Faith vs Skepticism - Why faith?

So are you saying the attraction of your god is that it is almost certainly untrue? Should we quantify your religious feelings as a propensity toward fantasy and falsehood? Are you proposing that reality fundamentally altered between 1850 and today, allowing new technology to function? Are you suggesting that the future laws of reality are defined by our imagination?I really hope that I am missing the point of what you are saying, because it seems like you cannot tell the difference between reality and your imagination. Or at least you don't want to.

Would that extend to preferring to believe in god as a rescuer rather than god as a fantasy? I suppose that really shuts down the discussion. For us at least, you will probably be just fine with the voices in your head. Only some ideas of god are actually unmeasurable. However, working with that assumption we can reliably assume that on your scale any *particular* claims about an unmeasurable god are only infinitesimally greater than zero.This is because if the god is truly undetectable then any claims about qualities the god has (loving, powerful, etc.) must be a completely evidenced guess. Out of the nearly infinite qualities we can imagine, the chances that any particular religious belief's claims are going to be accurate are minuscule.So, while we cannot assign a probability to the existence of a completely undetectable god, we can assume that any claim of an undetectable god with particular qualities is extremely unlikely.

That isn't a third option to that question.When considering a claim you have three positions, acceptance of the claim, rejection of the claim, and indecision. Only when you accept the claim do you believe it; indecision is not belief of the claim or disbelief of the claim.The question of belief in a claim is a yes or no question. An answer of "no" just does not imply disbelief in the claim.(This seems to be a recurrent issue in your understanding RAZD, are you still having trouble comprehending the distinction here?)

Obviously the atheistic and agnostic statements are more logical than the theistic statement. I listed both atheist and agnostic because you don't actually distinguish them with those statements; as written someone should logically agree with both at the same time. Without evidence to indicate that a god exists it is reasonable to disbelieve a claim of its existence, and lacking any evidence gods are impossible it is logical to say we don't know.You continue to insist that not believing a god claim is true must require someone to prove that it is false, but that is simply not the case. Before hearing a claim of a god's existence one does not believe in its existence, and after hearing the claim without evidence to support it the logical conclusion is non-belief.

Biased by logic I should hope. But were you actually defending the theistic option? I am not saying it is the same, I am saying that the logical position encompasses both statements:An agnostic position, per your statement, does not know if a god claim is true or not. An agnostic neither believes nor disbelieves the statement because there is not enough evidence either way.The atheist, per your statement, only knows that there is no evidence to indicate that the god claim is true and so does not believe it. You mention nothing about evidence that the claim is false in the atheistic statement and there is no claim that the god does not exist. What the F--- are you going on about? You appear to be claiming that the atheistic position is to accept that Y is true because there is no evidence to the contrary but to disbelieve X because there is no evidence in support of it, and the reverse for theists.However, you have not defined what the hell X and Y are supposed to stand for, so it looks like you just pulled some placeholders out of your ass and tried to blow them into smoke. I am sure your argument sounded much better in your head, but I am going to need more than this word salad to figure out what you are getting at. So, go back and try again to make your point.

Sure, but you claimed that:
"person B: there is no objective empirical evidence that shows X is true, therefore it is logical to believe that X is not true,"
is equivalent to
"person A: there is no objective empirical evidence that shows X is not true, therefore it is logical to believe that X is true,"It simply is not so. It isn't a contradiction! In either case! SHOW how they contradict if you think they do. Use words, not placeholders. NO, it is NOT!Is it seriously this hard for you to understand that disbelief of a claim is not the same thing as saying you can prove it to be false?Someone could claim that I will win the lottery in 5 years. They cannot prove it, and I cannot prove them wrong at the moment. Nobody can prove them wrong! This does NOT mean that I have to believe their claim! Right, and so reversing the premises and getting a contradictory result is rather expected isn't it? But that isn't what you did anyway; "notX" is not actually an opposite to X. It is simply a claim that is not the same as X. X could be the Christian god and "notX" could then be anything other than the Christian god.

No, they are not. The "Person A" statement is illogical, regardless of it coming to the same conclusion as a logical statement from "Person B". Just because it comes to the same conclusion does NOT make it logically equivalent.The "B" statement states it is logical to disbelieve a proposal that lacks evidence to back it up. The "A" statement states that the lack of evidence disproving a proposal is sufficient reason to believe. These are fundamentally different concepts, with the "A" statement being illogical. NO. IT. DOES. NOT.Just because I do not believe someone's claim that I will win the lottery does not mean that I believe I will not win the lottery. I cannot prove that I will not win the lottery, so taking such a position would be illogical. Instead, I simply believe that my winning the lottery is unlikely and that there is no reason to treat the claim as anything but a wild guess. My position on the outcome of the lottery is simply that I do not know the outcome at this time.A similar position applies to disbelief in a god claim: lack of belief does not require or imply that the statement be considered false. But it becomes invalid if you use completely different logical statements like you did above. How about C(X) compared to A(Y)? What sense does that make?You should be comparing A(X) to A(Y), B(X) to B(Y), and C(X) to C(Y). Anything else is just nonsense.

Umm, no? They are different statements with different logical progressions. A(X) is not equivalent to B(X), A(Y) is not equivalent to B(Y), A(Y) is not equivalent to B(X), and A(X) is not equivalent to B(Y). Why would you think they were?Do these look equivalent to you?A(Y) = "There is no objective empirical evidence that shows gods do exist is not true, therefore it is logical to believe that gods do exist is true."B(X) = "There is no objective empirical evidence that shows gods do not exist is true, therefore it is logical to believe that gods do not exist is not true."A(Y) claims that because something is not disproved, it should be considered true.
B(X) claims that because something is not proved, it should not be considered true.These things are NOT the SAME! But I also do not believe the person who claimed I will win, because their claim is unfounded and extremely unlikely to be correct. I lack belief in their claim, and so am atheistic. A and B are not of the same form.

You switched them around in message 297, so this is irrelevant. Stop switching back and forth in an effort to confuse, you claim it works either way.Lets color code!

quote:

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"person A: there is no objective empirical evidence that shows Y is not true, therefore it is logical to believe that Y is true,"

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gods do exist and gods do not exist

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Now lets plug them into the originals: Your Person A(Y) becomes

quote:

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person A: there is no objective empirical evidence that shows Y is not true, therefore it is logical to believe that Y is true

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OR

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person A: there is no objective empirical evidence that shows "gods do not exist" is not true, therefore it is logical to believe that "gods do not exist" is true

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Your Person B(X) statement becomes

quote:

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person B: there is no objective empirical evidence that shows X is true, therefore it is logical to believe that X is not true

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OR

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person B: there is no objective empirical evidence that shows gods do exist is true, therefore it is logical to believe that gods do exist is not true

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Your problem is right here: That is not the Person A statement! You simply tried to switch "true" and "not true" between the statements, but that fundamentally changes the statements themselves. You only get to replace X with Y, you don't switch any of the rest of the statement around. The "Person B" statement is not an absolute atheist position. Lack of belief in a claim because there is no evidence is atheistic, but does not actually claim the statement is false. It simply does not believe it to be true, a position shared by the agnostic. Neither am I (or Person B) an absolute atheist on the concept of a god. I don't believe the claim, but I do not claim to be able to prove it false. The lottery is 5 years from now, the tickets are not for sale. Furthermore, I don't play the lottery because I recognize the extremely poor odds of winning. Still, I cannot *prove* that I won't purchase a lottery ticket in 5 years. All agnostics are atheists.

The decision not to accept the statement "gods do not exist" does not imply the acceptance of the statement "gods do exist". The existence of an agnostic position should make it clear that it is not a dichotomy.Those flips you propose are not logical. They change the meaning of the statement and are not equivalent. That isn't what the statement says. If the claim for the existence of a specific god is rejected due to lack of evidence it does not follow that the god of that claim cannot exist. It simply means that the claim is not given credence.An agnostic neither believes that a god exists, or believes that a god does *not* exist. An agnostic simply does not know the correct answer. This PROVES that there is a third option, and thus your "either/or" argument is wrong. It is logical to disbelieve the claim, not to believe the opposite. An atheist can disbelieve every god claim ever made without considering them to be disproved.
--In summary, your logic is screwed up because you base it on an argument of false dichotomy.

I'M NOT DEBATING THAT!My point is that rejection of a claim does not imply the acceptance of its opposite. Rejecting a claim of X does NOT mean that I accept notX to be true! Then watch closely. Lets go back to where you try to equate Person A(Y) with Person B(X): (1) Lets replace the "not true" in the original statement with "false". (We can agree that "not true" and "false" can be exchanged, right?) This makes your transition look like:
"There is no objective empirical evidence that shows "gods do not exist" is false," (This implies that there is evidence that gods do not exist.)
into
"There is no objective empirical evidence that shows "gods do exist" is true,"That transition makes no sense. Look at the last statement; does the lack of evidence showing that gods exist mean that there must be evidence that gods don't exist? Of course not! "Failure to understand this is failure to understand basic logic." D and E both appear to be logical. I consider it appropriate to consider the possibility of anything to be true.

I don't think you will ever move on, due to the impenetrable callous between your ears. I'm tired of your squirming and attempts to push your assumptions.