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Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Pseudoskepticism and logic | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined:
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Are you actually denying that the possibility that any given god concept could be a human invention is an objectively evidenced fact?
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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Hi Phage0070,
I'd like to go back to Message 69 and expand a bit on my previous answer (Message 73). You said:
My evidence to back this up is that every system of belief I have encountered that involves a god has either made predictions which reality fails to conform to, or is such that Occam's Razor strips out every important aspect. Reality is, to the best of my ability to determine, indistinguishable from one which does not contain a god. You do realize that this amounts to saying there is an absence of evidence, because you reject that any evidence even provides a possibility of god/s, yes?
So how about it RAZD? Does this "evidence" live up to your completely subjective concept of "acceptable", or would you consider my behavior unreasonable? Completely subjective evidence is allowed for #5 Agnostic Atheist (as it is for #3 Agnostic Theists), because tacit with that is the admission that the evidence is not compelling and that we don't really know. The subjective evidence is your reason for leaning to one side or the other of strict agnosticism. Moving on.
Given no compelling reason why your definition of god is any better than another, I would have to say your logic follows. You realize, don't you, that this is the All A is B, B, therefore A logical fallacy? That this simple analogy shows that your position is logically false? We also see with Catholic Scientists post Message 87 that such assumptions can be wrong.
Then the question is how stringent your requirements of my qualifications would be for you to be convinced. Is there anyone who would be qualified to convince you one way or the other, or have you locked yourself into 3-5 on the scale by definition? The same as I would expect you to ask of a #2 Theist - where is the objective evidence that validates your hypothesis?
There are some things that you *must* assume. For instance, when you jump you cannot be sure that you will come down. It is not a *fact* because you cannot possibly have experimented in the future. You appear to be claiming that jumping with the expectation of coming down is illogical because you (or anyone else) cannot possibly be qualified to state it as a fact. Of course, so you are really saying that the only difference between a theist and an atheist is the assumption they make? People keep telling me there is objective evidence for atheism, but so far none has been presented. Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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Nice scorecard Straggler.
21 posts,3 promises to provide objective evidence, continued failure to address the topic, no evidence, none, nada, rien, zip .... How do you manage to be so consistent? Enjoy.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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Thanks Modulus,
I'm not sure you can prove a reason. Yeah, prove is a hard standard. I'll settle for objective evidence that justifies\validates the negative position.
... I certainly ask 2's to provide their reason and may occasionally attempt to show potential problems with it, but I won't ask them for proof. If their reason is something like 'faith', I'll probably criticize it as a non-answer to the challenge in question. If the reason/s are based on subjective evaluations that exhibit confirmation bias to belief/s worldview/s rather than evidence and an open minded approach, then they fail to show how they justify the additional step to go away from the central agnosticism.
I'm not sure why you think they should be a 5 rather than a 6, could you do me the courtesy of explaining why, given the words I used, it follows that one should be a 5? Could you explain why someone who says, 'I cannot know for certain' is being 'too certain'? Could you explain how their concession that they do not know for certain renders them unqualified for the title, 'agnostic'? If you put the emphasis on being agnostic, as you say in Message 36 What do they have to prove? ... What puzzles me is your idea that somebody that begins their position with 'I cannot know for certain' would not be regarded as agnostic or as being 'too certain'. Then either one is trying to weasel out of providing the objective evidence validation\justification that convinces them, or they are really a 5 but like to think they are a 6. This tends to fit the picture of cognitive dissonance, where there is a dissonance between what is claimed (believed about self) and where you are when push comes to shove (up against reality).
If their reason is something like 'faith', I'll probably criticize it as a non-answer to the challenge in question. What this thread is about is the equal burden to demonstrate more than just opinion, belief, faith, (including any subjective evaluation of the relative validity of evidence), to the challenge in question. The further you get from #4 - Pure Agnostic - the more you need to supply validating evidence to justify that position. As Truzzi says:
"The true skeptic takes an agnostic position, one that says the claim is not proved rather than disproved. ... Since the true skeptic does not assert a claim, he has no burden to prove anything. He just goes on using the established theories of "conventional science" as usual. But if a critic asserts that there is evidence for disproof, that he has a negative hypothesis --saying, for instance, that a seeming psi result was actually due to an artifact--he is making a claim and therefore also has to bear a burden of proof." Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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Hi Moose (such a happy looking cat, btw)
Now you are looking for "proof" of why I hold this position. I hold this position because I find no reason to hold the opposing position. I find there to be a total lack of evidence for God's existence. The question is why do you need to hold the negative position without having any objective evidence for it? Why don't you find an equal lack of reason to believe in the absence of god/s?
Now of course, this falls into the category of "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". And yet time and again it seems that this is where the arguments always end up, perhaps dressed up in some high-sounding words to attempt to disguise the fact.
Thus I find the "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" to be illegitimate. The phrase mutates into "TOTAL absence of evidence IS evidence of absence". Which just means that you have assumed you know everything, or have investigated every corner and niche inside and outside the universe. At least you are honest about going with the absence of evidence route. Curiously, personal opinion has no effect on reality. Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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Hi Onifre, no annoyance yet.
I guess I'm just confused then because, wouldn't falsifying your hypothesis be in support of my negative hypothesis? Isn't that in fact the only way I can support my negative hypothesis with evidence? So you see no way to support a negative hypothesis, and yet this doesn't make you question whether the negative position is valid? If you can see no reason to believe a positive hypothesis, and no reason to believe a negative hypothesis, doesn't that make you de facto an agnostic on the issue? Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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Phage0070 Inactive Member |
RAZD writes:
No, that isn't what it means. I am not rejecting evidence that provides a possibility of god/s, I am recognizing evidence to the contrary. If a theory makes predictions and they are correct, it is evidence that the theory is correct. If a theory makes predictions and they are incorrect, it is still evidence, just evidence that that particular theory is incorrect.
You do realize that this amounts to saying there is an absence of evidence, because you reject that any evidence even provides a possibility of god/s, yes? RAZD writes:
I am not talking about "subjective evidence", whatever that means, I am talking about your subjective interpretation of what is "convincing" evidence. You appear to set the bar so high as to make reasonable conclusions about practically anything impossible, a conclusion that I do not share.
Completely subjective evidence is allowed... RAZD writes:
First of all, no it is not a logical fallacy. You didn't state "All A is B", you stated "A = B"; that isn't descriptive, it is definitive. You defined "God" as "pink elephants", so they are interchangeable. The following "B, therefore A" is logically sound. You realize, don't you, that this is the All A is B, B, therefore A logical fallacy? That this simple analogy shows that your position is logically false? We also see with Catholic Scientists post Message 87 that such assumptions can be wrong. The premise of pink elephants not existing was false, so the conclusion that pink elephants do not exist would similarly end up as being incorrect. However, that again is not what you concluded. You concluded that, lacking any knowledge to indicate that pink elephants exist, you do not believe that they exist. This is perfectly reasonable: At the most such a conclusion is agnostic to their existence. If you believed that things you have no knowledge of existing then you would be... well, you would be RAZD.
RAZD writes:
I believe I have already provided that evidence; namely, if the evidence exists I believe in it. Perhaps it is more palatable if I described my position as a proponent of the evidenced reality, and only the evidenced reality.
The same as I would expect you to ask of a #2 Theist - where is the objective evidence that validates your hypothesis? RAZD writes:
Isn't it clear? There exists evidence and none of it is in support of theism, so all evidence is atheistic by definition! It isn't a lack of evidence for theism that makes it atheistic, it is the lack of theism in the evidence that makes it atheistic. People keep telling me there is objective evidence for atheism, but so far none has been presented. Edited by Phage0070, : adding an "ing"
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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Hi Phage0070,
First of all, no it is not a logical fallacy. You didn't state "All A is B", you stated "A = B"; that isn't descriptive, it is definitive. You defined "God" as "pink elephants", so they are interchangeable. The following "B, therefore A" is logically sound. So in your experience all other definitions fit into the mold of being pink elephants? Or is the definition necessarily inadequate? I would have thought that the implication was obvious that such a definition was not complete. This is the mistake you make - you assume you have included all A in your B, so that B is then representative of A. Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2477 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
RAZD writes: The question is why do you need to hold the negative position without having any objective evidence for it? Why don't you find an equal lack of reason to believe in the absence of god/s? For the same reason that you find your negative position on omphalism reasonable. Where are you on a 1 to 7 scale of belief in omphalism, RAZD? I'm a six. By your reasoning, that makes me a pseudo-skeptic. My reasoning is that there's no evidence for the proposition, and overwhelming evidence of the human tendency to invent such things. The same goes for gods. Of all the human supernatural beliefs, not one single one has ever been confirmed, making any individual supernatural proposition extremely unlikely. With gods, we know that so many mutually exclusive gods have been and are believed in, so that we can say with surety that any random god proposal coming from any human being is much more likely to be false than true. This is obvious. So, I repeat, where are you on a scale of 1 to 7 on omphalism? The other point very important to the topic that needs to be made is that you don't seem to want to understand what agnosticism is. Whether applied to gods or more broadly, it's the recognition that you cannot know something for sure. It is not a measure of likelihood, so that someone who is a 6 out of 7 on the question of the existence of 7 inch high piebald gnomes who shit gold is agnostic and isn't a "pseudo-skeptic".
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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
RAZD writes:
quote: Because all the objective evidence indicates it isn't there. When I turn my oven on, I have objective evidence that it is the resistance coils that are heating it up (electric oven), not an invisible salamander that cannot be detected in any way. But according to you, because I don't have any "objective evidence" to deny the existence of the undetectable salamander (after all, I've not exactly done any experiments regarding it), I don't have any justification to claim it isn't there. It would appear that your beef is with Occam's Razor: Given a sufficient description, you want to be able to claim that adding undetectable chocolate sprinkles is a rational thing to do. Or, it seems that you're saying that once we find an answer, we need to keep going in order to disprove all the other ones...that it isn't sufficient to show that two and two make four: We must move on to show that they don't make five or three or any other non-four number. Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time. Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.
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onifre Member (Idle past 2951 days) Posts: 4854 From: Dark Side of the Moon Joined: |
Hi RAZD,
Hi Onifre, no annoyance yet. LOL, cool.
So you see no way to support a negative hypothesis, and yet this doesn't make you question whether the negative position is valid? But I do see a way. By showing that the alternative to my negative hypothesis is a made-up/conjured-up/imagined concept. Which would then change what you consider to be a negative hypothesis into a default position that I hold; no hypothesis needed. IOW, I don't need to have a hypothesis, negative or otherwise, for something that doesn't exist beyond a concept in the human mind. Simply put, you haven't established what I have a negative hypothesis about because "God," as in the celestial entity of religious folklore, has never been established to exist beyond matters of faith and the human mind. The only position one can take is that of atheist. If you are a theist in regards to some other celestial entity, not of a religious nature, then the term "atheist" doesn't apply, because the term "God" doesn't appy anymore either. You wouldn't question me being a #7 on the scale if the question was, "Do I believe Zeus is the ruler of Mount Olympus?" But it seems like when the descriptions for God become more and more ambiguous, this should somehow philosophically force me to change my position to a #6 or even a #5, but why? You didn't do anything but change from the old version (Zeus) that has evidence against it, to a new version has the same evidence against it. Both Zeus and this *new* version are products of the human imagination and have never presented evidence to the contrary.
If you can see no reason to believe a positive hypothesis, and no reason to believe a negative hypothesis, doesn't that make you de facto an agnostic on the issue? Only when applicable, like when one asks my position on biological alien life. I would see no reason to hold to a negative or positive hypothesis in regards to that question. I agree that at that point, the only honest position is that of agnostic. But for a made-up/conjured-up/imagined concept, such as the ones used to describe ambiguous celestial entities, there is no hypothesis needed, negative or otherwise. [abe] As Laplace said: "I have no need for that hypothesis." - Oni Edited by onifre, : No reason given. Edited by onifre, : No reason given. Edited by onifre, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2
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quote: Actually you are incorrect. ANY probability estimate is a positive claim and requires evidence. The whole idea of 50:50 as the default is utterly mistaken. If there were a default rather than "no way to assign a probability", it would have to be at the lower end of the scale, with 5 the highest possible value. 3-4 as stated definitely would need evidence to assign such a high probability of existence.
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined:
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Yeah, prove is a hard standard. I'll settle for objective evidence that justifies\validates the negative position. Since I'm not sure the exact position you are looking for evidence of, I'll just guess that it is "I think God is very improbable". I am also assuming that you are not asking for evidence that this is indeed what a '6' thinks. What I guess you are asking for is evidence that leads to the thought that "God is very improbable". Is this right? The evidence in question can be summarised in my case as such: 1. The fallibility of the human mind2. There are millions of unfalsifiable and unverifiable concepts, imaginable and otherwise by the human mind. 3. The chances of any one arbitrarily picked set of such concepts actually existing are very low 4. Many of these actually proposed entities, specifically those labelled 'God', are often what I would call 'complex entities' (having personality, motivations, etc). Since it seems to me that reality has shown us that such complex entities don't just spontaneously appear and that they themselves require an explanation it strikes me as improbable that any 'God' type entity is the ultimate end of the chains of causality. If the reason/s are based on subjective evaluations that exhibit confirmation bias to belief/s worldview/s rather than evidence and an open minded approach, then they fail to show how they justify the additional step to go away from the central agnosticism. Technically, of course, all reasons can be shown to exhibit the properties you outline to some extent since 'reason' is inherently a subjective process. Either way, I hold the same set of beliefs for all unverifiable and unfalsifiable entities. They may, indeed be possible, but I have no idea which ones, if any, are actually real. Is that too closed minded?
If you put the emphasis on being agnostic... Then either one is trying to weasel out of providing the objective evidence validation\justification that convinces them, or they are really a 5 but like to think they are a 6. What if we simply don't ignore the being an agnostic part? We don't have to emphasise it, just include it in the definition, since it is included in the definition. Is it weaseling to agree with you that we cannot know for certain? Or are you suggesting that there is no such thing as anybody that holds positions '6' because position '6' is essentially the same as position '5'? What you decide to call me, a 5 or a 6 is immaterial. The fact is that I think 1. It cannot be known for certain (essentially by definition) that unverifiable and unfalsifiable entities exist or do not exist.2. Some god concepts qualify as above. 3. It is very improbable that any specified set of such entities are actually real. In my view, that qualifies me for '6'. It suggests to me that I am agnostic (since I say that I cannot know), but that I am more than inclined towards skepticism and think that god is downright unlikely and I live my life exactly as I would if such a being did not exist.
The further you get from #4 - Pure Agnostic - the more you need to supply validating evidence to justify that position. As Truzzi says I'm not making any claims that fall foul of Truzzi's criteria. I do not claim that god does not exist, or that a specific religious experience is a delusion. I am claiming that I think god is improbable, and that we have evidence that religious experiences can be caused by cognitive hiccups/shortcuts etc and we do not have any evidence that they are caused by entities of religious adulation. Further #4 is also making a claim: That the probability that God exists or does not exist is exactly equiprobable. I suggest that this requires at least as much justification as '6' does.
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined:
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With regard to any given god concept there are two mutually exclusive possibilities. Either it is a product of the human mind. Or it is a real entity. That the god concept in question could be a product of the human mind is evidenced beyond any doubt whatsoever. The possibility that said god is real is a completely objectively unevidenced claim. My "probably a product of human invention" atheism is thus not based on "absence of evidence is evidence of absence". Rather it is based on the objective evidence available.
The same evidence which strangely you also implicitly rely upon whenever you dismiss the Immaterial Pink Unicorn (or any other such unknowable and irrefutable concept) as "obviously made-up".
no evidence, none, nada, rien, zip .... Are you actually denying that the possibility that any given god concept could be a human invention is an objectively evidenced fact? Yes or no? If you don't actually explicitly answer this question I will take it as a "no". A "no" that you won't actually admit to because it rather destroys your argument. If you answer "yes" then we can start looking at the evidence for this. Evidence that is accepted by everyone it seems but you. Edited by Straggler, : No reason given. Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.
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Phage0070 Inactive Member |
RAZD writes:
That is why I added the bit about assuming your definition is as good as any other. I know you assumed the definition was not complete/correct when you made it, but I also hoped to make the point that you didn't have any evidence to conclude any other definition was more accurate.
So in your experience all other definitions fit into the mold of being pink elephants? Or is the definition necessarily inadequate? I would have thought that the implication was obvious that such a definition was not complete. This is the mistake you make - you assume you have included all A in your B, so that B is then representative of A.
No, you simply did not say what you meant. If you had said "I describe god as being a pink elephant" then you would be correct, but you *defined* god as being a pink elephant. Those are different concepts, despite what you may think. For instance, suppose we define pachyderm as being an elephant (and only that, since we are making the whole of the definition right now). This means that every pachyderm is an elephant but also conversely, every elephant is also a pachyderm. By changing your definition of god to be a pink elephant it precludes the possibility of there being a pink elephant out there that is *not* a god; after all, it is *by definition* a god.
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