Faith vs Skepticism - Why faith?

The great Wikipedia has a pretty good entry on Epistemology -> Epistemology - WikipediaThe most humourous part of the above exchange to me was You can't claim that you "do" know YET because you haven't been given the details to which the answer "I DO KNOW" or "I DO NOT KNOW" could be applied.You run the risk, CS, of infinite regression here it seems. The logical extension of your arguments (to my thinking anyway) is that you can never really "know" anything, since everything is predicated on another piece of knowledge. My head spins. Maybe I misunderinterpreted (Bushism). The ground between knowing and not knowing has many names in my view:Suspicion, idea, hypothesis, inkling, hunch, guess, impression, notion.Fill in the blank of the following sentence with any of those words:"I don't know for sure but I have a(n) _________ on the matter."The resultant sentence is representative of a state somewhere between "not knowing" and "knowing".Edited by Briterican, : No reason given.

Thanks for your comments and thank your for the welcome into the fray.If I had to put those three definitions in order of "logic", I would place them in this order:

• Logical: Agnostic - although in my personal opinion, a part of this definition is not accurate (the part stating that there is no evidence that God/s do not exist). I appreciate that many people feel this way and I think there is logic in the opinion.
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• Logical: Athiest - (see below)*
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• Not logical: Theist - I disagree with the first part (there is no evidence God/s do not exist), and I believe the second part is an amazingly ill-informed leap. (i.e. lets just go believe in some gods why don't we! If we don't like the ones we have to choose from, we can make some more up!).

I would expand on your definition of atheist, at least in the sense that I consider myself an atheist, as follows. My modification is italicised. Defined in that fashion, I would rank atheism above agnosticism in logical terms.With regard to things being on "equal footing", we need to be talking about probabilities here. Someone could tell me that Zeus is in the heavens shooting lightning bolts at bad people. I cannot disprove this, and I can never say "all the evidence is in", but I can say that I have reason to suspect this proposition as highly improbable. As Dawkins points out with reference to "tooth fairy agnostic", all such notions work on probability rather than certainty. I am pretty sure the tooth fairy doesn't exist, but I cannot say with absolute certitude that this is the case. However, this does NOT mean that the probability of the tooth fairy's existence is 50/50 or "on all fours" with the probability of its non-existence.Edited by Briterican, : Revision revision revision.

The sentence is "I don't know for sure but..."Why the need to make everything black or white, yes or no, on or off? You say "You simply cannot know if an undefined concept exists or not." I'm just not sure where you're headed with this.If I might stick to the issue of the ground between "not knowing" and "knowing" - do you really insist that there is no in-between?When you are born you "don't know" how to walk. At some point you "DO know" how to walk - but you didn't just switch from one to the other. You moved along a gradual slope leading from "not knowing" to "knowing".I'm not going to argue semantics, but to break knowledge down to a binary level (yes or no) seems to ignore the gradual development of knowledge both within an individual, and within our species as a whole.Edit - I think I might be making a mistake referenced on the Wikipedia page for Epistemology in that I have used a "knowing-how" example, rather than a "knowing-that" example. If you comment is specific to "knowing-that", then I can accept the notion that this could break down to a yes/no situation, but is it not the conjecture that happens subsequent to the acquisition of any piece of knowledge that leads to the attaining of more knowledge? And thus, can these digital bits of knowledge be added up into bytes, and thus the rise from bits to bytes represents the gradual curve of knowledge?Edited by Briterican, : No reason given.

Apologies that I have not replied. You have given this topic a great deal of input for which I am grateful, even if I don't fully agree with some of what you've said.Although it might be logical to say that: But "possibility" carries with it an element of probability. It is "possible" that the keyboard I am typing on right now will suddenly metamorphose into a butterfly and fly off not allowing me to finish this senten........" (crap where'd my keyboard go?). HOWEVER, the probability of this is incredibly low. I base that probability estimate on the fact that there has never been a recorded incident of this occurring in the history of keyboards.In the same vein of thought, I consider the probability that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe as being infinitesimally small, though I have no basis on which I can flatly announce that probability to be zero. Therefore, I find it unrealistic to come to the conclusion that there is a 50% probabillty that he exists and a 50% probability that he doesn't - i.e. the two possiblities (FSM exists / FSM does not exist) are NOT on equal footing. I consider the probability that the FSM does NOT exist to be dramatically greater than the probability that he does exist.Replace FSM in the above argument with whatever flavour of God you like, and (in my opinion) the argument still holds true.

It is this evidence that sways me to a 6 on Dawkins's scale, which you've criticised as flawed but nonetheless referenced often. There is no personal opinion involved. I base my probability estimate on two things:

• The available evidence from the fields of cosmology and biology support a universe that moves forward on fixed laws without intervention from a controlling agent.
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• There is no recorded evidence of the existence of the FSM or any evidence to support the contention that he created the universe last Thursday (again, substitute the god(s) of your choice).

I don't think I'm arguing with your mathematics, and I agree that possibility makes no judgment of likelihood. If your argument addresses only possibility, and not probabilty, then I suspect your maths follow. But I don't believe you can apply this sort of binary logic to the ideas of theist/atheist/agnostic. I am woefully underequipped to argue with you on the level of mathematics, but I feel as though probability theory is being left out altogether in the discussion, whereas it makes sense to me for it to play a prominent role.There is a possibilty that God exists. That leads you to the conclusion that there are only two possible states: True and False. You therefore aver that these two possible states are equally likely. It is the coin flipping argument above. If, however, I had empirical evidence that the coin had a minor flaw resulting in an imbalance causing it to land on heads more often than tails, it would be logical for me to bet on heads. I could still lose, but probability would be on my side. It is in this way that scientific evidence (from the fields of cosmology and biology) has tipped the balance so that someone arguing from a position of skepticism does so on a firmer foundation than those arguing from a position of faith.

This is a good summation of how I feel about your mathematics. They look great on paper, and your elimination of probability from the equation makes everything fall into place neatly, but doesn't really move us any closer to reality. Having said that, I realise that is not your intention, and that your intention has been to show that agnostic is the position most defensible in terms of logic, to which I feel that you have successsfully presented a viewpoint that I cannot disagree with, in the terms it is presented. Fair point, at least in terms of the ultimate origin question. I DO feel strongly that science demonstrates that these fixed laws hold firm and are not subject to the whimsical fancy of "miracles". Where the faithful see a miracle, many of us see a missing or inadequate explanation. Although the accumulated evidence of mankind does not abrogate the possibility of a divine creator having kicked off the whole process in the first instance, I feel strongly that the same evidence DOES strongly indicate that said creator is no longer "on the scene", guiding everything like the ultimate choreographer. Childish? Possibly, but no more so than scriptures themselves in their depictions of a jealous God's tantrums (usually resulting in genocide).
Mockery? Good That's the meaning I intend. I am confident that the mocking of ridiculous origin myths using equally ridiculous made-up origin myths is a good way to get believers to take a step back and evaluate their own reasons for believing.Edited by Briterican, : No reason given.

This addresses an important aspect that isn't reflected in the possibility based argument put forward by RAZD and mirrors my opinion that people arguing from an evidence-based position are on firmer logical ground than those arguing from a faith-based position: Faith vs Skepticism - I vote Skepticism. I think you and I agree. Unfortunately, "more likely" and "firmer logical ground" don't fit into RAZD's formula.I'm interested in the deist viewpoint only in the sense that I feel like it is incomplete. Although willing to accept that the universe moves forward on fixed laws, they leap away from naturalistic explanations only at the moment of origin... I ask, why? To their credit, they don't seem to get bogged down in too many details about the Supreme Being, only that there is/was one (I hope RAZD will set me straight if I got my notion of Deist wrong).