurdum" antcipated Popperian science.

I'm amazed you think that (or don't understand critical rationalism).

Reply to Wayfarer :smirk:

Quoting Wayfarer

You’re confusing your food processor with your word processor again, Smith.

:lol:

Quoting 180 Proof

I'm amazed you think that (or don't understand critical rationalism).

:grin:

Truth (of a claim) [math]\propto[/math] Improbability (of the claim).

Reply to Agent Smith False.

Quoting 180 Proof

False

No, it isn't!

Tertullian (Latin for "turtle") was probably just parroting Paul's curious argument that since God is so much wiser than man, his truth would appear foolish to wise men. So, the more foolish or absurd Christian doctrine is, the more worthy of belief it becomes. "Paul", by the way, derives from the Latin for "small, humble idiot."

[quote=Ciceronianus]Tertullian (Latin for "turtle") was probably just parroting Paul's curious argument that since God is so much wiser than man, his truth would appear foolish to wise men. So, the more foolish or absurd Christian doctrine is, the more worthy of belief it becomes. "Paul", by the way, derives from the Latin for "small, humble idiot."[/quote]

Yep, that's the standard explanation for Tertullian's pronouncements. It does seem rather odd and arrogant that we think ourselves capable of apprehending & critiquing God, a being whose intelligence is orders and orders of magnitude greater than our best brains. To put things into perspective, God's worst ideas are our best ideas.

Nevertheless, I wanted to explore the relation between the believability of a claim and how improbable that claim is; the point of a lie is to deceive and to that extent, a liar should keep his falsehoods as credible (read probable) as possible. The more impossible/improbable a statement is, the less likely it is to be a lie, oui monsieur?

Jesus, rose from the dead? :rofl:

"God's worst ideas are our best ideas."

Before this "discussion" gets transferred to the religious forum, let me say this: there can be no continuity between our ideas and god's ideas because god possesses all of her qualities to an infinite extent; consequently, from god's perspective, human thinking and human affairs must appear to be infinitely trivial and inconsequential and, quite probably, of no logical value whatsoever.

Reply to alan1000 Aren't you forgetting that God loves us (at least the Christian God does - I don't know enough about the other candidates), even though that's an incomprehensible mystery. I'm sure you're familiar with the way that loving somebody makes everything they do and say fascinating.

Reply to Agent Smith I'm not sure whether to take Popper's remark seriously. Anyway, what he actually says is that the most improbable theory is to be preferred because it is the easiest to falsify. That's a good reason if one's project is to falsify theories. One could chalk up many successes quite quickly that way. However, colleagues might feel that I had misunderstood the point of research. But I suppose one might gradually zero in on something that was hard to falsify.

If Popper's point is that a good theory needs to take risks in order to score, there is something to be said for this. Safe theories are easy to construct, but not very helpful. Surely, in the end a theory needs to be assessed on its relation to the evidence and to the problems it is meant to solve. Wild guesses might meet Popper's criterion, but they wouldn't get far on the grounds that they are risky alone.

I've just spent 10 minutes trying to believe the theory that the moon is made of cheese. I couldn't. Does anyone know any exercises (apart from Lewis Carroll) that would help me improve?

@Ludwig V

There's a rationale to miracles and interpretations thereof and it involves, inter alia, what truth (really) is.

Quoting alan1000

from ([s]god's[/s]) nihilistic and ambiguity perspective, human thinking and human affairs must appear to be infinitely trivial and inconsequential and, quite probably, of no logical value whatsoever.

:sparkle: :up: