Pseudoskepticism and logic

Good grief, you cannot be this dense. Look; if the evidence is made up then that, in and of itself, qualifies as evidence that people make things up!

I, along with many others, *have* answered. Occam's Razor; it is not required to explain the evidence. Behavior. I behave as though god does not exist. Right, and dying may prove the afterlife. Now why don't theists just use that strategy, ehh? I didn't say the world was an illusion, I just posited something that you cannot detect. Are you so arrogant as to assume that you are omniscient? It seems you are equating camouflage with a "Matrix" world. You are going rather far afield with this tangent, I don't see how it is relevant at all. You seem to be advocating giving your life for the cause of finding a hidden pit... So you would say you are treating it as though there was no pit right now? I have figured it out: You are purposefully debating dishonestly, feigning ignorance and idiocy when it suits to muddy the failures of your claims. This is unfortunately par for the course.Edited by Phage0070, : responding to "added"

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Right, you don't let the claim impinge on your behavior. You behave as you did before the claim was made, before you knew of the existence/non-existence of the pit. You behave... as though it was not there. It seemed uncouth at the time, and your position on the subject is rather unique. But since you asked: RAZD, will you kill yourself in the interest of science and the advancement of knowledge? For instance, you could figure out if ghosts exist. No, it isn't evidence. Do you have a problem with the principle itself? That is because the YEC's are making an assertion. I am not, I am simply dismissing their assertion as unnecessary. The claim of theism is a positive claim that requires evidence to support it. In the absence of evidence to support the claim, it is reasonable to ignore the claim as unnecessary complication.

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The true skeptic ... the claimant has not borne the burden of proof and that science must continue to build its cognitive map of reality without incorporating the extraordinary claim as a new "fact."

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See that part where the claim is not incorporated as a new fact? If the claim of theism is not incorporated as a fact, then the skeptic lacks theism in their outlook. They are: Atheistic.Atheism is not a positive claim. It is the *lack* of belief in a positive claim.

So would a god. If you think my pit throws the rules in the air, a deity blows them out of this world. Which YEC's are you talking about now? I thought they were claiming something did exist. Not according to the scale you quoted!

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6.00: Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. 'I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.'

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The default state of claims is assumed non-existence. A claim that has no evidence to support it has nothing to increase its probability of existing. That would qualify as "very low" to me. (In essence you can think of it as one list, "Things that exist". Something requires evidence to be placed on that list. There is not a "Things that don't exist" list that requires evidence, it is simply that things not on the "Existing" list are not on the list.)I also live my life as though it does not exist; why would I behave any other way? Not by your scale.

But you *can* prove it to them with an experiment. That is how we figured those things out in the first place, and when the experiment yields the results you predicted it would be evidence you are correct. We don't! It would be ridiculous to behave any other way; what is more likely, that you are a time traveler or one of the many other crazy people who claim to be displaced in time? You seem to be equating "I don't believe you" with "I will ignore evidence", which is not the case at all.Claims with no evidence to support them should be held in the same regard as any other of the infinite unevidenced claims that can be made about reality. There is no magical quality of simply voicing them that makes them any more likely to be true. You undoubtedly hold some things to be true about reality; things that are not on that list you *don't believe are real*. There really is no other option!

I think you *are* missing the point. The behavior of making things up to explain the unknown is undoubtedly something that gradually evolved, in the same sense that our sentience evolved over time.The point is that while the behavior was the product of our environment, selection, genetics, etc.. each individual concept is the result of the human mind. Birds may have evolved communication in a similar way we did, but birds don't speak Chinese. Communication isn't purely the product of the human mind, but *Chinese* is. In that same sense you can consider the production of deities and other similar mental shortcuts as not purely a product of the human mind, but you can consider every sample as being so.

Only if you stop insisting atheism is a negative claim.

The problem is that what RAZD is claiming is complete nonsense. Lets look at this quote: Suppose you are packing for a trip, and your significant other asks you if you should pack a wrench. You are momentarily confused as there appears to be no reason to bring a wrench, as you cannot predict any reason you would use it during the trip. It seems completely unnecessary.The problem is that when you point out "I don't see any reason to bring that along," if the response is "But you have not given any reason not to bring it along,". In this example the reasons for not packing a wrench in your overnight bag may be slim, but the point is where you are starting from.Things don't have a 50/50 chance of being packed in your overnight bag until you consider them and weigh the pros and cons, the default position is not packing something unless you have a reason. That is the same mentality I am applying toward claims of reality: I don't believe something exists without a good reason.RAZD appears to be taking the position that, not knowing a particular pro or con for bringing the wrench, he should freeze in indecision.

Only if we consider you utterly incompetent when compared to the rest of the human race. We have evidence that other people can hear and usually are accurate in what they hear, but you appear to be a liar whenever it benefits you. If we consider you wholly unreliable and dishonest, then it would be reasonable to ignore anything you claim no matter its possibility of being true.Shall we begin?

I say it as well. "Invested" is not the same as holding to the null in the absence of evidence; your elementary education would have been better served differentiating such concepts. No, it becomes acceptable to dismiss a new idea with nothing more than "You have no evidence to support that idea,". YES, that is what science should be about!

So tell me why "I don't see any reason to hold a theistic position without evidence," is any different. Then you never leave the room, and the bag never gets packed. No, I am simply rejecting a hypothesis as a true skeptic would. You seem to be equating the null hypothesis with a claim, which is not the case.

Then, if it came from the back yard we would reasonably check the back yard. When you suggest to check "heaven", you start to lose credibility. You are the person who concluded we couldn't know about the truth of an objective phenomenon you claim to have witnessed. I just provided a possible explanation for such a thing.

Doubt is part of being a skeptic, get used to it. Or, good luck being a skeptic without it...Doubt alone does not negatively affect the outcome of any experiment, and is indeed the reason why experimentation is done. We learn from experiments because we do not know what the outcome will be; therefore, we *doubt* the outcome. Attitude "a" still allows for evidence to be presented, and in this case it would be reasonable to go check the park for dinosaurs.

To which the response would be: "Because I don't see a reason to pack it, and my default position is to not pack things." On what criteria would you base this decision? You cannot know if you will need the wrench, but you cannot be sure you will not. You simply don't have any reason that you should bring it. So what do you do, and why? By the evidence that it lacks any evidence to support it. Note that I am not claiming it is incorrect, I am simply rejecting it until such time as it supports its claims.

Then, having checked wherever you think it came from and finding nothing, we would conclude that either the whisperer escaped detection or you made it up. The circumstances of the claimed message would determine the likelihood assigned to each possibility.