Faith vs Skepticism - Why faith?

Thanks, Briterican, And my reply to bluegenes remains that this is not intended to replace scientific inquiry, as long as that is possible.Rather it is to show that some positions are logically invalid, and thus not likely to lead to future scientific evidence, that the best we can derive from a lack of evidence, is that a lack of contradictory evidence shows that something ("X") [i]may[/y] be true. Assuming that something is "highly unlikely" can lead to short-sightedness, while being a little more open minded might lead to new insights. And I thank you for your gracious words. I can agree with this. In the '60's there were T-shirts that said "god is an absentee landlord" ... so "peace, man."Enjoy.

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xongsmith responds to me:

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It just doesnt have the other cool menacing nuance of swimming deep in the dark sea, lurking there, hidden from us, until some fisherman accidently hoists one aboard. So be it.

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You're still missing the point: You don't see any difference between a process that has proven results and a process that has never had any? The predictive claims of each are to be equally considered?This is the "evidence" that RAZD keeps insisting doesn't exist.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

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Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

RAZD writes:

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As we have seen that "literally mountains of evidence" melts away every time we talk about evidence that god/s do not, or cannot, exist, and that the "scientific evidence (from the fields of cosmology and biology)" etc etc is not a predictor of god/s not being responsible for the "fixed laws" that cause all that evidence to be as it is.

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But it isn't for them to define "god" and then do away with it. It is up to those who claim that god exists to define it and then we can work to see if it there is any evidence supporting its existence. If you can't describe it, there's no basis to insist upon its existence, even as a hypothetical.What are you talking about when you say "god," RAZD?The model works. Why do you demand chocolate sprinkles? Do you have any evidence that they are required?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

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Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

By your definition of "subjective evidence" every conclusion is subjective. Whilst this has some philosophical merit it is rather a moot point in any practical sense. The likelihood of gods being human inventions as opposed to actual entities does not operate in a vacuum of all objective evidence. It operates in the objectively evidenced context of human history, culture and psychology. All of which strongly suggest that gods are human inventions. See Message 499 for more detail on that. Given that science (or indeed any evidence based conclusion) is always tentative to some degree probabilities are innately and inheretly scientific. Absolute certainty of any sort is not. If RAZD is asserting otherwise then he has abandoned one of the founding principles of making rational evidence based conclusions. Amen to that.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Your bewildering obsession with my first ever EvC post made over three years ago does nothing but highlight your inability to counter the arguments acually being made to you, in this thread, in the present day. Frankly it seems a little desperate.But just to clarify for you as it is obviously causing you much distress: Three years + ago in that wholly unrelated thread I was making the generic point that atheists are making evidence based, rather than faith based, arguments and that absolute certainty (i.e. a 7 on the Dawkins scale) is impossible with regard to any inherently undetectable and irrefutable concept. I was attempting to say the following in my own (lesser) words: I suggest you take note of this before using words like "certainty" or "impossible" in your replies to me (or others). I also suggest you take note of it when saying that assessments of probability are unscientific. Nothing could in fact be further from the truth.Have we cleared that little misunderstanding up now? Good. Let's move on to the inconsistencies in you position then. See my next post.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

So with regard to gods we have to provide contradicting evidence that shows that gods do not, or can not exist to justify any scepticism. No assessment of probability is even possible as a result of objective historical evidence that implies human invention of such concepts.But in the case of magical Santa concepts all the rules change. We can simply justify scepticism and assessments of deep improbability by citing the historical evidence in favour of human invention. No contradicting evidence that shows that magical Santas do not, or can not exist is required. No talk of being "impossible" here. No questions asked.Can you explain this blatant inconsistency in your position please? Could you tell me what direct empirical objective evidence you have that contradicts the existence of magical Santa Claus concepts, The Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy? Or are you agnostic towards these concepts? At best you can cite historical and cultural evidence that (very) strongly suggests that these are human inventions raher than real entities. They are magical undetectable beings that are inherently unable to be directly refuted in the ridiculous way you are demanding. Ahhhhh so there is evidence then........? What happened to your much stated mantra that atheism necesarily equates to "absence of evidence is evidence of absence"? And "convincing"....?????? Convincing to who? You? ALL of the available objective evidence indicates that the very concept of the supernatural itself is a human invention that originated for explanatory purposes. NONE of the objective evidence available suggests that there is any reason to think the supernatural actually exists.For more on this see here: Message 499. You certainly have been caught. Caught contradicting yourself.Is atheism based necessarily on "absence of evidence is evidence of absence"? Or is there objective evidence? (Whether you find that objective evidence "convincing" is immaterial to this question).Why is historical evidence regarding the origins of magical Santa concepts or the Easter Bunny enough to justify complete disbelief in the existence of these concepts but a mountain of historical evidence regarding the origin and evolution of god concepts not even remotely worthy of any consideration at all?Please do explain.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : BrevityEdited by Straggler, : No reason given.

RAZD has conceded that there is not, and can never be in any practical sense, an "absence of evidence". But he remains determined to translate all atheistic arguments into statements of logical certitude. Despite the fact that evidence based arguments are necessarily probabilistic in nature. It is all very confused. The accumulated evidence of mankind doesn't abrogate the possibility of the universe having been magicked into existence by pixies, being hatched from the ethereal egg of a celestial chicken, being a matrix style ploy to kep our minds enslaved by evil robots or any other such unevidenced possibility.Why do we give deities any more rational consideration than any of these other possibilties? And doesn't the accumulated evidence of mankind suggest that a natural, as opposed to a supernatural, explanation is more likely as an eventual answer to any question pertaining to reality? Well I don't see why deistic explanations for the origin and nature of the universe are not equally open to such questioning. Why do we not consider the possibility that the universe was formed from the farts of celestial cows? Can we really say that RAZD's deistic claim is any more evidenced or rational?And finally my quote of the moment: Amen to that.Edited by Straggler, : Fix quote formatting

*Blink!*
If you dont know what they are how can you say RAZD is demanding them?If I recall, you said something like "Whatever incompleteness the model may have, I call the missing part chocolate sprinkles." AH here it is:
From Message 471 in this thread: What's wrong with your elegant definition? Looks good to me.

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

Do you consider the existence of as yet undiscovered species of fish to be evidentially equivalent to the existence of gods?

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).

Which is exactly why RAZD's formula is so very very wrong.

What RAZD will do, having described "X" as something in a complete evidential void, is try to substitute god/s or the existence of god/s for "X". He will not establish that god/s or the existence of gods actually is an "X".Now, examine the "1" position of those who claim to know there is a god. If someone claims this, we cannot actually conclusively prove or disprove the claim. Attempting to do so would mean begging the question, and assuming that the existence of gods is an "X" in order to prove that the person cannot know there a god.This is something well known about strong agnosticism, the position from which a "1" or "7" claim is attacked. Weak agnosticism (I do not know whether there are gods or not or I do not know where my sister is right now) just states a fact of personal ignorance. But the strong agnostic claim that no-one knows whether or not there is a god requires evidential support. There could be some old sage in China who knows the secrets of the universe, and who could therefore be a ligitimate "1" or "7".So, we cannot disprove a "1" position. What we can do is use science rather than logic to establish a strong case against the position. This would mean establishing the kind of theory that I've been using. It's not hard to find evidence of spurious claims of knowledge of gods. Two "1" people who claim to know that there are "one true gods" of different discriptions provides this, for example, and we can build up a theory that claims of knowing that there is a god are spurious, and ask the "knowing" people to falsify it. But we cannot prove them wrong, because we cannot assume our conclusion by declaring all gods to be "X"s.So, if you were to claim that you knew there was a god, I would be in a "6" position on your claim, with a scientific theory to back up the view that it is "very improbable". RAZD would be what? A "1" (he knows you cannot know), on the basis that the existence of god/s is an "X". Or a "4" on the basis that he cannot know whether gods are "X"s or not. Then your claim might be an "X" in his view.

Rrhain asks: Who in this thread is insisting that anything get tossed out? Certainly not RAZD! We arent talking to YECs here.As the scientific analysis is brought to bear upon the situation, the unexplained would be expected to melt away into naturalistic phenomena explained by the now expanded Model, as has always happened thus far, in it's self-correcting way. Nothing is getting tossed out.Take for example the excitement caused by this thing, the Voorwerp:http://www.sciencenews.org/...id/33471/title/VoorwerpWHT.jpgSoon there WILL be a naturalistic explanation that everyone will agree on. But speculation had been running wild for awhile there.Suppose something does come along that would require a major change in how we understand the Laws of Physics. How much of a change would be needed to call it a bonified Chocolate Sprinkle, the Real Thing?Arthur C. Clarke is famous for saying a Technology from any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Magic. Au contrere! For people like you & me, we sink down to the 6ish Dawkins scale. The Sample Size and Result drives us that way, along with the fact that the Current Chocolate-Sprinkle-less Model works better than anything else we know.

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

Straggler asks:
NO.
Of course not. I think I threw away the Coelancanthic Ace for the Rrhainian Chocolate Sprinkle Ace, and regretted that I had to do so. It was a poetic visual, inappropriate yes, that I had latched onto first, complete with JAWS soundtrack. Unfortunate.The Ace in the deck that we have never seen, dont have any objective evidence that we will see, but cannot rule out 100% certain.What we can do is observe the track record so far of finding such an Ace. It has been Zero. I think there are some mathematics that can characterize the likelyhood we will ever see it, in terms of statistical confidence, based on the Sample Size in question, that is Positive Evidence for taking a Dawkins 6.0 position. But this would entail computation of probability that RAZD wants to avoid.No, the Coelacanth was not a major extrapolation from the existing Model at all. It was hardly a ripple in the Model, if anything. Scientific evidence of a god would most likely entail a major extrapolation, if not a major course change in the development of the Model - something way beyond any of the changes and expansions to the Model we've seen to date. Way beyond the change from the Ptolemaic system to the Copernican system. Way, way beyond that.** come to think of it, though, encountering a scaly, toothy, sea-wet, flopping live Coelacanthic Ace within what been looking all along like an ordinary deck of ordinary playing cards would be quite something....but that is another day.

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

But why does he want to avoid it? Have you asked yourself that question? In any evidence based argument assessment of probability is just inevitable. It is necessary and wholly unavoidable. There isn't a scientific or any other evidence based conclusion in existence that is not essentially a statement of probability. Even those conclusions that we are all but certain of.RAZD would prefer to deny that there is any objective evidence relevant to the god question at all. In fact he has been doing exactly that for months. If not years. Now that he has been absolutely forced into conceding that objective evidence necessarily exists he is trying to claim that it is irrelevant or "unconvincing". But all human claims operate in the objectively evidenced context of human history, culture and psychology. And all of the objective evidence available strongly implies that gods are human inventions. We can wrangle over the degree of scepticism that is justified by this objective evidence (and no doubt will). But the fact remains that the evidence based and rational conclusion with regard to gods is not agnosticism. Nor is any scepticism merely an unevidenced subjective "opinion". Whatever RAZD and his pseudo-mathematical assertions or multitude of ever changing and arbitrarily defined scales of belief might say.I should make this my signature: Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.