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> I also grew up in a Christian house and am now atheist--I never understood how people could reconcile "church shopping" for a community that aligns with their views (e.g. not homophobic) with the notion that the core religious concepts are supposed to be infallible. If you disagree with various churches on some doctrinal/sociological point, how do you know that your current church is correct on God existing, or knowing what he wants?

That doesn't actually seem like a problem specific to religion, but a problem with truth, generally. If anyone believes their beliefs are true, they have to reconcile that with the fact that people disagree, which usually proceeds by believing those people are in error or that the differences aren't significant. I don't think Christians actually believe that the truth is something easy to access, given the emphasis on faith and belief that everyone is flawed, etc.

[tenacious_tuna]

> given the emphasis on faith and belief that everyone is flawed

Forgive my possibly abrasive tone, but "given the emphasis on faith and belief that everyone is flawed" falls apart when the focal point of the church and the religion it purports, the god, is held to be infallible.

The notion that all these disparate groups can cite the same 'source of truth' as their guiding principles, yet come to such significantly different conclusions as to fight wars over them shows those principles aren't as useful or reliable as members of any church make them out to be.

That's where my frustrations come in: churchgoers seem inherently aware of these intense differences, yet don't seem to question the reliability of their text (or view, or belief, or...) despite all these alternative conclusions from the same tools and evidence.

(In Street Epistemology the "Outsider Faith Test" is used to demonstrate this; broadly phrased, "If it is possible for a person of Hinduism to use faith to justify their belief in their god(s), and it's possible for a Christian person to use faith to justify their belief in their god, yet those beliefs are in opposition to one another, is faith a reliable tool to determine what is true?")

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> Forgive my possibly abrasive tone, but "given the emphasis on faith and belief that everyone is flawed" falls apart when the focal point of the church and the religion it purports, the god, is held to be infallible.

Not really. That only falls apart under particular assumptions (e.g. an assumption that a perfect thing will only create other perfect things, or that perfection will be the particular kind you imagined it must be).

> (In Street Epistemology the "Outsider Faith Test" is used to demonstrate this; broadly phrased, "If it is possible for a person of Hinduism to use faith to justify their belief in their god(s), and it's possible for a Christian person to use faith to justify their belief in their god, yet those beliefs are in opposition to one another, is faith a reliable tool to determine what is true?")

I've got a pretty clear sense that there are regions of truth that our "reliable tools" cannot access. Faith is basically the hope that some of those regions can be accessed in other ways.

[tenacious_tuna]

> there are regions of truth that our "reliable tools" cannot access

This is a contradiction in terms. If you have a set of tools such that some tools reliably determine truth and some don't, inherently that latter set can't be used to "access" other "regions of truth." Put differently, when I examine the universe with my reliable truth-tools (roughly, the scientific method), I see no reason to believe that these other regions of truth that my tools cannot detect exist. If I use tools that are demonstrably flawed, like faith, I can conclude those things are true, but why would I use known-bad tools to reason with?

It almost feels like a weird inverted understanding of object permanence; I can't see into the other room, so I cannot reliably determine what is inside it. It's possible since I left it that a ninja suck in and left a million dollars in my couch cushions, then retrieved it later--I would have no way to detect that from here, so my 'tools' can't determine that. Why would I choose to believe in the ninja?

It is possible that you could come to believe something that is true by faith (as in, "I have faith we live in a heliocentric solar system, although I cannot prove or determine this with my current set of tools"), you cannot use faith to prove that what you believe is true. A practitioner of Street Epistemology, Anthony Magnabosco, has a very good conversation [1] with someone on that very topic.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmFyiLICAa8

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> This is a contradiction in terms. If you have a set of tools such that some tools reliably determine truth and some don't, inherently that latter set can't be used to "access" other "regions of truth." Put differently, when I examine the universe with my reliable truth-tools (roughly, the scientific method)...

You'll notice I put "reliable tools" in quotes. I do not think they are as reliable as you do. For instance, to give a secular example, they're unlikely to be able to give an answer to the simulation hypothesis. Say physics ultimately derives from a certain configuration in Conway's Game of Life, and that configuration is in-fact running on some kid's Hyperpentium 4 PC. Science may be able to access the truth of the configuration and game rules, but it's totally blocked from probing the region of truth beyond that. However, that block is one way, and the kid's totally capable of editing the configuration to add a message "LOL U DOODS R IN MY PC." Now (with or without the message) you may decide to have utter faith in your tools, and deny or dismiss as meaningless what they can't perceive, but that's just denial or averting your eyes. There is truth there, it's just outside the grasp of your tools.

[tenacious_tuna]

I'm perfectly content to leave things such as the simulation hypothesis as "I don't know."

This is another tool in the Street Epistemology toolbox, one normally done at the start of the conversation: you display a container of tic tacs and ask if there's an even or odd number in there--your conversation partner shouldn't be allowed to closely examine the tic tacs. There is a 'true' answer, but it's impossible to determine from their vantage point: as such, what use is either stance? The only "correct" answer is to acknowledge while there may be a true answer, they're unable to determine it from there and as such they don't know.

My tools are perfectly reliable in the sense that they are reliable indicators of truth where they can be applied, e.g. to things that can be observed. You're completely correct in that if we are in a simulation they can only probe the bounds of the problem, and offer no answer as to if we are indeed in a solution (beyond if an observable event occurs that would indicate such)--but I don't feel compelled to choose a "side" on that issue, and I remain skeptical of people who choose to do so in the absence of evidence--the same skepticism I regard folks who believe in a god with an absence of evidence. They may be correct, depending on the claims they make about that god and it's ability to influence the universe, but I see no reason to allow that possibility to influence my life and decision making, just as I don't allow the simulation hypothesis to influence my decision making: having seen no evidence, why would I affect change in my life for this thing?

It seems as though we've disagreed on the meaning of "reliable tools"--I don't mean omniscient, I simply mean they're the best way I've found to believe things that are true with regard to reality; put differently, they don't yield false positives. (Though it's wholly possible for me to reach false conclusions, I am only human.)

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> This is another tool in the Street Epistemology toolbox, one normally done at the start of the conversation: you display a container of tic tacs and ask if there's an even or odd number in there--your conversation partner shouldn't be allowed to closely examine the tic tacs. There is a 'true' answer, but it's impossible to determine from their vantage point: as such, what use is either stance? The only "correct" answer is to acknowledge while there may be a true answer, they're unable to determine it from there and as such they don't know.

So, I should conclude that I don't know if LIGO has ever detected gravitational waves? I am unable to determine that from my vantage point.