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Member (Idle past 4829 days) Posts: 400 From: Colorado, USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Faith vs Skepticism - Why faith? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi Meldinoor, interesting topic.
Recently I've been thinking a lot about the idea of Faith and Skepticism, and about their relevance in determining Truth. To me, the biggest difference between faith and skepticism is that faith relies on a number of preconceptions, while skepticism seeks to eliminate preconceptions by considering several possibilities in a debate. I'm curious: do you notice the preconceptions that flavor your choice of words? One of them is that there is a dichotomy involved. One of my favorite Non-Sequitur cartoons had two tables, the first has a banner that reads "All your questions answered" and around the corner the second table has a banner that reads "All your answers questioned" -- which shows that both extremes are equally invalid at finding answers. Note that there is no reference to religion or science, but a more generic approach. What we have is a mixture as you alluded:
Truth is, as a skeptic, I can't be sure that there isn't some great conspiracy engineered by the devil to trick the faithful into accepting evolution. But it seems to me that skeptics (I'm speaking for myself here) do develop a form of faith in that which has shown itself to be reliable in general. Science has always seemed to get closer and closer to the truth (as in the move from Geocentrism) while steadily opposed by those of faith. If we eliminate delusion and fanatics from the discussion it comes down to the question of how much trust you can put in a concept representing reality: We do tentatively take on basic faith (lcase) the concept that objective evidence is indicative of reality, and that the experience of reality can be replicated by others having similar subjective experiences of that objective evidence or by some empirical measurement that can be reproduced by others. But once we have exhausted the ability of science to explain evidence we are thrust onto our personal sets of beliefs, preconceptions, and knowledge - our worldviews - for what we think is likely or unlikely to be true. The problem is compounded by the need to have answers, as Larni said in Message 7 Most people find uncertainty distressful. Some people find it very much so and tie themselves up in all kinds of cognitive knots to remove the uncertainity from their lives. The need to certainty is not limited to religious types. Somewhat (unintended?) ironically Message 26 states:
The faith you describe sounds like a kind of overconfidence in poor evidence rather than what I would have thought many mean by faith. I am still curious why agnosticism gets such bad press, when it is the basic approach of science. An open minded skeptic can consider concepts that are not invalidated to be possible. we can note that some are not practical to be investigated at this time, and as a result we necessarily don't know the answers. In addition some people may feel that certain concepte are relatively inconsequential one way or the other (such as the immaterial pink unicorn) such that there is virtually no difference whether true or not - and in such situations one can be apatheist (don't know and don't care). We each make our decisions about concepts based on our worldviews, and because those are necessarily different, so are the conclusions. Does this help us to understand reality? Possibly, if we recognize what of our beliefs are based on guesses, assumptions and personal opinions ("overconfidence in poor evidence"), and what are based on (empirical) evidence. Probably the most insidious belief is that one's personal opinions etc. represent truth - and this applies to people regardless of political or religious stripe. Enjoy. ps - kudos for reaching out to Peg. Edited by RAZD, : can't sleep, add clrty by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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Hi Straggler, enjoying yourself?
RAZD writes: Straggler writes: The faith you describe sounds like a kind of overconfidence in poor evidence rather than what I would have thought many mean by faith. I am still curious why agnosticism gets such bad press, when it is the basic approach of science. An open minded skeptic can consider concepts that are not invalidated to be possible. Possibilities with which everyone has consistently and unanimously agreed. I am bewildered by your ongoing inability to distinguish between the evidence based arguments regarding possibility and likelihood being advocated by your atheistic opponents with your preferred strawman misrepresentations of certitude. The possibilities that make an agnostic position valid, versus arguments based on "overconfidence in poor evidence" and which do not justify the claims of atheism above a level of personal opinion. The irony of you talking about "overconfidence in poor evidence" was amusing enough. You claimed to be a 6.99999 atheist with little practical room for doubt. This fresh insistence on your position being backed by "the evidence based arguments" after having had the opportunity of a whole thread where all that was posted was poor to non-existent evidence - where you failed to present any evidence for the absence of gods, is precisely the kind of "overconfidence in poor evidence" you accuse of others. Either you are an agnostic with an atheistic personal opinion or you are a pseudoskeptic claiming a level of confidence in evidence that does not exist.
As long as you are unable to overcome these intellectual blind spots you are destined to forever misunderstand, misrepresent and argue in circles with those who do not share your cognitive blinkers. Curiously, I am still not able to see evidence that does not exist. You are welcome to your opinion/s, sadly (for you) this will not alter reality in any way. Having said that, I will not drag this thread off topic further to deal with you. Enjoy. Note: that I have hidden the content of this post as (1) it is off-topic to this thread, (2) the issues were already discussed on the Pseudoskepticism and logic thread, where atheists had plenty of opportunity to present the evidence to support their arguments, but failed to demonstrate any evidence to justify anything more than an opinion, and finally (3) an ongoing discussion of one opinion vs another is pointless. Edited by RAZD, : /qs Edited by RAZD, : material hidden to regain topic by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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Hi Meldinoor
I admit that I'm basing my argument on a very specific definition of faith. When I say Faith I'm not referring to religious faith in general. Nor am I referring to a mere hunch that happens to lack supportive evidence. Well, it seemed to me that the words had certain connotations that pre-suppose your conclusion.
For instance, I know people who, when asked whether they accept the TOE would say no because the Bible contradicts it (in their opinion). Now granted, in this scenario I am assuming their belief in the infallibility of the Genesis account to be their starting point. A faith position. If evidence led them to this conclusion then they may well be skeptics. Assume you mean evidence against ToE being based on skepticism. To me this only holds if one is equally skeptical of the positions offered in it's place. Archangel was guilty of this one-sided skepticism while being gullible of any claim against evolution.
Eventually I realized that an awful lot of intelligent people did accept the ToE, and that they could, with ease, demolish my arguments simply because they understood the theory much better than I did. I felt uncomfortable holding to a belief that I could not defend, so I decided to eliminate any of my a priori beliefs that I could not also arrive at through a reason and evidence-based approach. Furthermore, I would be agnostic for any scenario for which I held no evidence one way or the other. To date, I have not fully satisfied this goal. However, I have eliminated many assumptions I once held by faith alone, in order to pursue a more skeptical approach. Don't forget to keep an open mind where there is no evidence one way or the other and you will do well.
Descartes attempted to reduce all assumptions down to "I think therefore I am" (I exist) in order to describe reality using a minimum of faith. (Descartes was a Christian, but that's beside the point.) Wouldn't Descartes' approach be more prudent than also presupposing the existence of a Deity and the validity of certain scriptures? Curiously, I was just reading more of "Consilience" (see Consilience - the Unity of Knowledge), and he was talking about AI and Turing Machines, and said that Descartes had concluded that such a machine that could replicate human intelligence could not be built. It seems to me that this issue is not the really the "existence of Deity" part, but the "validity of certain scriptures" part as being evidence for the existence of god/s.
Then there is a second class of evidence: Subjective Evidence. I may well have experienced something that supports a particular belief that can not be objectively evidenced. For instance, my father experienced a Near-Death experience in his youth. This experience might have changed the way he looked at the possibility of an afterlife, yet he has no objective evidence of the afterlife. I'm pretty sure a lot of faith is built on subjective experience that can be pretty darn convincing to the person going through it. But just because it's subjective, doesn't make it invalid. Exactly, but without substantiation, all we can conclude is that this is a possible explanation of the experience. The person having the experience has cause to believe it, but nobody else does. Nor can they disprove it, so at best they can be agnostic to it. Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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Hi Straggler.
Untrue. The fact that you have to quote me making a general point of principle three years ago rather than citing anything I have actually said to you about what I actually believe in any of our conversations in the last six months exemplifies your need to misrepresent the actual atheist position to have any argument at all. Message 34 Curiously you provided the link and did not qualify it in any way.
I would say that the rational position towards any wholly unevidenced possibility is a 6. And this would still qualify as pseudoskepticism unless you have evidence refuting it. What you think is irrelevant.
But it does exist. That is the problem. That is your blind spot. Evidenced possibilities and unevidenced possibilities. You will never get it so I honestly don't know why I bother. The evidence that no god/s exist is actual empirical evidence, evidence you had a whole thread to publish but somehow did not do so? Or do you mean that the semantic games you play, full of tautologies, straw men, false dichotomies, begging the question and other logical fallacies, to convince yourself, should convince anyone else because of your high opinion of your opinion? When the fact remains that your personal opinion is evidently based on "overconfidence in poor evidence" -- at best -- because you have failed to present anything else. Hysterical. Note: that I have hidden the content of this post as (1) it is off-topic to this thread, (2) the issues were already discussed on the Pseudoskepticism and logic thread, where atheists had plenty of opportunity to present the evidence to support their arguments, but failed to demonstrate any evidence to justify anything more than an opinion, and finally (3) an ongoing discussion of one opinion vs another is pointless. Edited by RAZD, : /qs Edited by RAZD, : hidden material to regain topic by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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Hi Onifre,
Because agnosticism assumes the question "is there a god?" is relevant. It assumes the premise is true and should be given thought to, before the premise has been given a reason to come up. I have a concept that you have never heard: do you believe it, do you disbelieve it, or do you not know what your position will be until you hear it? To say that something does not exist means that you have not only considered the concept but have considered how it fits into your world view and whether you then think it is is likely or not.
Personally I've always thought it was theism/diesm/agnosticism vs atheism - all of those assume the premise, where as one (atheism) must first need a reason to even ask the question. Unfortunately your opinion is not reality.
The methods of science works in the opposite direction; a phenomenon needs to be established to have occured, then it works toward a logic answer. Nice try. Science proposes a theory to explain evidence, but the pro or con truth of the theory is not assumed in pursuing more evidence. Predictions are made that would happen if the theory were true and that would not happen if the previous theory were true (light bending for instance). In addition, predictions are made that would not occur if the theory were true and which would invalidate the theory if true. Until the evidence comes in the hypothesis is untested - and we ... don't ... know. When theory is tested and validated by accurate predictions, and not invalidated by new contrary evidence, it still remains tentatively probable at best, a 2 on the scale, because of the supporting evidence for the theory, never a 1. When a theory is tested and invalidated, then it is discarded. So you have three positions in science : positive - neutral - negative, where the positive and the negative positions can only be taken when supported by evidence and the neutral position is the default until there is sufficient evidence to conclude either a positive or negative result.
What phenomenon has taken place that needs to be looked into that relates to a "god?" In other words, why is "is there a god?" even a question? In other words -- you don't know and you don't care? Note: that I have hidden the content of this post as (1) it is off-topic to this thread, (2) the issues were already discussed on the Pseudoskepticism and logic thread, where atheists had plenty of opportunity to present the evidence to support their arguments, but failed to demonstrate any evidence to justify anything more than an opinion, and finally (3) an ongoing discussion of one opinion vs another is pointless. Enjoy. Edited by RAZD, : hidden material to regain topic by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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Meldinoor, apologies for bring in forces for non-topic discussions.
The best way to go about it is probably to start from a position of uncertainty, and compare the Bible to a list of criteria one would expect from the direct Word of God. Things like internal contradiction would have to be looked at, accuracy of predictions, agreement with known facts and so on. This is a good approach: predictions that would provide positive or negative feedback, and then compare which are more important. For a believer (regardless of belief) the positive feedback is important (confirmation bias) while the negative feedback is discarded (cognitive dissonance). For a skeptic (regardless of belief) the negative feedback is important (confirmation bias) while the positive feedback is discarded (cognitive dissonance). To get around this log-jam we need some deal-breaker. Any suggestions? Assuming we are off the map of scientific process and knowledge, and only have subjective experiences of different people to go on. How do we decide some measure of truth in these circumstances?
The best way to go about it is probably to start from a position of uncertainty, and compare the Bible to a list of criteria one would expect from the direct Word of God. Things like internal contradiction would have to be looked at, accuracy of predictions, agreement with known facts and so on. It would be interesting to go through the bible and do something like what Jefferson did - delete all the contradictions and known falsehoods. I think that a substantial volume would still be left. Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi Meldinoor, looks like terminal topic drift is underway. Sorry.
Relevance is only important to the degree you need to make a decision.
This, I think, is the main disagreement your two-sided discussion hinges on. I can't speak for RAZD of course, but I doubt if he'd consider himself an agnostic regarding the purple pixie that lives in my closet. In this example, the existence of the pixie is simply not a relevant issue. No evidence has ever suggested its existence, nor does its existence help explain the evidence that we have. Furthermore, nobody is claiming it exists. Why should I automatically disbelieve something when there is no evidence to do so? Certainly pixies have been mentioned before, and finding a real one would be most exciting yes? I agree that whether one exists or not is not a critical decision I need to make, so waiting for further evidence pro or con would be the prudent logical scientific approach would it not? This is due to what I call the open-minded skeptic approach, a willingness to consider concepts on their merits and not on any preconceptions of validity or truth.
I think where you differ is that RAZD considers the existence of gods to be a relevant question. One that bears thinking about. Perhaps he knows of some phenomena that might be better explained by the existence of the supernatural. Actually most of the discussions have been about the reasons (or more correctly, the lack thereof) to justify an opinion that the existence of god/s is highly unlikely. With emphasis on the unlikely.
Here's an analogy. At present, I'm not an agnostic regarding the existence of pixies. I don't believe they exist. But if I found magical glowing pixie dust laying around my house I'd begin to wonder. Now the existence of pixies would be a relevant question (assuming the dust had the properties usually attributed to pixie dust, and was sufficiently unlikely to have appeared by known processes). Now imagine the pixie dust suddenly vanished, leaving no evidence behind. I would have had a subjective experience that hinted at the existence of pixies, but no evidence with which to argue their existence. Now the question would be relevant to me, but not to anyone else. I could therefore call myself an agnostic with regards to pixies, while you who had never seen the pixie dust, would rightly maintain a disbelief in them. You could be agnostic if skeptical of your experience, or you could be a 3 - agnostic believer, predominantly agnostic but leaning towards belief due to your subjective experience. Certainly you would be more open minded to the idea of pixies existing than before such an experience. Unfortunately this has nothing to do with your original topic, which I do find of interest, while the atheists had their chance to make their points on the Pseudoskepticism and logic thread and failed. I don't see any reason to let them rehash those arguments here, and will mark further responses along this line as "noted" - because they are not relevant to this topic. Deciding whether god/s exist or not is actually fairly irrelevant in my mind - they either do or they don't, and no amount of opinion one way or the other is going to change that, nor does it necessarily have any impact on your life. Now, getting back to your topic, the question you had for Peg was
Message 1: My question is: How do you argue a faith-based approach to Truth? Now we have also established that a subjective personal experience is cause for faith
Message 46: Then there is a second class of evidence: Subjective Evidence. I may well have experienced something that supports a particular belief that can not be objectively evidenced. For instance, my father experienced a Near-Death experience in his youth. This experience might have changed the way he looked at the possibility of an afterlife, yet he has no objective evidence of the afterlife. I'm pretty sure a lot of faith is built on subjective experience that can be pretty darn convincing to the person going through it. But just because it's subjective, doesn't make it invalid. So we can establish a possibility for a generic faith belief, and the question then becomes one of getting from that point to one based on some well known religion or another - why christian gospel for instance? Enjoy. Edited by RAZD, : /qs by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi Peg, a couple of questions:
The New Catholic Encyclopedia says There are three states of afterlife in Catholic belief. I've not discussed this with you before, so it is my lapse, but are you catholic? I understand you are an old earth believer, iirc. Just trying to get the frame of reference here, thanks. This I take it is the biblical stand
2. Souls can die Ezekiel 18:4 "The soul that is sinningit itself will die. Thus theses souls will disappear forever? While the catholic teaching is
There are three states of afterlife in Catholic belief. Heaven is a time of glorious union with God and a life of unspeakable joy that lasts forever.[120][122] Purgatory is a temporary condition for the purification of souls who, although saved, are not free enough from sin to enter directly into heaven. It is a state requiring penance and purgation of sin through God's mercy aided by the prayers of others.[120][122] Finally, those who chose to live a sinful and selfish life, did not repent, and fully intended to persist in their ways are sent to hell, an everlasting separation from God Are you saying that hell is not in the bible but has been added by the church? Just curious. Now -- how do we tell which is true? When you trust a source by faith, how do you tell what source to trust? As I said to Meldinoor Message 57:
quote: It would seem that all we have are differing opinions about reality, yes? Enjoy. Edited by RAZD, : name spelling by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi Meldinoor, very well.
Possibly. But as I missed my chance to post in the pseudoskepticism thread, at least I got to take part in that discussion long enough to present my opinion. Now, back to to the topic. Message 1: RAZD will call you a pseudo-skeptic if you take a "6" attitude on anything you cannot conclusively disprove. To be clear, any 6 position requires objective evidence to support it, just as any 2 position requires objective evidence to support it. Examples of properly supported 2's and 6' are rife within sciences, so any claim that one's position doesn't need to provide that same level of evidence to support it is special pleading. You seem to have a handle on how far one can go on opinion, so perhaps we can leave it at that.
It would be interesting to compile subjective experiences across a range of belief systems and see what they have in common. It might take us back to the root of all belief-systems. Personally, I have experienced a few of what one might call subjective religious experiences, and afterwards found that at least a few other people had experienced the same thing. I do of course consider the possibility that said experiences had perfectly natural causes, but the details of the event precludes me from rejecting the supernatural altogether. I think this would be an entirely valid approach to looking at the issue of religious and spiritual experiences. These types of experiences occur in all cultures, and virtually all religions have their own brand of ascetics who practice having such experiences. You would have to filter the related experiences to account for the varying worldviews involved in order to find common elements, and this may be difficult.
ABE: This post may still seem off topic. But I'm discussing a way to skeptically evaluate the foundations of religious faith. If we are contrasting faith and skepticism, surely it would be of interest to explore the validity of the subjective experiences that give rise to faith. This too, is of interest to me, however I am at a bit of a loss on where to go after these experience, although there are some hypothesis. Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi Straggler, still with the false dichotomies ...
The problem is that the question just may not be answerable.
Yes. The question is why? Do we seek a naturalistic answer? A testable answer? A scientific answer? Psychology? Culture? Etc. etc. etc. Or do we special plead this question and just say "goddidit"? At which point all debate stops, all investigation ceases and we hit the inevitable conceptual dead end. Or do we say that we just don't have enough information to make a decision, and that we just don't know. Certainly there is insufficient evidence to form anything more than opinion, and we all know that opinion is not sufficient to control reality. Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi Meldinoor, seems Peg has stepped out. Too bad, as it was getting interesting.
But when you get to the untestable claims, like the IPU, or any other alleged supernatural entity, this approach falls flat on its face. There's no way to gather evidence one way or the other. Correct, and the default position when you don't know, is that you don't know. Similarly, the default position when you can't know (or are unlikely to know in your lifetime), is that you don't know. Now one can form opinions on the likelihood of things like pixies in the closet, opinions based on your life experiences and learning, your worldview, but these are subjective evaluations, and there is no way to rationally measure their likelihood. So we make assumptions based on opinions. We can review these assumptions in relation to certain scientific findings and see how such opinions stack up in validity against the testing done by science, and we generally find that opinions are weak predictors of reality at best, no matter how well informed the opinions.
As I understand it, skepticism is an approach to testable claims. If I'm a skeptic, then I should evaluate the likelihood of any claim that you make by testing it. But just plain vanilla skepticism is not all there is to the scientific approach, for as Peg pointed out, skepticism doesn't add to the equations. What you need in addition is an open mind - open to possibilities, specifically including possibilities that are not contradicted by any known evidence. Because of different people necessarily having different worldviews they will have different interests and opinions about possibilities, and certainly we see a broad spectrum of fascinating possibilities that people are willing and energetically pursuing because different people are open to different ideas. Thus I come to the conclusion that an open-minded skeptic approach is the best overall approach, letting different people take up concepts that interest them, and leaving ones they are not interested unexplored until further information is available. Enjoy. Edited by RAZD, : No reason given. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Rrhain, taking two messages to reply to one person, writes:
Wow. I guess the under/over for you bringing up this silly claim of yours was less than a month. Do we have to have another 300 posts of you avoiding the issue? Curiously, those that have read my messages from the beginning will recognize that my position on this issue was stated years ago, and that my position has certainly not altered since 04*30*2006 and Perceptions of Reality. It has not changed, because there has been no evidence that has been presented in the intervening time sufficient to alter my knowledge, opinions and beliefs on this issue. Fascinatingly, the last thread on this topic, Pseudoskepticism and logic, was singular in the attempts of several atheists in general, and Rrhain in particular, trying desperately to avoid the issue of presenting evidence to support their negative position. It was also, embarrassingly (for strong atheists), devoid of evidence that god/s do not exist or cannot exist, sufficient to justify a "6" or "7" position.
What makes you think the question isn't answerable? We have plenty of evidence indicating an answer. Why do you deny it? Ah, now we have evidence: after 562 posts on the Pseudoskepticism and logic thread with Rrhain claiming that he didn't need to supply evidence for his negative position, suddenly now he needs to have evidence for his claim. Let's see what it is:
Oops, no evidence. Amazingly, I find it extremely difficult to be in denial of evidence that is not presented.
You haven't managed to understand your own statement. You have an opinion and despite all the reality surrounding you telling you that your opinion is incompatible, you refuse to let it go. Your opinion is not sufficient to control reality no matter how long you hold your breath, stamp your feet, and throw a tantrum. Instead we have an ad hominem attack on me, rather than dealing with the issue. Interestingly, I am happy knowing that my opinion is just my opinion and I'm not the one claiming that it is anything more than that. Saying that my opinion is not compatible with reality is not demonstrating it. Demonstrating it would mean putting up evidence that shows that god/s in fact do not, or cannot, exist. Objective, empirical evidence, not logical fallacies and arguments based on assumptions of knowing more than is known.
Message 110 (second reply)
Indeed. But what makes you think we don't know? Your opinion that we don't is insufficient to affect reality. Indeed, indeed, however, my opinion is based on the total lack of evidence that shows there are no god/s presented by anyone on the Pseudoskepticism and logic thread. Now I don't claim that this opinion is fact, just that this is the impression I have after 562 posts on that thread without any being presented. You can change this opinion by actually presenting evidence that god/s don't, or cannot, exist.
Indeed. But what makes you think we can't know or are unlikely to know in our lifetime? Your opinion that we can't is insufficient to affect reality. Curiously, your theatrics are getting in the way of your comprehension -- all I was saying, was that in conditions where you don't know, the default position is that you don't know: glad you agree with this now.
Huh? Your claim is that we have absolutely no evidence regarding pixies? That there are no methods by which we might acquire evidence? That seems a bit preposterous, don't you think? On the contrary, we have overwhelming evidence regarding the existence of pixies in general, not just in your closet. Why would you have us deny it? Ah, yes...your opinion. But your opinion is not sufficient to affect reality. Wow, another assertion of evidence: let's see what it contains:
Oops, another blank. Incredibly, I still find it difficult to be in denial of evidence that is not presented. Maybe these pixies are pink, immaterial and have a single horn on their heads?
Indeed. But what you also need is a mind that does not reject known evidence simply because it contradicts your opinion. Your opinion is not sufficient to affect reality. Indeed indeed, so where is your evidence?
Indeed. 'Tis a pity you don't actually follow it. Instead, you follow a closed-minded subjective approach which rejects evidence that contradicts your opinion. Your opinion is not sufficient to affect reality. Less than a month and you're still obsessing about this. More ad hominems ... Like not presenting evidence to support your position, whether it is positive or negative? Like the arguments made trying to avoid presenting evidence? Like the assertions of having evidence, but somehow not seeming to mention any of it? Cutting through the theatrics, all Rrhain has done is repeat a phrase several times, followed by statements of incredulity, and appeals to anonymous authority, and an absolute failure to actually confront the issue of evidence to support a negative position.
Shall we go through another 300 posts of you avoiding the evidence? Another 3,000 or 3,000,000 posts by people trying to impose their opinions on me is not likely to change things either. Posts by people asserting they have evidence and that I am avoiding, or denying it, while presenting none, are notable in their inability to change my opinion/s, beliefs, and knowledge of how the universe works. What will change it is evidence, objective empirical evidence, that god/s in fact do not exist or that they cannot exist. Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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Hi bluegenes, frankly it amazes me that you continue this argument.
I'm wondering how long it will take you to realise that you're making a fool of yourself. Nothing like starting with attacking the person, rather than the issue.
If you don't eliminate supernatural propositions with a "6" on the Dawkins scale, then there are no "2"s and "6"s in science for you. If you claim that properly supported "6"s and "2"s are rife within sciences, then you are automatically giving a "6" or "7" to numerous zero evidence propositions like "fairies manipulate sub-atomic particles". Sorry, but your logic is weak here: having a 3 to 5 position on the supernatural does not mean that there are things not supported by actual empirical evidence - what it does mean is that positions 1 and 7 are not, and cannot be, supported. Curiously, neither I in particular, nor science in general, claims to be anything more than 2 to 6 in scope -- including, btw, a LOT of positions that are 3, 4 and 5 along the way. For instance: the basic assumption in science is that the empirical evidence acquired through experimentation and testing is in fact representative of reality. The fact is that this basic assumption in all science means that there can be no 1 or 7 positions of absolute knowledge, and it is why science is necessarily tentative, at most claiming to present the best explanation of the evidence rather than the full picture. In essence, supernatural possibilities is one of the things that forces one to be 2 to 6 in science.
Think it through, then tell me "bluegenes, you're right", otherwise I'll embarrass you with the kind of step by step explanation usually reserved for creationists. And you will be wasting your time and going further and further from the original topic on this thread. Let me run through a simple scenario for you: Starting with this post by Bluejay Message 168:
quote:emphasis mine. Without evidence one way or the other, any claim about the pelvic girdle of Tiktaalik is not justified by the evidence. One could claim that the lack of evidence of a pelvic girdle in Tiktaalik is evidence that there was no pelvic girdle. One could claim that people make things up (an argument creationists like to use, btw) and thus any claim that Tiktaalik had a pelvic girdle is likely made up. One could claim that any number of millions of different pelvic girdles could be proposed for Tiktaalik, and the probability of them being true is highly unlikely, so therefore it is highly unlikely that Tiktaalik had a pelvic girdle. Curiously, I don't see Bluejay in particular, or scientists in general, being impressed with any of these arguments, yet these are the same logic used in arguments advanced in the Pseudoskepticism and logic thread to support a "6" position on atheism - a position that (if I can borrow Bluejay's words) - is "using the technique we scientists refer to as "lying." In this particular case we have a 4 condition in science: we don't know, and the default position is that we don't know.
There's overwhelming evidence that supernatural beings are figments of the human imagination. First off, "overwhelming evidence" is your opinion of the evidence, not actual objective empirical evidence - no supporting objective empirical evidence of this claim has been presented yet, second -- even assuming that it does indeed support your "figments of the human imagination" -- it does not rule out god/s existing.
Just because you cannot disprove a supernatural proposition does not promote it to anything other than very/extremely unlikely. Sorry, but what it proves is that you don't know, or you cannot know. Any claim of likeliness\unlikliness is opinion, not evidenced based conclusion. Remember that pretending to know something that is not shown by the actual empirical evidence is (borrowing Bluejay's words again) - "using the technique we scientists refer to as "lying." Now let's apply this to your latest silly scenario:
What you seem to fail to realize, is that you have confused your opinion on supernatural things with a 6 position justified with evidence, and then you have confused that position with my having to have anything other than an opinion on them. On the issue of christianity in general and christ in particular, I am agnostic. My conclusions based on my opinions and beliefs about god/s are more generic than specific, and this means that I can view all these claims as different aspects of the same general essence/s. I do believe that people can embrace good or evil or "make deals with the devil" to try to obtain an overall good through an evil act (Cheney comes to mind). I do believe that people in power are corrupted by power, and I am disappointed in Barak over several things, mostly gitmo and continuing bailouts of big companies, but I'm happy to see his efforts on healthcare and on providing economic incentives to the bottom of the economic chain. Now for me to address the issue of "antichrist" first I would have to assume that such exist, rather than be agnostic on it, and then I would have to assume that this would occur in my lifetime, and finally I would have to assume that I - ignorant as I am about christianity in general and the antichrist in particular - would be able to identify this specific incarnation of supernatural forces without the rest of the world already knowing. My understanding, such as it is, is that such incarnation is undetectable by the common person, especially any person who is not a christian. Fascinatingly, I conclude that I cannot know whether this is true or not, given this information, and that for me to comment otherwise would be (borrowing Bluejay's words once more) - "using the technique we scientists refer to as "lying." Meanwhile I am still perfectly capable of offering my opinion on the matter, and my opinion is that, while no saint, Barak is still better than Cheney and cohort/s. In the future, see if you can apply this simple metric:
Apply this to any future scenarios your want to try, and see what results you get - who knows, you may learn, or at least understand, better, how I think about these things.
Don't try to pretend this is off-topic in a thread about Faith and skepticism. Message 1quote: Originally framed in the context of biblical faith.
Message 46quote: Curiously, this applies to any a priori opinions and beliefs that are not supported by evidence. Perhaps people need to be more skeptical of the atheist "6" position/s? Message to Archangel Message 64 of EVOLUTION'S FRAUD HAS CONTRIBUTED TO ITS PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE::
You claim to be a skeptic? Skepticism - Wikipedia
quote: Note that I am agnostic with an opinion that god/s may exist, and that I have seen no evidence that contradicts or invalidates this opinion. One needs to be wary of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance, whether due to faith OR skepticism, and I believe one should search out, identify and neutralize a priori beliefs and opinions as much as possible. This is one of the reasons I changed from atheist to deist. Enjoy. Edited by RAZD, : is Edited by RAZD, : Bluejay by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Sorry Modulus, but I (still) disagree that your argument shows anything.
No wonder you thought the arguments were specious: You didn't understand them. Curiously, you don't show this to be so.
But there is evidence for there being a pelvic girdle in the living species of Tiktaalik. Living species? Not even in the fossils. Tiktaalik roseae: HomeTiktaalik roseae: Meet Tiktaalik Tiktaalik roseae: Meet Tiktaalik quote: Those fin skeleton details are the front fins. No mention at all of a pelvic girdle or pelvic fins. The fossil does not go back that far. I also googled "Tiktaalik pelvic girdle" to see if there was any new information. AiG on Tiktaalik roseae: In the Disco Institute "Research" Tradition.
quote:emphasis mine. http://www.bio-medicine.org/...-fish-and-land-animals-3772-1
quote: This matches what Bluejay said. We don't have evidence from Tiktaalik for the back part of the organism, including pelvis, girdle rear fins or tail. However, this is irrelevant to the argument: the argument is that without evidence what we can say is that we don't know, and that anything else is pretending.
The faith based position is that we haven't found the Tiktaalik's pelvic girdle because Dave the wicked Palaeontologist removed them all in such a fashion as to ensure nobody would detect his theft. The evidence, say the faithers, is that there is no pelvic girdle found in the specimens. ... Which seems to me to be an excellent alternative (and more complete) way of putting the point I was making in that earlier thread - and seems to be on topic here. Frankly, Modulus, I am astounded that you keep making this poor argument, as obviously you have not understood my points at all. The issue is not whether the pelvis has been, or can be, properly described, from the information available, but whether it exists.
The point Deutsch makes is that this explanation happens to be falsifiable (and falsified) but that it is easy to vary it slightly to avoid that falsification. And there are potentially infinite ways of varying the story to avoid subsequent falsifications, ultimately culminating I assume in the story that an undefined deity causes the seasons by {insert scientific explanation}.
quote: All of which just shows that you have a poor explanation, not that the pelvis\god/s\whatever do not, or cannot, exist. The point of the Tiktaalik analogy is that it should be relatively obvious that concluding that there is no pelvis, (or girdle or fins or tail ...) is not justified by having a poor description of what they may be like when found. Now if your argument is only concerned with how good the description is, then it doesn't answer the question of whether god/s exist or not, nor does it provide any evidence on which to conclude a negative hypothesis that god/s do not, or cannot, exist. We can obviously make some assumptions about what Tiktaalik's pelvis, (or girdle or fins or tail ...) could look like from the closely related species before and after the time of Tiktaalik, but that is opinion based on assumptions and the likelihood of the description being correct is low, as you have claimed, while the likelihood of the pelvis (or girdle or fins or tail ....) having existed (and perhaps evidenced in other as yet unfound fossil specimens) is much much much higher. That is what you have not addressed. Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi Peg, nice to see you back (we seem to be swamped with incredulous atheists at the moment), so let's get back to the topic.
i did go away for a week so i apologize for not seeing this post sooner I hope you had a good week, alas for me it was h... ah ... extremely uncomfortable (chemo), but getting better.
im not catholic, im a JW. We are not associated with any church. I've known some JW people, but not well, and certainly not introduced to their beliefs, which leaves me with secondary sources that could be full of falsehoods and me none the wiser.
The important thing to take into consideration when reading the bible is to remember that it was not written in english but in Hebrew. ... In Hebrew the meaning of sheol was quite clear. It was where people go when they die...back to the earth in an unconscious state. ... When we research the origins of 'hell' its clear that they are pagan in origin. Ancient Babylonian and Assyrian beliefs of the nether world is pictured as a place full of horrors, and is presided over by gods and demons of great strength and fierceness. That was my impression from other sources (some jewish friends and previous debates). Interesting.
Yes, that is exactly what i'm saying. ... If the bible says A+B=C but someone else says A+B=D and another says A+B=E then JW's will always trust the bible as the source of truth. In this case meaning the bible where hell is an unconscious dark silent eternity.
The first thing that we need to know is what the original words meant in hebrew and a lot of research has gone into understanding the original language. It seems to me that this approach is heavily dependent on interpretations and cross-referencing. What do you do when there is disagreement between (a) two different parts of the bible, or (b) two different scholars about the interpretation/s? How is conflict resolved? In science we resolve conflict by testing the conflicting concepts against evidence, to see if one can be invalidated by new evidence that shows that the concept is invalid. While this cannot be done for all concepts, and on some others we are waiting for the evidence to come in, it is a piecemeal process that gradually over time seems to draw closer and closer to a valid picture of reality.
this is very true. That being the case then surely you'd agree that God (if you believe he exists) must also have his own view of reality. If he does then the only way to know what it is to get it from the source that is said to come from him...the bible. My view, as a deist, is that the best way to come to know about god/s or creation is to study the product, the "collected works" as it were. Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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