Omphalism

Your proclamations of doubt and your denial of the validity of relative likelihood seem contradictory. So you don't think that the empirical conclusion is more likely to be correct than the Last Thursday conclusion? Then in what sense do you "doubt it"?So you don't think the IPU is more likely to not exist than to exist? Then in what sense do you "doubt it"? Only if you assume that Last Thursdayism isn't true. On what basis do you make that assumption? Your claims of doubt, confidence and agnosticism seem contradictory.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Remember I am a biblical omphalist in this discussion. I have faith in the bible. I advocate that my omphalism is as valid as your empiricism. It strikes me that if you "cannot tell" then your confidence in the empirical conclusion ragarding the age of the Earth and doubt of Last Thursdayism, or biblical omphalism, is simply subjective world view and nothing more. Like you said "How can I tell?"That is precisely my point. How can you tell? Hmmm. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence? And Last Thursdayism doesn't have an identical contextual history? Why are you agnostic to Last Thursdayism but not agnostic to equally irrefutable notions of the unable to intervene in our universe IPU?Please explain.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Yes it's frustrating when people advocate agnosticism to something purely on the basis that it is irrefutable regardless of any other considerations. Welcome to my world (removing my biblical omphalist hat for one moment). Unless you accept biblical evidence this is an impossible request. The fact that you don't accept biblical evidence is not my problem. The fact that you claim the validity of empirical evidence whilst claiming not to know whether the entire universe was created last Thursday IS your problem. It is logically unjustifiable. You misunderstand. I believe in biblical omphalism on faith. My argument is that your empirical claim is no more valid than mine. You show me the data and then tell me why you think it is even valid. Of course. Why did you ever think otherwise? You seem as agnostic to Last Thusrdaysim and the IPU as that nutjob atheistic Straggler who denies the valid belief in any of these concepts beyond the logically possible. How come? The lack of absolute certainty is something that none of the atheists you have been arguing with for years would disagree with.The question here is why are you atheistic towards some of the concepts under discusssion whilst opposing those atheists who denounce all such equally unfalsifiable claims as "unlikley"?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Has it even occurred to you that the requirement that a method of knowing produce results that are empirically verifiable before it can be rendered reliable is a practical consideration based on the limitation of only being able to perceive the world by means of our empirical senses? If a method of knowing never produces any conclusions that can be verified as correct in practise then on what basis can you have any confidence at all in the reliability of any conclusions derived from that method of knowing more generally?You say I have attempted to polarise debate. But this is because I am attempting to show you that your superficially oh so moderate and reasonable claims of agnosticism are in fact a product of very contradictory thinking. On one hand you claim confidence in empirical conclusions but on the other you claim absolute agnosticism to completely contradictory conclusions. Purely on the basis that they are unfalsifiable and unknowable. For example how can you be confident that the Earth has existed for billions of years whilst simultaneously stating that you have absolutely no belief either way as to whether or not the Earth was omphamistically zapped into existence less than 10,000 years ago? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t add up. You, like others here, seem to have entrenched yourself into believing as an absolute and incontrovertible logical truth that if a specific claim is un-evidenced and un-falsifiable then the only option is complete and utter how can we ever have any idea at all agnosticism. You also seem to have fallen into the trap of assuming that anyone who challenges this inconvertible and self evident truth must be doing so on the basis of a woefully imbecilic tautological argument. But the bottom line here is that under scrutiny it is your assumptions and your thinking that just do not add up.No we cannot say with complete certainty that the world wasn’t omphamistically created Last Thursday. Or even 5 minutes ago. But so what? If we are agnostic towards everything where absolute certainty is impossible then there really isn’t much that we are not agnostic towards is there? Semantics. You can have more confidence in the conclusions of one epistemology than another. In that sense you have more confidence in that particular epistemology. There is presumably a reason why you have more confidence in the empirical conclusion regarding the age of the Earth than you do biblical omphalist conclusions regarding this same matter. I have simply repeatedly asked you what that reasoning is. Don't play dum. Yes without mentioning any other conclusion as one that you have any confidence in. But yes - Your ongoing ambiguity has been noted.Or are you seriously going to proclaim that you are equally agnostic to all conclusions regardless of the method of knowing deployed? That you know nothing at all with any confidence at all? Because that is the logical end-point of where you are heading here. What is being questioned is the basis of the omphalistic claim. On what basis is the omphaistic claim being made? Why would we have any confidence in that conclusion at all?And since when did adding a self verifying component to a concept already designed to be unknowable and unfalsifiable warrant it with immunity from scepticism? Blessed are those who believe but do not see. And the Immaterial Pink Unicorn (in a malicious twist of irony) reveals herself only to disbelieving atheists when they are in the process of debunking the existence of deities thus meaning that every atheistic reference to the IPU is in fact evidence of the actual existence of the IPU. And so on and so forth. So what? But why might that be considered necessary? Crazed empiricist zealotry on my part? Or something more justifiable? Have you ever asked yourself that question? No? Then I would suggest that you are the one demonstrating blinkered thinking here. Not me.How can one practically demonstrate reliability unless a method of knowing produces conclusions that are detectable and verifiable by others? The fact that we are only able to detect, and thus verify, empirical conclusions is entirely a practical consequence of our sensory limitations. Which part of this are you not understanding? No. I am asking you on what practical basis you are differerentiating conclusions derived from whatever alternative epistemologies you are talking about from "fantasy or fairy tales...."imagination or delusion"?But you won't say what epistemologies you are talking about or why you consider them a remotely reliable basis for making conclusions. More ambiguity. More evasiveness. Can they? Or do they believe that they can? How do we, or indeed they, know with any even vague sense of reliability? Isn't this just a case of entirely subjective personal conviction? Faith by any other name. And why should I be agnostic to something just because somebody else has faith that it is true? What alterative method of establishing reliability are you proposing? What epistemologies are you talking about? Beyond simply citing belief as evidence upon which to justify belief? Which is what you are indirectly doing here whether you fully realise it or not. OK. Shoot. What non-empirical form of evidence are you advocating and why do you think it results in conclusions that are remotely reliable? Enlighten me. I don't demand it be empirical. I am asking that an epistemology result in verifiable conclusions. If your methods of knowing are incapable of ever producing conclusions that anyone can verify for purely practical reasons then - Yes you do indeed have a problem demonstrating reliability.But don't make me out to be the zealot because you are unable to face that problem with whatever alternative methods of knowing it is you are refusing to specify here.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

In my biblical omphalist mode I am indeed advocating that you should be agnostic towards biblical omphalism. You cannot falsfy it and empiricism, whilst a useful practical tool, is not a path to truth.When everything, including the evidence you cite as showing that Last Thursdayism and biblical omphalism are false, could have been omphamistically created less than 5 minutes ago (5 Minutes AgoIsm) without empirical evidence being able to show us any different then one has to admit that any confidence in empirical conclusions must be faith based. No?So I have faith in my bible and you have faith in your empirical "evidence". But neither one is less faith based than the other. I am just not in denial whereas you are. "I doubt it" seems like a statement of relative likelihood to me. Do you not consider the empirical conclusion regarding the age of the Earth as more likely to be true than the Last Thursdayist conclusion?

I remain utterly bewildered as to why you think that omphalism specifically is any more worthy of agnosticism than any of the other near infinite entirely unknowable irrefutable unfalsifiable and self verifying scenarios, entities or beings that either of us could conjure up.I also remain absolutely bewildered as to how you think it is possible to demonstrate the reliability of a method of knowing that is incapable of making conclusions that can be perceived. Yes I realise that believers believe that their empirically unknowable conclusions are non-empirically evidenced. The problem I have with this is how? I asked this in Immaterial "Evidence" and nobody has ever been able to give me an answer. It ultimately amounts to unconsciously citing belief as evidence upon which to justify belief. Which is of course circular. Why do people of faith even try to go down the route of claiming such poor forms of evidence? So the conclusion that the Earth has existed for billions of years is just an internally epistemologically consistent conclusion no more or less valid than the biblical omphalist conclusion that it is less than 10,000 years old? Or indeed any other age based on any other internally consistent epistemology (e.g. Last Thursdayism on the basis of reading sheeps entrails)? That is the logical consequence of what you are saying. That there is no correct answer as to the age of the Earth. It simply depends on ones wholly subjective epistemological preference. Do you really believe this? When confronted with biblical creationists do you really think "Yeah their conclusion regarding the age of the Earth is just as valid as the empirical one"? I find this hard to accept.I take a more pragmatic view. I follow what we know to work in practise. And given that you are a scientist I find it hard to believe that you really accept all epistemologies as equally valid and all knowledge to be nothing more than the arbitrary result of choosing one equally valid epistemology over another. But you can do so much better than that. You can ask on what basis the omphalist conclusion was made. You can ask why anyone would consider this conclusion to be even remotely reliable or valid. You can compare it to the known reliability of other competing methods of knowing and the rival conclusions derived from them. You can claim knowledge even in the necessary absence of certainty. Good luck with your manuscript. And a dispassionate approach is no bad thing for a working scientist (although I don't accept that agnosticism and being dispassionate necessarily go together - some who advocate agnosticism do so with much passion). I wish you well also with your other issues. Personally I can't help it. And I don't think it is necessarily a problem as long as it doesn't completely take over from meaningful discussion. A debate board (I think) is all about putting your beliefs out there and seeing just how well they stand up to scrutiny by others. And that is bound to entail some emotion and passion when it comes to strongly held beliefs or even deeply held assumptions. It's just inevitable so I don't shy away from it. But I am genuinely sorry if I have pissed you off recently. No it isn't. When we next talk never forget that I am primarily here for my own entertainment. No matter how fervently I might make my case none of it really matters at all. You too.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

So the rational conclusion regarding the age of the Earth is..... What?Edited by Straggler, : Fix quotes

Well I wish we could. But omphalism here is just the current and less inflammatory representative of all the inherently unknowable things people keep relentlessly insisting we should be rationally agnostic about. That is all very well. Except that on a site almost entirely dedicated to discussing "irrelevencies" like the existence of gods and other such unknowables there would be little left to argue about if we took this advice. Verisimilitude is probably my own position regarding the rationality of science too. But what if Last Thursdayism is true? Then all we are doing is being ever further duped away from the truth by empirical evidence regarding the age of the Earth.What is the rational conclusion regarding the age of the Earth? How confident of this conclusion do you think we can rationally be? Does your answer to this question (with the implicit lack of certainty that we all seem to agree is necessary) really allow you to claim agnosticism towards the conclusion that the Earth was created less than a week ago?Edited by Straggler, : Spelling and wordingEdited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Why is the empirical conclusion the rational conclusion if you deem it rationally to be no more likely to be true than the omphalist (Last Thursdayist, Last month-ist, whatever) conclusion?This seems contradictory.

OK. OK. Rule out? That seems a little too convenient. In what sense do you mean "rule out"? Do you just mean ignore the question in any practical sense? (In which case I agree entirely I might add). Do you "rule out" all things which are empirically unknowable and what exactly do you mean by "rule out"? What can we "prove" or "disprove" with absolute certainty? And those who would advocate a form of omphalism would disagree that it is entirely unknowable in the way you are suggesting. It may not be empirically knowable. But all sorts of non-empirical methods of knowing could be claimed as the basis for an omphalistic conclusion.If someone tells you that the universe was omphamistically created last year and that they know this by divine revelation of some sort on what basis do you "rule out" their claim? Aside from practical irrelevance how much credence would you give the veracity of this claim?

But why is it rational to follow the empirical data? In doing so you are implicitly rejecting the key omphalist claim that the empirical data you are following is deceptive. But you previously said that omphalistic claims could not be rationally discarded as inferior.Again - This seems contradictory.

Previously: And now: So rationally we should have confidence in the empirically evidenced age of the Earth. But simultaneously we cannot rationally consider this conclusion as any more likely to be correct than the omphalist conclusion which specifically states that the empirical evidence is misleading and unreliable. So (according to you) we can rationally have confidence in a conclusion whilst simultaneously rationally accepting that this same conclusion is no more likely to be reliable than it is unreliable.Huh?

So explain to me why it is you consider the empirically evidenced conclusion regarding the age of the Earth to be the rational conclusion. As you have previously stated to be the case.

But omphalism tells us that the evidence in question is misleading.So why do you place empiricism over omphalism when it comes to looking at the evidence and deciding what the rational conclusion is?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Previously: And now: So is it rational to consider the empirically evidenced conclusion as more likely to be correct than incorrect? Indeed. And yet you remain unable to see that citing the empirically evidenced conclusion as the rational one whilst simultaneously claiming that it is rationally impossible to consider this as more likely to be correct than the rival omphalist conclusion results in a contradictory position. So is it rational to consider the empirically evidenced conclusion regarding the age of the Earth as more likely to be correct than incorrect?That is the question. Can you answer it without contradicting yourself?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.