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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.

[tenacious_tuna]

You could ascribe reasonable certainty that folks using the scientific method have accurately modeled the universe, as determined by their documented and repeatable experiments.

I've previously seen people phrase that as "having faith in the beliefs of others," which usually boils down to semantics on what "faith" means: I believe it is likely those people have observed the things they say they have, because of the nature of the scientific community and how these experiments are structured.

I also think we're getting rather far off the specific, original issue: the existence of a god. In my experience this has been the kind of thing a single individual can experiment with and reason around--at least, in all the ways people tend to give evidence for their belief in god:

(1) hearing him communicate with them in some way

(2) seeing him influence the universe in ways they'd expect a god to

(3) believing a god must have been necessary to create the universe due to its complexity/beauty/etc.

You'd contended (please do correct me if I've misunderstood your argument) that the tools I suggested--the scientific method--were incapable of determining what lies behind the observational curtain, which I agree is certainly true: if you can't observe a thing or its effects in any way, you cannot determine its existence. The thing we seem to get hung up on is what we should believe about what lies behind that curtain.

My stance is to take the null hypothesis and assume nothing exists beyond the curtain; at the very least, not a god that interacts with our world and the people in it as the Christian faith claims. In short, "I have not seen sufficient evidence to conclude a god exists."

Your stance seems to be that it is acceptable to believe facts about things beyond this curtain; that we are not in a simulation, that there is a god, etc, framed as having faith in those facts being true, despite observational tools not functioning in this realm.

The tic-tac example wasn't supposed to be an indictment of extrapolative beliefs from experience ("these people have reliably observed the universe before / predicted things / modeled things for years, it seems reasonable to continue to trust their motivations and methods"), just a demonstration of when "I don't know" is a more correct answer over taking a stance when observational tools have reached their limit.

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> I also think we're getting rather far off the specific, original issue: the existence of a god.

Huh? I picked up that you're kinda evangelical and were drifting there, but that's not where we started and it wasn't actually the conversation I was having.

> My stance is to take the null hypothesis and assume nothing exists beyond the curtain;

Isn't that a little unreasonable? You see a floor, so you assume nothing exists on the other side because it blocks your vision?

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while I think this is a sensible stance for most highly educated people, for most this just is something they can not cope very well with. And I think that these "simple" minds are then prone to all the other cults out there (like QAnon - what is it else than replacing things people can't know about with faith.) - and from their teachings these are _much_ worse.