from RAZD: If you believe in something without evidence, then you should believe in any other thing without evidence.
The question that you need to ask is NOT why you should believe in the IPU but instead why it is that other equally unevidenced concepts that you DO believe in (e.g. deities) are deserving of any less atheism from others than the degree of atheism that you apply to the IPU. You have completely failed to answer this question.
first off, RAZD's statement 1 quoted above doesnt make logical sense.
it is not a reverse analog of the logic in
1. If you believe in something with evidence, then you should believe in any other thing with evidence.
it's more like: "If you cannot start a clock by touching it, then you can start it by not touching it." - from one of RAZD's favorite books.
but it's not that either.
1. If you believe in something with evidence, then you should believe in any other thing with evidence.
this statement contains a bird's nest of assumed and acceptable definitions for "evidence". we can probably discount out of hand someone believing in something completely aside from whether or not it has evidence. no, the belief must be because of the evidence, i would think. we can probably assume that the evidence in question is compelling and convincing, implying the observer has an internal construct of conditional constraints that lead to the conclusion that the evidence is compelling and convincing. this construct supercedes the mere strength of subjective belief. it's on a higher rung. then a venn diagram works here. belief would be subserviant to this construct.
if you believe in something without evidence, and again this evidence would be of the compelling and convincing kind, then you have dropped down a rung in your standards to consider subjective evidence. once you have done that, you no longer are required, as you would be with your internal construct, to believe in any other thing without evidence. the construct is not in play anymore. it's not on the same higher rung anymore. the venn diagram wont work here.
i think RAZD is saying that that does not necessarily put it on the bottom rung. i think Straggler is looking for those intermediate rungs from RAZD and hasnt seen compelling and convincing evidence that RAZD has provided them.
maybe another thread........
*gleep*
- xongsmith
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