Is My Hypothesis Valid???

From Message 314: On purely logical grounds, you should be agnostic. Without any evidence whatsoever for or against it, we're left in the position of not knowing. I don't believe the IPU exists because somebody just made it up to prove a point. Brahman? I dunno.From Message 315: But if you are simply relying on the lack of evidence, then agnosticism should be the default, not atheism. I thought you arrived at your atheism, not just because of the lack of evidence for it, but because of the mutual exclusivity of all the various gods and peoples' tendency to make stuff up, right?So, you have reasons to disbelieve in god, aka 'evidence' (in my loose sense of the word) just like I have reasons to believe in god. Niether of our beliefs compare to the disbelief in the IPU. Does the above explanation help answer those questions?

WTF!?You ignore the parts where I explain how I disagree with you to spin my post into agreeing with you?Pffft. Good day, sir.

I said good day!

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I don't.

This isn't really on topic, so there's no need to reply. I'll just explain myself though: Lacking belief is not actively disbelieving... I don't know if your neighbor has a cat or not, nor do I have anything to indicate one way or the other. I do not believe that they do have a cat (weak atheism, ie lacking a belief if god). But for me to take the active belief that they do not have a cat (strong atheism ,ie believing that god(s) do(es) not exist) without any reason one way or another would be illogical.

I don't think we're all talking about the same thing with the word "unknowable"...Way back in Message 220, I had this to say:

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Not RAZD's "inherently unknowable" deity.

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I'm not going to speak for RAZD, but the Diests' god is not "unknowable" in the sense that there is nothing empirical at all about it. A quick look at the wiki page on deism shows:

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Deism is a religious and philosophical belief that a supreme God created the universe, and that this and other religious truth can be determined using reason and observation of the natural world alone, without the need for faith.

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bold added for emphasis

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What they mean by "unknowable" is to contrast it with theism which has a god that can be communicated with or "known".

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And in Message 218 I said:

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If you're defining it {"empirical"} as "able to be heard", then RAZD's deity is not inherantly non-empirical as there has to be something there to bring it up in the first place...

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Has RAZD explicitly stated that his diety is "inherantly unknowable" in the sense that you are using it?

Scientific investigation relies on the control, repeatability, predictibility, etc of the experience so something simply being of our 5 senses doesn't necessitate that we can investigate it scientifically.Lets say that your on one side of a dark canyon with your team of scientists and I'm, unknowingly, on the other holding a laser pointer and a pair of night vision goggles. When you are looking, and no one else, I shine the laser in your direction so you can see it. When the scientists turn to look, I keep it off. The experience you had of the laser would be empirical but immune from scientific investigation because I have the ability to decide who gets to see it.Same scenario, but this time the laser has a faulty battery where it sparatically turns off and on. This time it would be immune from investigation because the results are not repeatable or predictable.Or how about if I can shine the laser directly into your eye and, perhaps because of the total lack of any dust, the scientist cannot see it at even the slightest angle.For a totally different scenario, think of something that happened only once, how about the Big Bang, we can't investigate that scientifcally. I believe that god is not a part of our universe, that he is "outside" of it, so I don't think we're going to see him from the inside, but I also believe he has the ability to effect the inside of our univers should he so desire. Maybe he is able to be sensed sometimes but not others, by design or by choice. Our lack of scientific evidence for him suggests that he just doesn't want to be detected, or is only detectible sparatically, just as much as it suggests that he doesn't exist at all.

They expect a belief in god to be irrational and/or illogical.

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ABE:Just saw the post above mine after I submitted:

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How can he be such a rational, logical person when it comes to others' sincerely held beliefs, yet can't be so when it comes to his own?

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See? A belief in god couldn't possibly be rational or logical Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

In my first post in this thread, Message 198, I replied to Straggler:

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Straggler in msg 197 writes:

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In the case of inherently non-empirical concepts there is no possibility that the "evidence" in question can possibly be anything but "wholly subjective".

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If by inherently non-empirical concepts you mean that there is no possibility that the "evidence" in question can possibly be objective, then you’re just stating a tautology.

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His Message 197, subtitled: "Refutation: RAZD's "Perceptions of Reality" - RIP", was his "final refutation":

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RAZD writes:

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Premise 1: There is no way you can distinguish "objective" evidence from the "subjective interpretation of objective evidence" - for any single experience.

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This premise is false. In the case of inherently non-empirical concepts there is no possibility that the "evidence" in question can possibly be empirical and objective. Thus for those concepts which your thesis was specifically setup to consider, namely those unavailable to scientific investigation, the first premise of your theory is indisputably false.

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RAZD writes:

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Premise 2: There is no way you can determine - for a single subjective experience - whether it is a "subjective interpretation of objective evidence" or a "wholly subjective experience" - either by the person having the experience or by a later telling of the experience.

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This premise is also false. In the case of inherently non-empirical concepts there is no possibility that the "evidence" in question can possibly be anything but "wholly subjective". Thus for those concepts which your thesis was specifically setup to consider, namely those unavailable to scientific investigation, the second premise of your theory is also indisputably false.

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RAZD writes:

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Conclusion: There is no rational logical line between what is valid evidence of reality, and what is not -- when dealing with single experiences.

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Given that both your stated premises were false it is hardly surprising that your conclusion is also false. Where the concepts in question are inherently non-empirical in nature there is indeed a rational and logical distinction between what can be validly and objectively evidenced and what cannot. Where the concepts under consideration meet the criteria of being unavailable to scientific empirical investigation, i.e. the very concepts that you set out to explore, both your premises and your conclusion are therefore logically and indisputably false.

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We can clearly see that his refutation relies on the tautology that I originally suspected.