Pseudoskepticism and logic

Well I've asked you what you think the number x is, but you haven't answered. I think it is high, and I can show why. I'm not asserting that 'there are gods' is unverifiable. I'm asserting that the claim 'there are unverifiable agents' is unverifiable. If you are talking about verifiable gods then the argument for or against them might be different. I've been arguing for some time that there is a common set of causes to beliefs in gods and their kith and kin. Is that all you were saying? As for the purpose of a common belief in god - there doesn't need to be one any more than there is a purpose to optical illusion, cancer, our blind spot or any other of a number of 'silly designs'. The evidenced reasons probably lie in evolutionary contingency, 'just good enough' brain design.It is a field under present study, but there are some interesting answers. Hmm. Well I hold that x is very high, possibly infinite. Which is why my view is as it is. I can show my argument as to why it is high. A very well thought out argument. You make an assertion without explaining it and expect it to hold weight? I have not only not done as you say, but I've been saying the exact opposite. I'll take that as a no. I don't have evidence that it isn't. Just like any other of a thousand similar hypotheses. I think that the evidence displays a strong likelihood that there is a common set of causes for these common experiences. OK, so assuming it one is not more likely than another (based on what evidence we currently have), then that means that either one is equally likely to be true. If we are only considering the two possibilities and we assume one of them is true - the probability you pick the right one is 50%I put it to you that there are a lot more than two possibilities and that this means the probability is likewise lower. Yes, they could. Or they could not. And we still don't end up any wiser as to what that truth is (it might be something trivial like 'there is more to the universe than we know'). What we do agree on is that there is a common set of causes behind these phenomena. It is an argument from incredulity in that I am explaining why I am incredulous to the god hypothesis. I am not arguing that the god hypothesis just feels personally improbable I can't see how it could be true therefore it isn't. I am arguing that I have a set of reasons for believing that the god hypothesis is improbable, I've laid them forward for examination. If you think that the reasons I have put forward would categorise me as a pseudoskeptic, then go right ahead. I don't feel that it is a problem to be a pseudoskeptic by those standards. If however, you see a specific problem, then speak out.I have addressed the common elements to religious experience on a number of occasions, and it is embedded into the argument. Do I need to repeat it? Are you going to continue dismissing my argument with skeptical sounding catchphrases and by ignoring the important parts or are you going to show that your view of my argument is true?

Mod's argument in brief

1. There are common experiences.
2. Almost certainly as a result of common causes.
3. What people believe is the cause, and what the cause is are separate things.
4. There is evidence for some of the proposed causes.
5. There is no evidence for many many possible causes including those that have been proposed and those that have not yet been proposed.
6. The chances that you picked the right set of causes from the evidence-less pile is low given the size of the superset.Note: I've tried to generalise this argument, it isn't just about gods or chi or ghosts. It is about any experience that is common such as optical illusions etcIf at any time you care to address this argument I'll be keen to hear your view. I am still unsure which of the above statements you disagree with and why.

I hope so, it feels like a roundabout. I haven't shown it, because it clearly isn't so. I certainly haven't been operating under that assumption. Several times I have suggested that the chances of correctly picking out a subset of entities from the superset are low. The case where there are only two options, and only one of them is correct - is used for illustrative purposes. The description causes could trivially be modified so that they are mutually exclusive in case you were thinking that mutual exclusivity was all that important. Yep - and a person can pick any concept and find it conceivable. I'm not sure why that is an interesting thing to say.We of course, cannot rule out the possibility that one leaf is both green and contains no chlorophyll. It might be that some other molecule operates in the (as yet undiscovered) species of tree it belongs to. It might be that it is naturally white or some other colour and it was painted green by somebody. It might be that it is actually red but for some reason the crazy moon beings are using their blasted ray to make humans perceive that single leaf as 'green'.But I'd be inclined to think that any given leaf is probably green because of chlorophyll rather than crazy moon beings, despite not having a shred of evidence that rules out crazy moon beings. The same argument applies. There need be no more reason that the reason we are so compellingly fooled by optical illusions, or why we have a blind spot or any other 'silly design'. There might be more reasons - maybe it helped build larger communities in our evolutionary history. I suspect it might be like asking why do we enjoy cake or music or any art, why do we laugh/smile or have any definable 'pleasures'. I've not suggested that it was a refutation of all experiences for one single second. You are not discussing my argument. Try again. Why would I? I do not believe that it is the case - it is not my argument. Yep, and they often report objects which can be weighed, touched, and measured. If you tell me you experience an optical illusion moving, even if everybody else reports they see it to. That does not mean that the picture is moving, "What people believe is the cause, and what the cause is are separate things." Not at all. 4 + 5 actually says that there are a set of possible causes. Some of which we have evidence for (4) and some of which we do not (5) and that there are many members of the set described by (5). You are making it out to be far more extreme than the words I am using, almost like you think I'm a hardline extreme atheist and so you are trying to interpret my words as if I was trying prove the statement 'God does not exist' rather than explain the position 'I think a god is unlikely to exist'. Almost like. Of course, that isn't true. But then again, it is possible. Correct. But I have at no point argued that god is not a real or existent entity. You misunderstood my points 4 and 5 and have not tackled point 6.Now do you accept that there are some causes of religious experience for which we do have evidence for? If so, you agree with point 4.Do you accept that there is a possibility for some cause for which we do not have evidence for (I assume you do) AND that there are many such possible causes? If so, you agree with point 5. I think you think my claim is a negative hypothesis or claim. So I've done that - your criticisms seem to be levelled at an entirely different argument that I'm not actually making. Disagree. There are two claims being made here:
1) I don't know if it's true.
It might seem trivial, but it is a claim.2) There is insufficient evidence.
This is a negative claim, so by your standards it requires evidence. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. I thought we all agreed on these points a long time ago, and we were trying to justify the Dawkinsian '6' rather than the '1's and '7's.Edited by Modulous, : correcting grammar, expanding a few points.

Now you are getting silly. It's like you aren't even following the immediate discussion. Do you honestly think it is not clear that any two such concepts are not necessairily mutually exclusive? Your entire argument seems at least partially based on the premise that that they are not mutually exclusive possibilities for unverified entity's sake!It seems clear you have completely misunderstood what I was saying. (5) is the set of all possible mechanisms for which we have no evidence. (5) includes god. If you want to argue that I made up god, then I guess the argument is over. For evidence of this you present me talking about something entirely different: Gibberish. How you can so tragically misunderstand my position is shocking.The possibilities are not mutually exclusive. Several of them might be true at the same time!This is clearly true.There are common elements, which are probably explained by common causesYou have have so badly misunderstood my argument you are trying to make out I am saying the EXACT opposite of what I am actually arguing. Instead of trying to show my argument fails - how about we just concentrate on you understanding what it is? It is very very simple - even if you happen to disagree with it.I won't defend your version of my argument because it is gibberish. I'll defend my argument when you get round to understanding it. Hopefully it is now clear that my reference to it clearly not being so was in reference to you thinking I was claiming one thing which I wasn't because it clearly wasn't true. And we both agree it isn't true. How you interpreted to mean that is beyond me. So we agree that it is a claim for which there is a burden of evidence required? Whether the burden had been met was not the question you asked me. Yes, which I have been debating with you for some time. Did you think we were debating something else? It would explain a great deal.Now that you are on the same page, explain to me why my argument doesn't support the position that god is unlikely, thanks. The correct response to the Creationist claim is to say that nobody supposes that amino acids randomly bump into each other and out poofs a complex organism. That there are a sequence of probable, perhaps inevitable steps that occur.And yes - if a single god exists then the probability that a god exists is 1 - this isn't curious at all The same can be said of the IPU, to those that think it is unlikely - yes? Based on the evidence we have to hand, we cannot say this at this time. As you seemed to concede - the probability there is a god is not greater or lesser than moon rays. Indeed there are many possibilities with equal grounding and no way to tell which is more likely. Let's consider a specific (and real) case.I have a religious experience.It might be that it was caused by an entity or process for which we have evidence (4).It might be that it was caused by an entity or process for which there is no evidence (5).Do you agree that this just about covers it?Great.OK. So let's assume that it actually turns out to be (5).Now, the question is - which entity or process was it?We don't know, right? But if we decide to pick one, or a collection
of processes and I was to ask you - "What is the probability the one I picked is right?" what is the answer? It might be difficult to give an exact answer, but I think it is evident that it is low.There are many many possible processes/entities that fall into (5). I am fairly sure that there are plenty of things in the (5) which will one day by (4). It might even be the case (and probably is) that there are some things in (5) that are real and they will stay in (5) throughout the entirety of human history.It is a huge set.So, let us suppose that I think the experience was given to me by ultimately malevolent 'demonic' figures who want to tease me with temporary glimpses of greatness only to have them snatched away.This is possible.It is one many many possibilities.If we assume of those many possibilities is true - what are the chances that the 'taunting demons' hypothesis happens to be the right one (or among the right ones)? I would say it was many to 1 against.

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.

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.

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 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.

---

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.

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'

It makes more sense in the context of the sighted flashes and blind people conversation. If you are blind and have a vision flash of your mother you are experiencing the same entity as everybody else (your mother) in a different way (through sight).God, on the other hand, is not your mother. So 'blind' people (those without religious experiences) don't experience god in the same way blind people experience their mothers. Yes - I'm confused on these too. I've asked RAZD for clarification a few times so I'm confident we'll learn what they mean. I think it is a result of RAZD and I being on different pages. Yes - I said as much in Message 410:

quote:

---

Chance of it being YHWH is very low because YHWH is a very specific entity being described (brushing aside difficulties in bringing conflicting ideas in the bible to one side).
There is a higher chance that it is an invisible pink unicorn (which has less stated properties as YHWH)
There is a higher chance that it is at least one invisible pink unicorn (since that includes one and many IPUs which contains more members than pure monounicornism)
Higher still that it is at least one invisible unicorn (all colours of invisible unicorn permitted),

​

Higher still that it is at least one invisible equine being
Higher that it is at least one intangible equine being
Higher that it is at least one unverifiable equine being
Higher that it is at least one unverifiable mammal-like being
"" "" unverifiable divine being.
"" "" "" entity.
"" "" entity.

---

and I think I tackled this argument in my 'piles of hypotheses' argument introduced in Message 461.

I assume you haven't read The God Delusion and you don't understand the scale or its application. I don't think Dawkins is to blame for you not having read his book and thus not understanding how to apply his scale or the justification for including probability statements at all.You have identified yourself as essentially a PAP - and you are defending the PAP position. The scale isn't intended to reflect PAP positions, but TAP positions. As Dawkins explains, the PAP's position is that one

quote:

---

...cannot say anything, one way or the other, about whether or not God exists

---

and he attempts to defend the contrary position that

quote:

---

...the God question is not in principle and forever outside the remit of science

---

And, like other scientific decisions it might be possible to assign a degree of likelihood to various hypotheses (It might be a toss up between disease and asteroids for certain extinction events (A "4", say) but I think we can all comfortably say it is incredibly unlikely time travelling Mormons created large prehistoric extinction events).

So by (b) being a true experience I take it to mean that the question is 'is the experiencer's reported understanding of (b) an accurate explanation for the cause of the experience?'I point out in reply that the exeriencer's reported understanding of (b) is an example of (y). One example among many. Why is that explanation more likely than another equally evidenced explanation? If it isn't then given they are equiprobable - how does this not lead to the issue I was raising?

Your words. You claim to be saying that you are not talking about someone who is 50/50 as being a true skeptic. You seem to be more inclined towards someone who is a PAP (ie., you define god as unknowable therefore the rational position is Permanently Agnostic in Principle). A TAP might also reject the probabilities, of course. The entire purpose of the scale was about those that think it possible to assign relative probabilities to propositions - and they are all TAPs. My evidence is that the god hypothesis is equally evidenced and unfalsified as any of a potentially infinitely large pile of other hypotheses and that there is no way to discriminate between any of them. It is therefore incredibly unlikely that guessing one (or using any method to pick for that matter) will strike it lucky.You have seemingly conceded that there are large numbers of such hypotheses.
You have seemingly conceded that the god hypothesis is amongst them.That is the evidence.Unless there is some evidence to give any one of those hypotheses some preponderance...then I regard any one of them as equally unlikely. And as such I withhold the belief that they are true.I predicted you would not find the argument compelling - otherwise you would already have agreed with it. I hope you are able, at least, to understand it.Is there agreement on this proposition though? That all unevidenced unfalsified hypotheses should be treated equally, and that belief in any one of them should be withheld until sufficient evidence comes in?

Agreed. Correct. You keep saying this like I've disagreed with you about it or something. It's quite odd. Which question, exactly, does it not answer? Yes, they could. And both the mechanical explanation and CIA poisoning could be occurring at the same time. This is perfectly in line with the argument I'm making - do you think it isn't? Indeed. So - of all the possible things you could be experiencing (moon rays, CIA poison, aliens, Cartesian demons...) what are the chances any one of them is right if we assume that one of them is? I mean - we are going to have to essentially guess here, and you've guessed that god is preferred. I think your guess is no better than rolling a die, or interpreting entrails. Could you explain why this is not the case, if your choice is better? And then you go on to answer it 'no.' You suggest that you do not hold that omphalism is true and you suggest that you also do not hold that omphalism is false.The question is - why do you decide to not hold that it is true? Why does it matter that there is no evidence? It could be true, right?

I've never claimed that either X or notX is true and as such I didn't realize it was of import to this debate.However, unless the person is lying - the religious experience is definitely real. The question at hand is 'what caused it?'. We can dream up any number of possible explanations, yes? Agreed, I don't know. Like I've been saying for some time now. No. No no no no no. No! That is not the case, by definition.We have a pile of things that explain religious experiences for which there is evidence.There is no evidence that god caused any religious experience.So that hypothesis isn't in that pile.God is over there -> On that huge pile of hypotheses for which we have no evidence.Somebody picks up all the hypotheses that are consistent with 'god done it' and creates a third pile. This pile might contain a true hypothesis. But so might any other arbitrary pile of hypotheses. The chances that your arbitrary picking method managed to fortuitously pick one that is true is very low. Really? Looks like it to me - oh well I've been wrong before. RAZD holds the belief that omphalism is true.Maybe I should have picked another example: Or do you hold them all to be true?Of course - I anticipate you'll object. That's not true - read it again you'll say. And I'll say 'Oh, sorry so you don't hold the belief that omphalism is true'.One state of affairs or another must be true. So which is it?Is RAZD an omphalism believer?
Or has he withheld belief in omphalism because of the lack of evidence?
Or is the some other reason RAZD does not believe that omphalism is true?I am not asking if RAZD believes omphalism to be false.
I am not asking RAZD if he thinks it can be known.
I am not asking RAZD if he thinks he does know.
I am merely asking RAZD if he has accepted a belief in omphalism. Does RAZD hold the belief that omphalism is true? Is RAZD a '2' on Omphalism?

Word it how you like. I'm almost certain the answer is 'no'. The follow up question remains: Why not?

There are significant problems in this thread that require significant work to get around. Unfortunately, even the basic fundamental issues were difficult to even explain. So let's summarize as best as I can where things went.

Definitional problems

If we are trying to decide whether something exists, before an agreement can reasonably be expected to be reached - all parties in question should agree on what it is they are speaking about. Agnosticism isn't the rational position to take on an undefined object - ignosticism is the correct response.It seems RAZD wants us to talk about an entity whose key defining feature is that it unknowable. Which leads us to the question - how can we know that the entity in question has this property?

Possibility

Many times during this thread the fact that a god might exist has been described as 'a possibility'. This is a positive claim, for which no evidence has been presented.Just because we are not able to rule out the mostly undefined entity in question, this does not necessarily equate to it being 'possible'. By RAZD's own rules we should remain agnostic on the subject of whether God's existence is even possible.

Evidence lacking

But let's assume we know what we are talking about. And let's assume it's existence is possible. It seems, as a matter of convenience, we are all happy to accept that there is no evidence that supports the claim that god exists.But why is evidence of any import?I asked RAZD, but he did not answer - instead focussing on debating a question which we both already knew his answer to (and his final post to me in this thread was him answering the question in the way I had already anticipated (almost)), but not answering the core question crouching behind this question.Why do we care about evidence?As RAZD admits, one unfalsifiable and unverified 'possibility' is as likely as any other (that is: one possiblity is not 'more likely' than any other (Message 430): I will return to this point.

Preponderance of the evidence

Another issue is that there are some explanations for some phenomena attributed to god (eg religious experiences) that are entirely mundane.There exists no evidence that any of these experiences have actually occurred as a result of god.If I see people playing a ball game in the street, then I see damage to my greenhouse, then I see that the people have all stopped playing their ball game. One possible explanation is that the ball caused the damage to my greenhouse and the ball players retrieved their ball and scarpered.Another possibility is malicious greenhouse orcs came along and scared the ball players away, broke a pane of glass in my greenhouse and then left no other evidence of their existence.There is no evidence against the orcs - but there is evidence in favour of a ball game mishap. Indeed - even without seeing the ball game I would suggest that a ball game mishap is a more likely explanation for greenhouse damage than marauding orcs.RAZD's epistemology would have us remain agnostic with regards to what happened. Indeed - no matter how much evidence piled up in favour of the ball damage hypothesis, even if the evidence in favour of it was beyond reasonable doubt...RAZD would still consider any unfalsifiable hypothesis as equally reasonable and since it cannot be ruled out beyond a reasonable doubt (by definition) RAZD finds himself unable to know anything.Of course, this isn't the case since RAZD doesn't take this position as seriously as he seems to indicate (hence why he is inclined to believe in god (and omphalism)).

Beyond reasonable doubt

Now we know RAZD's epistemology renders him strictly unable to say that he knows anything - I'm comfortable in rejecting it as useless.So - to answer the question: Why do we like evidence so much?Let us say that two people have been arrested for breaking my greenhouse. And let us say that there is equal amounts of evidence to support the claim that either one of them is guilty. Let us say that two police officers are talking. One of them says: I reckon A did it.He might be right. It is certainly possible.But he can't know if he is right. He can't verify his claim. In reality it could be either one so he has a 50% chance of having got it right.Now let us consider what happens when we have three suspects. The chances of being right are about 33%. With four suspects the chances are 25%. I'd say already that with a mere four equally evidenced suspects the chances of us correctly identifying the suspect is getting 'low'.It is my view that when it comes to unfalsifiable unverifiable claims - there are potentially infinite equally evidenced suspects.So the chances of correctly identifying which one is correct is quite low. And this assumes that one of them did it.Evidence allows us to increase our confidence in a hypothesis from a base line of essentially 'highly unlikely' to 'a little more likely' all the way to 'very likely'.

An argument that wasn't being made

If we return to the two suspects situation. RAZD seemed to want to raise some points against an argument that wasn't being made.He suggests that it could be one or both of the suspects and marauding orcs. OR maybe, the marauding orcs' modus operandi is to influence ball game players to aim their ball at the greenhouse without even knowing it!This is a clever attempt to distract from the point, and RAZD managed to confuse the issue with his x=y+b talk, using his own personal meanings for the letters which took some time to establish.Yes - the orcs could have influenced the ballplayers to have done it. But so could CIA poisoning, god or any other unfalsifiable/unverifiable entity/process.We have evidence that ball players can cause the damage.
We have evidence that one of these particular ball players might have been involved in some of the damgae.
There may be other ballplayers responsible (and there does exist evidence that other ballplayers exist)
We have no evidence for god/undetectable CIA plots/unfalsifiable orcs/moon rays etc etc.So we stand in front of the gods, the plots, the orcs and the rays. They all have an equal amount of evidence. Before we can add them to the 'things which we think were involved in the greenhouse damage' pile we need to have evidence to elevate them to at least the same kind of level as we have for the ballplayers.Until then - they're all 'equally likely' and without any evidence, that likelihood is pretty low.

Illusions

The fact is that we have no direct access to reality. We have only our brain. Our brain takes meaningless information and gives is meaning. The purpose of the brain is to create meaning from information. It is not only very good at this, it is excellent at it. It is eager to create meaning from just about any information.When light hits our eyes - it is a tumble of meaningless information. The brain sorts through this information and literally makes sense out of it - using context as a vital clue. It expects that objects in shadow will be duller than they are so we perceived such objects as being brighter than reality (hence why optical illusions with shadows are possible). Indeed - what we see from the size of the moon to motion to colours is highly dependent on context.What we see - is not what is but what our brain has interpreted as being the case.As such - our default position should be that anything that we perceive which cannot be verified independly of our brain - should be treated as highly suspect. To hearken back to the OP, as a possible 'artefact' of the brain's 'eagerness' to create meaning from inputs.

Claims of artefacts

I am not claiming that any given religious experience can be defninitely claimed to have been the result of an over eager brain - or a brain hiccup or whatever. If I was to say that - the burden of evidence as Truzzi says, is on me.I can however, claim that the measuring equipment is problematic and that as such we shouldn't rely on it without independent confirmation. There is evidence for this claim.There is evidence that we can imagine as many hypotheses' as we like - we seem very good at it. There are probably numerous hypothesis that we can't imagine but which we cannot rule out.The preponderance of the evidence is that the brain is making meaning out of stimuli for which it cannot otherwise make sense.Nobody here is claming that any specified religious experience was as a result of x or y. Or Not x or not y. So Truzzi's negative claims require evidence doesn't apply - despite RAZD's insistence that it does.I do make an epistemological claim about why we don't believe claims that are evidentially identical to the most ludicrous made up unfalsifiable nonsense one can dream up and that is because of the unlikelihood of any specified hypothesis being true as described by myself in this thread ad nauseum.The only get around for this is if one picks the most general unspecified 'thingy' to discuss.

Omphalism redux

As RAZD has come to realize that his epistemology means that he cannot know anything. That has (surprisingly) left him pondering Omphalism in a serious tone:

quote:

---

The breakpoint could be the formation of the universe (results in deism), it could be 6000 years ago (results in YEC earth, but still with flood problems) or it could be last thursday. We don't know....you could put me down as a weak "3" - weak theistic agnostic - at most. Certainly not a 2.

---

For clarity, position 3 is, "I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe".I think that sums it up on its own, really.