Pseudoskepticism and logic

Then that was a silly conclusion. I assume that your backyard is objectively evidenced rather than "something" only ever expereinced subjectively by you? I also assume that you have objective evidence that your sense of hearing works. I am also pretty sure that real things making noises in real backyards is a fairly well defined phenomenon.Perhaps a better anology would be if you had a back yard that nobody else could empirically detect and that you were also stone deaf. Then if you heard something in your backyard I would be wholly justified in my atheism towards whatever you attribute that "noise" to surely?

I guess beyond a sort of Descartian "I think therefore I am" (and even that can be justifiably doubted) we don't really know anything. By your all-encompassing definition of agnosticism I think I might be classed as agnostic about everything up to and quite possibly including my own existence. Do you really think that the two questions:Was that a dog I just heard in my back yard?
Was that an empirically undetectable entity I just experienced?Are equally objectively (un)evidenced?No claim operates in a vacuum of all objective evidence CS. Dogs, backyards, your ability to hear, even the noises that dogs in backyards make are all heavily objectively evidenced phenomenon.The possibility that you heard a dog in your back yard whilst far from a certainty is an evidenced possibility in a way that claims of the supernatural just are not. The comparison of the two possibilities is frankly silly. No we don't know. But the relative likelihood of the two claims isn't even in the same evidential ballpark.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Well you can't explicitly. But do you have a known tendancy for hearing things? Things that either turn out not to be there or that only you and nobody else can hear? If not then I would suggest that you have an objectively evidenced ability to hear that suggests some sembleance of reliability. Albeit imperfect. Oh are we talking about material and empirically detectable gods now? Well do you think a claim that someone heard a dog in their backyard and a claim that someone experienced god are evidentially equivalent? Are they in the same evidential ballpark? It seems obvious to me that they are not but you seem to disagree?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Oh OK. But it is gods that we are being challenged to somehow disprove here is it not? Can you explain why?It seems obvious to me that dogs, backyards and the ability to hear noises associated with these very real and concretely evidenced concepts are so mundanely known to be true as to make the two claims literally worlds apart.Edited by Straggler, : Fix quotes

Well materially refutable things are relatively easily refuted. No? The interesting question arises when we consider the defualt position with regard to concepts that are irrefutable and objectively unevidenced by their very nature. It would be a very short discussion (I hope) if all we had to do was establish that grass is not red. For example. Well RAZD made it pretty obvious which atheist he was talking about and he, you and LL have all at various points in this thread requested that the evidence against gods specifically be presented. That is kinda silly. The two possibilities are not equally (un)evidenced at all. Blatantly so. We have a wealth of evidence for the possibility of one (the dog in the backyard - just to be clear) and absolutely no objective evidence for the possibility of the second claim. It is all about evidenced possibilities here CS. Ah yes the power of indoctrination................

For the record - I agree with this entirely. I, and I think most others (except Oni) on the atheist side of the debate here, are assuming at least some vague concept of god as implicit. As vague and ambiguous as this "something" may be it is still a definite concept on which one can pass judgement.However if we are simply being asked "Do you believe in X?" where X is a non-concept. A concept whose only property is a complete absence of any definition then the question doesn't even make sense. We are effectively being asked "Do you believe in ___________?".I am not atheistic towards "____________" because there is nothing to be atheistic about. But equally I don't see how anyone can claim to be agnostic about "it" either.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

That is a simplistic misrepresentation. I cannot be bothered to go through why again. But we don't lack sufficiant information at all. We have masses of information. Masses of information about dogs and the likelhood of one being in your back yard. Masses of information about the human proclivity to erroneously attribute things and experiences that they don't understand to the supernatural.Look your argument on this is just blatantly silly. You are pitting the very real and objectively evidenced possibility of a dog being heard in your back yard against the possibility that an internal voice of god experience was actually due to god and calling them completely equal.In the crazy situation that you are advocating, where each claim lives in isolation to all other objective knowledge, dogs and gods are equally evidenced. Go figure.There is no such thing as a vacuum of all objective evidence.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

It assumes that "schwag" has some meaning as a concept. Meaning as a concept that differentiates it from "grass" or "The French" or any other concept. A concept tied to some sort of reality. Otherwise the question is entirely meaningless.Are you CS? Are you? Will you answer that question?If your response to this is "Am I what? What the hell are you talking about? Your question is meaningless" then I can only agree. Maybe that makes things clearer? Could you provide a suitable dictionary definition of "god" so that we all know what we are talking about here? One that everyone will agree upon? Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

because I don't know what the question means. "Schwag" could be Ukranian for toast for all I know. In which case saying I don't know if toast exists would be a pretty dumbass answer.Instead I say I don't know what you are asking I have no opinion whatsoever until you explain yourself. The "I don't know" you are seeking applies to the meaning of the question. Not the answer I cannot possibly give. You tell me. I have no idea what it is you are asking. Your question is meaningless to me. Well then Oni is in a position to give you an answer where I am not.

But I didn't say that!!!! Oni did. Take it up with him. But don't attribute it to me. Well how much more information about the possibility of dogs in your back yard do you need to accept this as an evidenced possibility? How much more information do you need regarding the human proclivity for humans to invent supernatural answers before you consider the possibility that the very concept of the "unknowable" supernatural itself is a human invention as an evidenced possibility? And is this possibility better evidenced than the possibility that gods actually exist? If so regardless of any squabbling over the degree of disbelief any accusations of "pseudoskepticism" are misplaced. You started talking about noises in your backyard. Then what was the backyard noise and figment of your imagination emoticonned comment all about? You seemed to be equating subjective common empirical experiences with the sort exceptional subjective expereinces we have discussed in relation to gods? Well how many once unexplained natural phenomenon have been erroneously attributed to the sueprnatural? How many times has the supernatural answer ever turned out to be the right one? What reasons?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

I am confused. In Message 302 you said: Now you say: What am I missing here? What were you saying with regard to your noise in the backyard example? OK. Do you think sightings of birds or hearing noises (maybe a dog?) in your backyard are evidentially equivalent to the sort of expereinces that people cite for gods? Or do you accept that these concepts and thus possibilities are objectively evidenced in ways that gods are not?

You seem to have reached the stage where you are actually in denial of facts. Oh well. That aside. You actually seem proud of your ambiguity and evasiveness! I would suggest that your ambiguity is borne from a desire to make whatever it is we are talking about here as irrefutable as possible. Unfortunately it still falls foul of reason and evidence unless either your god exists only in your mind or you genuinely have no more idea of what you believe in than we do (in which case how can you believe in it?) Talking of negative claims..... How can you possibly know enough about something "unknowable" to know that it is definitely unknowable? Why isn't it at least potentially knowable? How do you know it isn't? Contradictory nonsense RAZ. You really haven't thought this through very well have you? "Unknowable"? "Outside the universe"? "Off doing other things"? Good grief RAZ this is truly ICANTian. But then given your current position on evidence you are in appropriate company.Edited by Straggler, : Fix quotesEdited by Straggler, : No reason given.

I have no problem with saying "I don't know" at all. That is the first part of my answer to the question of every single irrefutable concept imaginable. Closely followed with "but the evidence suggests it very unlikely". What is your problem with recognising that any given wholly unevidenced claim is relatively unlikely to be true? Hallelujah LindaLou! Welcome to the dark side you old "pseudoskeptic" you. Welcome to the atheist point of view. It is frustrating being confronted with an endless array of irrefutable entities all of which you consider deeply improbable isn't it? The only difference between you and I is that you special plead those unevidenced entities and concepts which you feel for whatever wholly subjective reason are "sensible" rather than "silly".But if you or RAZD or anyone else cannot demonstrate why by the definition of the OP you are not psudoskeptics with regard to any of the concepts that we all agree are "silly" (your word not mine BTW) then you cannot legitimately require that anyone else meet these criteria with regard to anything more contentious.Could it just be that the criteria being requested (i.e. to refute the inherently irrefutable) are bogus, pointless, ill considered, self defeating and "silly"?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

For how many unexplanied but ultimately testable phenomenon has humanity invoked the supernatural throughout history? How many times has the supernatural answer turned out to be the correct one? How many times has the non-supernatural answer turned out to be the correct one?Why do you think the answer to the question: "Why do humans seem determined to invoke the unknowable to explain the unknown?" - will be any different? Are you saying we should not expect naturalistic answers over supernatural despite this past record? Are you saying that there is no evidence to suggest that the naturalistic answer is more likley than the supernatural answer to such questions?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

I do take you word for it. I accept that you don't know. Do you accept that I am not claiming to know either? But what do you mean by "genuine agnostic"? Are you ever "it's 50-50 I just don't know" agnostic about any defined but irrefutable claim? Or does every claim have a context in which it is considered? Your next statement suggests the latter. Hurrah! Hallelujah! And welcome to my position too! I would go a step further and say that we indisputably and always consider any claim in the context of what we understand about objective reality. In short this amounts to "No claim operates in a complete vacuum of all objective evidence". Something I have been saying in multiple threads for a very long time now.All the objective evidence available, including the context in which they arose, suggests that the concepts you consider "silly" (immaterial toilet goblins, ethereal squirrels and the like) are human inventions created to fulfill human needs. We don't know this with 100% certainty. Such entities by their very nature are irrefutable. They could be real. But a degree of "probably human invention" atheism is justified without accusations of pseudoskepticism. On this we presumably agree? Even if the exact degree of skepticism is more contentious.However the objective evidence available and the very same reasoning also suggests that any wholly unevidenced claim is also most likely a human invention. Once we accept this fact a degree of doubt becomes the rational baseline. We can squabble endlessly about the exact degree of likelihood that any given unevidenced claim is a human invention. But once we accept a degree of doubt as the baseline we can then move on to consider the more interesting questions that relate to this. Questions that look beyond the indisputable fact that humans can, and do, invent false concepts to instead consider the motivation for any given example. Or even the "why" for the more generic question of humanity invoking the unknowable to explain the unknown. Oh for the love of God! Certainty? Again? Forget certainty. I have never once talked in terms of certainty. Only relative likelihood. Why do you and RAZD relentlessly try and paint your opponents as black and white, 1 or 0 mechanistic binary imbeciles who are certain and definite about everything when the actual positions they present you with are the very opposite? It seems like a debating tactic. Please desist from these assertions. I don't claim to be certain about anything. Fine. In many ways I actually agree with you. I am certainly not denying that the unknown exists. That would be both arrogant and stupid. I think that there are many aspects of nature that we have yet to discover anything about. I hope that this is true and believe that it is. But it is also not very clever to ignore evidence just because it doesn't agree with the conclusion you want to be true. And all of the evidence suggests that invoking the unknowable and supernatural is a pointless dead-end answer that is almost certainly wrong anyway.If you personally choose to pursue that path I am not going to stand in your way. But if you tell me on a debate board that I should accept your particualr chosen and specially pleaded supernatural path as rational and consistent with the evidence then I am going to disagree with you. If you tell me that invoking the supernatural and unknowable is an "interesting" answer to anything then, again, I will disagree. I don't see "somethingsupernaturaldidit" as any different at all to "Goddidit" as an answer. We condemn creationists for falling back on "Goddidit" but how is what you are doing here ultimately any different? I leave you with my previous set of questions regarding this very point. I await your answers with keen anticipation.