Pseudoskepticism and logic

Okay, Modulus, let's backtrack a bit It's possible that I did misinterpret your comment, but it was followed with (Message 448): It seems to me that you are still saying that there are more differences than similarities, and that those differences are more important than the similarities.But if you want to concede that several experiences could have common elements of similarity, then this is not evidence against the possibilities of god/s. I concede that there is insufficient evidence at this time to say the existence of god/s is true AND I concede that there is insufficient evidence at this time to say that the existence of god/s is NOT true.Why do you stop short of saying the last bit? There you go again. And you tell me I am confused by your argument.

• Some religious experiences may be valid
• The probability of the experience exactly matching and exactly describing a god is extremely low ... and
  ​
  ? ∴ ?
• (absolute atheist): the existence of god/s is not proven, and therefore god/s don't exist
• (strong atheist): the existence of god/s is not proven, and therefore god/s are extremely unlikely
• (atheistic agnostic): the existence of god/s is not proven, AND the absence of god/s is not proven, and therefore we can't make a rational decision, there is a possibility that god/s don't exist
• (pure agnostic): the existence of god/s is not proven, AND the absence of god/s is not proven, and therefore we can't make a rational decision
• (theistic agnostic): the existence of god/s is not proven, AND the absence of god/s is not proven, and therefore we can't make a rational decision, there is a possibility that god/s exist
• (strong theist): the absence of god/s is not proven, and therefore god/s are extremely likely
• (absolute theist): the absence of god/s is not proven, and therefore god/s exist

I'm just trying to follow your logic to a valid conclusion.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : agnostic not atheist theist

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Thanks for acknowledging that possibility. Sorry for sounding grumpy. Ahhhh, so that's the confusion. No I wasn't even commenting on the number of differences or similarities between experiences. I'm perfectly happy for the sake of argument to accept that all the experiences are largely similar. We can worry about the differences between experiences later, if we ever get that far I agree. It is neither evidence for or against them. I do agree that it is evidence that there is probably a common set of causes that makes these experiences occur. I don't - I've been saying it for some time. There is no evidence that suggests that god does or does not exist. It cannot be said based on the evidence that god does or does not exist. God is, in many descriptions, unfalsifiable and in a few more unfalsified. There are some god entities that have been essentially falsified. You do seem confused about what it is. Agreed. That's not my position.My position is that there are many hypotheses that explain the 'religious experience' phenomena.
Of those hypotheses, many of them have no evidence to support them.
Given that there are many hypotheses with no way to discriminate between them, choosing one (eg., that there is a god entity causing them or that there is a moon ray toting crazy lunar being) is arbitrary and likely to be wrong.I've simplified the argument somewhat, but this is it in essence. An analogy I used before might help.Imagine writing down every single possible (ie,. unfalsified) hypothesis that explains Religious experiences each on a seperate slip of paper.Let us stipulate that some of them are right.Let us also stipulate that the god hypothesis is right.Put all those pieces of paper into a (presumably large hat). I say to youGive me $100 and pull out one answer. If you pull out the god hypothesis I'll give you $1000.Do you give me $100?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Hi RAZD,Boy RAZD seems like there is a lot of confusion here. Basically that is because we are dealing with a belief here. You get a lot of I don’t know what you are talking about, when you come right up against a belief. Evidence is all we need and then there is no confusion.Now I’ve known that I and all people have beliefs, or if you will faith.Faith is a belief without proof, without objective verifiable evidence.I have two sons, like all the other males in the world I have NO objective verifiable evidence they are biologically mine. I operate under the belief they are, based upon my wife’s word that this is true and a very subjective opinion that they resemble me. This does not rise to the level of ‘objective verifiable evidence. It is a belief/faith.I also have a mother and father. In 60 years here, I have no objective verifiable evidence that they are in fact my biological parents. Yet, I operate a large part of my life assuming this is true as with my sons.Facing reality, understanding you have faith/beliefs means you understand what you and other people are doing. If you think you have faith/belief in nothing without objective verifiable evidence (a common atheist theme here) you are living in a delusion.You do not get to demand objective verifiable evidence of the deist or theist while in your own life you have faith/beliefs and can not provide objective verifiable evidence of these beliefs, or for that matter that god does not exist. You do not get to claim these people are irrational or delusional for you are doing the exact same thing they are. I have no problem with this. I do have a problem with atheist’s claiming they are superior to everyone else because they are under the delusion they believe NOTHING without objective verifiable evidence.So atheists, show me you believe nothing. Give me the objective verifiable evidence that you are biologically related to both your parents and to your children. Same standards of evidence required of deists and theists by you for god’s existence.RAZD,
Thanks, until you asked for proof/evidence in your OP for the atheist position and received 452 replies WITH NO EVIDENCE.It made me realize atheism is a belief, just like deism or theism.Thanks, I needed thatMarty (petrophysics) a fellow deist..don’t believe a word I saylook for yourself and see what you find!

I believe a lot of things. I just don't believe that a god exists.To expand: There are probably many things which I believe without sufficient evidence. I'm not sure the parentage things qualifies, but that isn't of importance. Whenever my confidence in a proposition is not justified by evidence and reason - that is an epistemological error on my part. Being human - this is likely to be the case.Further: this is exactly the point we atheists have been making throughout this thread, and others. Humans quickly and easily jump to conclusions and prematurely and certain conclusions are favoured by humans more than others.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

No problem, just provide me with the evidence why this is so.453 posts with NO EVIDENCE, atheism is a BELIEF Edited by petrophysics1, : No reason given.Edited by petrophysics1, : figuring out quote

Yes, that is the OP - repeating it at this stage is the ultimate in going around in circles. I have made about twenty posts in this thread. If you have something specific to say about the evidence and reason that I have presented please do. If you just want to say that you find it unconvincing or that you don't believe it qualifies then that isn't a debate and I'm not interested. What you choose to call it is irrelevant. I have provided my reasons for why I believe the existence of god to be improbable. Feel free to address those reasons. I'm not interested in your handwaving dismissal.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Hi Modulus, let me see if I can show you why your "probability" assumptions get no traction in my opinion. So we come back to my response that every x = y + b where b is a constant element of the spiritual or religious experiences.Let me note that my expectations for such common elements are low, I do NOT expect experiences of coming face-to-face with god/s to be common in details, nor do I expect voice-of-(insert religious icon here) to be common in details. As a deist I don't expect god/s to show up just because someone has an experience.With a minimalist (skeptical but open minded) approach I would expect a common experience closer to the Buddhist vision of "being-that-is-not-being" or oneness with the universe. This gets back to the how versus why question, and the purpose of such experiences.If we compare these experiences to the experiences of a person with vision in a world of blind people, we can have an analogous situation. Here the blind scientists can measure the brain patterns in normal (blind) people and in people suffering from the visionary disease, and they can show that certain sections of the brain are active when visionary people are having an episode. They cannot measure, nor determine what it is that is causing this pattern, other than that certain nerves inside the body are stimulated, nor can they determine what is "seen" during these experiences. The concept of colors seems to be a made up concept, etc etc etc. They can explain how these brain patterns occur, and they can attribute them to various brain malfunctions and behaviors, commonly associated with "visionary" people, ones that don't occur in normal (blind) people. In old times, this "visionary" condition was cured by simple pre-frontal nerve fusions, so that the damaged nerves would no longer send false signals to the brain, however now some radical scientists are exploring the concept to understand more about what is happening.Why people see is because it serves a purpose, the ability to survive and reproduce is enhanced for those that can see. This serves the purpose of survival for the individual directly, and indirectly for the species.If the purpose of creation is to develop sentient and fully aware beings comparable to god/s, then the ability to see and to reason are elements likely to be included as emergent properties of the process.It is also not unlikely that a mechanism to take people outside their normal consciousness levels of survival and breeding, to an awareness of the oneness of life that is above tribal thinking would also be an emergent property set to occur once a certain level of intelligence was developed. The problem I have is that you can't - even with this example - eliminate the god hypothesis from virtually every example.Let's compare this to a lottery, where tickets cost $100 with a $1000 prize for getting the bonus "god-is-real" card.First, if all the tickets are sold, the probability of my getting the bonus card is low, but the probability of someone getting the bonus card is 1: a sure thing.Second, let's say there is a secondary prize, evidence of a spiritual nature. This is like being guaranteed $0.01 back on every ticket (everone's a "winner" lottery). If all I need to do is select one ticket from your lottery to win that prize then the probability of picking one card with such evidence is 1: a sure thing.Finally, I go back to my previous statement that any x = y + b where be is a constant value, so any one of your pieces of paper has a value of x = y + b. In other words, some have (4)+(b) and some have (5)+(b), and if all I need to do is select a piece of paper with b on it, then every piece has that.Now, what this does, is replace all your imaginary scenarios with the actual question: is there a value (b) that is common to all or most spiritual or religious experiences?We don't know. The explanation (4), of how some experiences may occur, does not eliminate the possibility of (b) also being evident. There is not sufficient information or objective evidence for a logical conclusion, and thus the logical position is the agnostic one:

• The evidence for god/s is not sufficient to show beyond a reasonable doubt that god/s exist, so the premise is not proven.
• The evidence against god/s is not sufficient to show beyond a reasonable doubt that god/s do not exist, so the premise is not proven.
• There is insufficient information to allow one to calculate probabilities of one over the other, because neither have been disproven, and logically each is just as valid a possibility as the other, both are untested hypothesis that need further information to validate before one can reach a rational conclusion.

So yes, IF you can guarantee that the result of your lottery will be absolute knowledge pro or con, then I will take your wager.If you can't guarantee a winner, then your lottery is rigged or has severe functional problems, and this renders any calculation of probability based on the sale of tickets invalid.Enjoy.

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Hi again petrophysics1, thanks for the support. Exactly, and precisely where the whole issue started on the Percy is a Deist - Now what's the difference between a deist and an atheist? thread. Good advice.Enjoy.

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Ladies & Gentlemen!I have laboriously traced my way through all these posts and I must say:KEEP THE THREAD OPEN PAST ITS 300 POST LIMIT, infact this thread should continue until the gasoline runs out in the desert miles away from gas with out water or radio or *anything*....Anyway.Hrrrmph!we have a Failure to Communicate, as Strother Martin would put it in Cool Hand Luke.Perhaps I should rephrase the issue thusly:Before we divide all Gaul into 2 (not 3) parts, lets consider the OP.
It's all about taking a negative THESIS about something and then making arguments to support your view.Here's the deal in a nutshell (since we cant seem to AVOID the big issue of god(s) - what evidence can atheists, such as me, come up with to support our view? Ok - call me a 6. What - wait, maybe we should rephrase this as "What would, in your own words, be an example of evidence that would confirm the NEGATIVE - there are ZERO supernatural occurrences in the history of the universe?"Fascinating.Indeed.Looking at the other side, what would it take to have Evidence of supernatural occurrences?Take God: "Well...if God suddenly shows up in Washington DC in the Sky so big as we can all see and booms out over every possible way of getting the message across that he/she/it is here to check up on things, landing in the Whitehouse lawn so to speak on Live TV."Dig?So, what would it take to have Evidence Of No Supernatural?There in lies the rub, because a single example to the contrary would falsify it. Nevermind - on to the Test - what would this test look like. This is not demonstrating the Absence of Evidence, so all of Straggler's push to get "Every story of God or Gods has been shown to be made up by man" has ZERO value here. Besides using the risky Inductive Reasoning, meaning that all his argument needs is 1 counterexample to kill it, he still is using Evidence of Things Not Seen. And then Bluegenes, with his finite size of possibilities, as if this was a math problem, and the sum of all possibilities cannot exceed 1.0000, and so his wonderful expounding upon tallying up what percentage of what you have already used up already, as deadly as it is, HAS NO RELEVANCE to the OP. His argument is similar to the argument that there are no uninteresting numbers. Well, no. But it was close.Again - let's get to the nitty gritty.What would a test for a prediction that there is 0.00000000000000 supernaturality in the universe look like?We can think of chemistry tests and translate them up into this?
Maybe Statistics can lay the blow cold and determine once and for all?Let's get to the nitty gritty.I'm thinking "indistinguishable for random occurrence" first, as measured from scientific testing. i mean, hello, here, we have to have a scientific test.So I make a test for that - does that do it? No.NOT EVEN IF EVERYTHING IS RANDOM does it mean that no spiritual, or supernatural, forces are at sway here. But it is looking pretty damn good.Experiment result: It's Not Random.huh?
what do I mean?The relative strengths of the physical constants, e.g. 1/137 and the like, work out to be just right to create atoms & molecules & whatever that lead to the wonderful world we have.Does anyone here (other than cavediver) have any have experience with the concept of Evolutionary Cosmology?The idea here is that universes have been born again & again with random values for these physical constants. We just happen to be in one that had them set just right to last long enough for us to be here (which is an extension of the Anthropomorphic Principle).So NO , the universe is Random under this scenario. What an arrogant waving of hands! No - what I was shooting down was the notion that the physical constants are magically just right to make us. The Force of Evolution is bigger than the Force of Cosmology.Evidence of supernatural things will have to come up with something else, methinks - BUT this is not Absence of Evidence means Evidence of Absence!This is about positive evidence that accidental, unintelligent, random (or biased but natural) happenings is sufficient to explain everything - from evolution to cosmology. We have the Evolution Theory for planet Earth (which will probably work out pretty well anywhere else, but that's another story).What would this evidence look like?
What predictions would a theory so assembled make?
What kind of test can we devise to pursue this?Rather than tote out all the Absence of Evidence evidence, what can we come up with to test Presence of Evidence! What is Present?Fascinating. I think we can mull some more over this.

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- xongsmith

I mean, think of it: even convincingly demonstrating that the Universe is INDISTINGUISHABLE from a Universe with ZERO supernatural presence - and I mean flat out to the zillionth decimal point - is still Absence Of Evidence and therefore not Evidence of Absence.Let's put our heads together and come up with something! Challenge!

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- xongsmith

Hi RAZD. I'm keen to address them The key difference being that there is independent evidence for many (but not all) of the things the people with 'visionary episodes' report. For instance, there is a strong correlation between the frequency of light and the reports of things being the 'same colour'. That is, you ask somebody to identify objects of the same colour, then measure the frequency of light coming from them, we can expect that the frequencies are more similar than with objects that are reported as different. And different people will agree when certain things are the same colour etc etc.They would also be able to identify what objects are in a room, without needing to touch them or hear them.Thus, the hypothesis that 'visionary' people have the ability to 'sense' the frequency of light has evidence. The frequency of light is an entity for which we have independent evidence.A better analogy would be blind scientists and occasionaly sighted people, and after doing all the above and realizing that sighted people have an additional sense, then encountering the problem of optical illusions.The sighted people report that the printed page is moving yet there is no independent verification that any atoms or anything is moving. The frequency of light from any given section remains constant.Are sighted people detecting movement caused by an agent that manages to cover up its tracks (playing with the equipment), or maybe an agent has poisoned sighted people. For sure, their motion sensing regions of the brain seem to be illuminating. But why? Is it because the brain has evolved to create models of the world and can be fooled by unexpected patterns? Well I'm not sure about 'not unlikely' - we are in the realms of massive speculation here, about the intents and purposes behind the creation of the universe and the evolution of humans assuming that there is such a thing. It is possible, but whether such a mechanism would be somehow implanted into our brains for that purpose or not is not certain. Either way - your hypothesis has no more evidence in its support than any of the other ones I've created, or that others have thought up. Agreed? I'm not eliminating the god hypothesis. It gets put in the hat along with the others. Yes, this is the same as saying that probability that the god hypothesis card is in the hat is 1. Not sure what the secondary prize is for. If you are saying that the probability of picking a card is 1, given that you pick a card then that is trivially true.But not all the hypothesis contain a 'spiritual' element. So where does the 'spiritual nature' come into it?I grant that the more general the hypothesis the more likely you are to pull it out of the hat. For example, the chances of pulling out a hypothesis that was 'something to do with scientists' is higher than pulling out a hypothesis that is 'evil scientists from the future using undetectalbe gremarian tachyon streams so that they can have tuesdays off'.If you wanted to bet on the 'something did it' hypothesis, then I agree - the chances of pulling that out of the hat is 1. But the x I was talking about is essentially the number of pieces of paper in the hat. How can any one of the pieces of paper have a value of x=y+b? You're going to have to explain what you actually mean here.There are x hypotheses of type U. (ie., unevidenced hypotheses)
We have no way of telling which hypotheses are more likely than another.
Therefore if we pick one hypothesis, it is arbitrary and the chances of us being right is 1 in x.I appreciate that assumes that only one hypothesis is right. If we assume that there are several such hypotheses that are right then the chances are n in x or 1 in m. I still hold that 'm' is high because 'x' is very high compared to 'n'. The answer to which is 'probably yes'. Again you say that my scenarios are imaginary. Are you calling 'god', 'chi energy', 'a oneness tying all humans together' imaginary? I've never claimed that it does. You do accept that is the case, yes? It's not really like running a lottery. It is more like a lucky dip. You have to put the paper back in the hat after drawing. I think you'll need to explain your y+b stuff before I can hope to understand how the lucky dip is rigged. In my example, I didn't even touch it. I asked you to write every single possible hypothesis on a piece of paper and put it into the hat. I'm not sure how I would rig it, and since it isn't really happening and we can stipulate that the hat and its contents are exactly as described I don't see the relevance.I'm just saying that of all possible hypotheses (all the bits of paper in the hat), the chances of picking the right one out of that lot is pretty low. Do you agree, at least in principle, that the chances of pulling out any given hypothesis, or even a generalized set of hypotheses are quite low unless we generalise so much as to be saying nothing of any interest.

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edit: I've looked back on what you are saying and here's what I think you mean by x=y+bx = the truth
y = an unevidenced hypothesis
b = an evidenced hypothesisOr something like that?If so then let me work in those terms.You have a pile of paper with every single hypothesis possible written on each one.You have to select as many hypothesis from the pile as you like. You pick up all the ones for which we have evidence for. You put them to one side.So your explanation for the phenomena so far is a bunch of hypothesis which have evidence. We'll call this the scientific account.Then you pull out all the pieces that require evidenced entities but require an unevidenced entity but which we know how to verify but has not been so yet.We'll call this the pile of possible scientific research avenues.So we have collected the scientific account plus the scientific research avenues.We still have a big pile in front of us. What are the chances that an arbitrarily picked piece of paper happens to be true?Pretty low I'd say.Now let's say you went through them reading them. And you read a few that describe some kind of 'divine' non human magical being. Some of them are quite specific. You decide to collect all of them together that meet some criteria of 'godhood'. You declare that amongst this pile is at least one true hypothesis.I say to you - "But there are many more hypotheses left! Why pick out that collection of them? I mean you might be right, but there are so many other hypotheses. Why look over here - I've collected a huge pile of hypotheses that have some kind of 'benevolent planet dwelling beings did it' and over here is the 'secret governmental organisation did it' pile, 'a political group did it' pile over here, 'intradimensional scienists did it' way over there...I've got tons of arbitrarily picked groups of hypotheses piles. The chances its over in yours is pretty low I'd think.In short - you get to remove the 'b's from the hat. We're looking at the 'y'sEdited by Modulous, : latest patch released in response to attempting to understand the argument in front of me.

Hi Modulus,Still problems. Except that in this analogy the blind people are completely unaware of these things call lightwave that seem to appear and dissappear without being detected by normal people. Ghosts, people with precog ability, etc etc.There does seem to be some common elements of claims made by "visionary" people, but they are all subjective experiences with no validation in the blind world reality. They only need to be rare enough that no two get together for your comments to make some sense, assuming that we leave out the idea that lightwaves are known to this blind world.No analogy is perfect, however this one serves to make my point. You can nit-pick the details, but you can't avoid the point that something similar could be going on. Exactly, which is why, if you cannot eliminate the possibility of (b) from any spiritual or religious experience, then picking any one gives you that same (b) result.Your singular card was for a particular god to exist, second prize can be any god can exist, third prize is that there is a spiritual plane outside of normal (blind) human perceptions.We have whole realms of possibilities with string theory and multiple dimensions: what would something from outside our 3D+T perceptions look like? What color are the wavelengths? You have it backwards, and this is just what you have been doing, or close enough to be irrelevant.If you throw out all the (y)'s then all you have is the (b)'s and your chances of getting a (b) == 1.That is your problem.My concern is not with how many different ways "light" can be explained by (blind) people, but in asking the question "does this light exist" - and that is independent of your calculations of pseudo-probabilities. Well, I thought we were discussing religious\spiritual experiences, rather than alien abductions or conspiracy theory experiences. The untested subjective experiences are sorted by what they claim to pertain to, and then studied to see what is common about them.In such a situation it would not make sense to look at other experiences that don't claim to involve religious or spiritual experiences to see if they have a religious or spiritual component in common with the ones purported to be religious or spiritual. Not just humans, but an emergent property that would appear in any species that reaches the level of intelligence we have. Not implanted, an emergent property, like speech, that occurs once a certain level of intelligence is developed. Agreed, however I am not making the claim that it is "highly likely" or even that this possibility is likely to be true. As you note it is speculation about a possible purpose for such an emergent property to serve.Of course, I'm a Deist/Agnostic: I don't claim that my opinion is any more likely to be true than anyone else's.So yes, your massively speculated evidence is just as much based on opinion as mine, and it certainly is not objective evidence, nor is it an entirely valid logical construction, as I've been arguing.This is sufficient to justify weak atheism = atheist agnostic, and not strong atheism where a claim about the likelihood of the truth is made.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : light question

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Thanks xongsmith for joining us. I wasn't aware that we knew of another universe, and had determined that one was created by god/s and the other was a natural formation.Take the analogy of soap bubbles: some occur naturally, some by children blowing bubbles, and some by accidental spilling of soapy mixtures: how can you tell which bubbles are which? And the absence of evidence can be due to lack of cause for making evidence, OR it can be due to not looking in the right place.In the case of the Coelacanths, it was not looking in the right place.Enjoy.

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Oh come on. What I was saying was that if all scientific investigation supports what this Universe would look & behave like if there were ZERO supernatural action in it, then it still wouldnt address your question. It would be a grand version of the Absence of Evidence. I certainly was not saying there was another universe. Although that is possible for another topic. We are talking about this universe, correct?Is it not about searching for the presence of Evidence to support the notion that this Universe is completely devoid of the supernatural?That is, the Presence of Evidence.Consider 4 boxes:on the Theist side we haveBox 1: Evidence that supernatural things exist
Box 2: Absence of Evidence that supernatural things do NOT existon the Atheist side we haveBox 3: Evidence that supernatural things do NOT exist.
Box 4: Absence of Evidence that supernatural things exist.Now, in this EvC group Boxes 1, 2 and 4 have been populated with various posts from the group.I thought you were curious why Box 3 hadnt been populated yet.Isnt that it?Note: Box 2 may be low on count as well. But Box 3 is still empty?

In that case, I'd imagine the blind people would be inclined to believe that there might exist ghosts or angels or some kind of precognitive power. As we know, they've guessed wrong. The correct hypothesis is ESP and they are merely experiencing the things the blind people experience but in a different way. That's what often happens when you pick an unevidenced hypothesis. Something similar is probably going on. People do have experiences where they experience the same things in a different way. That's basically the physicalist hypothesis. The god hypothesis would be where the person is experiencing something different. Yes - I think I tackled that point with the 'piles of god hypotheses' analogy. OK. But that is trivially true. It means nothing. Maybe you mean something different with your ys and bs than I did?I was referring to (b) as an 'evidenced hypothesis'. So, let us say that one hypothesis is 'anomalies in the temporal lobe cause religious experiences by interfering with the parts of the brain associated with speech, comprehension, naming and facial recognition'. Let us assume this is evidenced. We take that out of the hat.We end up with a pile of hypotheses that are evidenced. We all agree that there is evidence to suggest that these hypotheses can explain some religious experiences. We have a pile of unevidenced hypothesis left behind.You pick one (or a pile of ones), and add it to the evidenced pile of (b) declaring - I think there is a true one in this pile (or in this pile I have hypotheses that I think are all true). What are the chances that the pile of new ones are actually correct if we assume there are some true ones out there? All of the hypotheses in the hat are hypotheses that explain religious or spiritual experiences. So yes, the chances of picking up a piece of paper that contains a hypothetical explanation for religious or spiritual experiences is 1. I'm not sure why this means anything interesting. If you agree that they are equally evidenced then I don't see any reason to prefer one or another. To that end, they are all equal and they are many. The chances of picking out the right one is low. So if you say 'I picked the right one without evidence to support my choice', I'll reply "It's unlikely you got it right - look how many other ones you could have picked without evidence to support your choice"I am a weak atheist in an important sense. I see no reason to pick the god hypothesis up out of the pile and give in any better status than any other similar pile. I am an atheist because I do not believe it. I am not an atheists that believes it to be false.Indeed - I act this same way with all hypotheses. I justify choosing not to believe any unevidenced hypotheses is true because it is unlikely that such a hypothesis is true. I justify thinking it is unlikely to be true as already described.The consequence of this is that I don't believe in god.When someone asks you "Do you hold the belief 'a 6-day creating Yahweh with Omphalism created the earth six thousand years ago'?", the answer I'd imagine would be 'No I do not hold that belief {but I don't know if it is true or not}'. Why did you decide that did not hold that belief? How do you justify not believing it? I justify it along the lines of 'you could just make up any old unfalsifiable nonsense and say "It could be true", and you'd be right but the chances are that most such ideas are exactly that: nonsense'