Scientific Knowledge

Hello. I am going to ask all of the participants of any consequence in this thread the same question. Question: - Does the fact that a given proposition is untestable preclude a de-facto atheist stance (i.e. 6 on the Dawkins scale) from being rationally taken towards that proposition?NOTE: I am not remotely suggesting that untestability demands that an atheistic stance be rationally taken for any given proposition. I am asking if untestability acts as a BARRIER to such a stance being taken.If you choose to reply feel free to explain your answer but please do make sure that it is clear as to whether you are in the YES or NO camp.

Hello. I am going to ask all of the participants of any consequence in this thread the same question. Question: - Does the fact that a given proposition is untestable preclude a de-facto atheist stance (i.e. 6 on the Dawkins scale) from being rationally taken towards that proposition?NOTE: I am not remotely suggesting that untestability demands that an atheistic stance be rationally taken for any given proposition. I am asking if untestability acts as a BARRIER to such a stance being taken.If you choose to reply feel free to explain your answer but please do make sure that it is clear as to whether you are in the YES or NO camp.RAZ - It would be greatly appreciated if you spared us any repetition of your admittedly impressive array of charts, scales and colourful deductions. Just explicit statements will do more than nicely.

Good. So we both agree that in future any talk of Ben Franklin in a field without a means to test for electricity blah blah blah is of no real consequence. Untestability/unfalsifiability in and of itself is NOT the deciding factor. Well neither the Hogwarts Hypothesis nor the existence of Immaterial Pink Unicorn are remotely testable but I would suggest (and I think you would agree) that anything other than strong skepticism towards these propositions would be severely misplaced. Of course. But we'll have no more of this insidious notion that unfalsifiability/untestability is the deciding factor.

So some are precluded merely by being unfalsifiable and others are not. Typical.Is the untestable/unfalsifiable nature of the Immaterial Pink Unicorn a barrier to atheistic (6 on scale) rejection? Does the proposed existence of the IPU "require that the body of objective scientific evidence would be LYING to us".....?Try again Xongsmith. I think you need to decide whether unfalsifiability/untestability alone is a barrier to taking an atheistic stance towards any given proposition.I think you need to go away and think about what that actually means.

FFS RAZ you are utterly impossible. We still don't have an explicit answer to the question asked. Forget ANY Goddam scales for one cotton pickin minute.Question: - Does the fact that a given proposition is untestable preclude a de-facto atheist stance (i.e. confident but tentative rejection) from being rationally taken towards that proposition? I can only conclude that this is a YES. That you do consider an atheistic stance towards the Hogwarts Hypothesis irrational and logically invalid even if you are willing to take a 6.9999 stance yourself on a scale that you have now rather conveniently redefined to be "subjective". Your approach is just dishonest RAZ.If we can't agree that the Hogwarts Hypothesis can be rationally rejected no mater how untestable it might be then I just have no faith at all in your sanity/honesty and have nothing more to say to you.

If you put ANY untestable proposition through your little exercise in pseudo-logic it will necessarily come out the other side demanding your silly brand of agnosticism.Unsurprisingly if you ONLY apply your little exercise to those propositions which you have already decided you are agnostic about, and refuse to consider anything that doesn't give you the answer you want, you will find your arguments utterly convincing and entirely in line with what you have already decided.Your conclusions are not derived from your "logical" analysis. Instead your ever changing argument is designed around achieving the conclusions you have already drawn. It is an elaborate and ornately decorated post-hoc justification. Nothing more.You have gone in a massive circle and "proved" yourself right. If that was your aim I guess congratulations are in order. See Message 278 and Message 282Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

there is of course always the make it up as you go along option. I am not asking you if you are an atheist towards anything you twit.I am asking you if unfalsifiability/untestability alone is a barrier to taking an atheistic stance towards a given proposition.Why on Earth would it be 'YES' for some and 'NO' for others?

See Message 15I think you will find all the answers there. Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Which is exactly my point XongsmithThis is exactly why pointing out that a particular proposition is untestable/unfalsifiable is not the argument clinching point that some seem to think it is. This is exactly why talk of Ben Franklin in a field without a means to test for electricity yadd yadda yadda isn’t in itself an argument.If someone wants to invoke the untestability/unfalsifiability of their particular pet belief as a reason to demand that everyone else be rationally agnostic towards it they need to explain why their particular belief is different to all of the untestable/unfalsifiable propositions to which we can and do rationally take an atheistic stance.Don’t they?

But that is my point.Agnosticism cannot be demanded just because something is unfalsifiable. That is the lesson that needs to learnt here.It is at least as much about the evidence supporting a given proposition. Or, in many cases, the lack of it.

But (as we all keep relentlessly repeating) the conclusion is not "there are no gods".The conclusion, based on the positive evidence, is that gods are figments of human imagination, no more likely to be real entities than any other such human invention.Get it right.

That appears contradictory. If theory A produces more reliable and accurate predictions than theory B then theory A more closely matches reality than theory B. Right? Frankly this seems inarguable. But you seem to be disputing it. Where we conclude that something (e.g. evolution) is highly likely to be correct we necessarily eliminate mutually exclusive alternatives (e.g. omphalistic special creation) as very unlikely.

Any proposition for which there is no evidence of any sort whatsoever (which obviously raises the question of what is evidence and what is not - but that is a separate issue) is necessarily the product of imaginative minds. Who says so? You cannot conclude one thing without eliminating other mutually exclusive things. NO matter how unfalsifiable they may be.This is a simple fact of logic.

But if you are capable of competent calculations you won't end up with better predictions. Newtonian mechanics provides easier calculations but less accurate and less reliable ones. Usually to a degree that doesn't make the extra complication worthwhile.So which is the theory that most closely matches reality? Of course it is. It is entirely here and there. That isn't really a proposition unless some notion of "gods" has already been proposed is it? But that isn't what I said.What I said is that any proposition devoid of supporting evidence is necessarily conceived from the minds of imaginative beings. How can it be otherwise?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

A process of deductive logic can only ever reveal that which is encapsulated within the assumptions one starts with. Nothing more.Your deductively derived demands for agnosticism are more convoluted but ultimately no different in principle or method to your demonstration that 1 + 1 = 1 earlier in this thread.If you cannot see why this is an insufficient basis upon which to consider the nature of science, or why it is a fools approach to investigating reality then I can only pity you.