Faith vs Skepticism - Why faith?

That's not true. A Skeptic will ask for proof before accepting an explanation, rather than just accepting what someone tells them on...faith.Now, for many things, have an expert tell you something is true, you will either accept it, as you can't realistically do the necessary tests yourself, or you will get a second opinion to see if they match, and therefore test, if not the prediction, then at least the conclusion.I'm a skeptic, I accept things provisionally, unless they are backed by a lot of evidence. Things with no evidence, I tend to reject provisionally until evidence comes along. I am seeking truth, but I know I will never reach a perfect understanding or complete certainty.Like a famous coach once said, "Those who pursue perfection attain greatness." It's a goal that can never be met, but we can do great things as we get closer to it, rather than just assuming we're already there and not trying any more.

To be consistent, that's exactly what he would assert. RAZD's disagreement, and the one that has been hashed out over 4 threads now, and one that Onifre has been sucked into now, is that he doesn't quite grasp how agnosticism and atheism relate to each other. Agnosticism is an atheistic position, by taking no position, you don't have belief, and are thus atheistic. Just about every atheist on this board would agree that they don't and can't KNOW if there is a god or not, meaning they're agnostic, they just also take the approach that if something is not evidenced, there is no reason to consider it any more than as an intellectual exercise and live their lives as if it doesn't exist.

Evidence is not proof. You can have evidence for something that turns out to be wrong. That doesn't mean the evidence pointed to the truth until new evidence was found, it just means the evidence was not sufficient, was incorrectly understood, or was ambiguous.{AbE} All that's being said is, until there is evidence FOR a proposition, the best starting point is one of disbelief. As new evidence rolls in, your position changes, it can move closer to belief, or it can remain at disbelief, but with more certainty.Edited by Perdition, : No reason given.

Maybe for some. This is how I live my life. I don't believe a claim unless I have an objective reaosn to do so. If a friend tells me something, I have a history with that friend and can guage whether they're knowledgeable enough in the topic to know what they're talking about, and whether this is something they would lie to me about.If I read it on the internet from some anonymous poster, I'll look for corroborating evidence elsewhere at sites I have reason to trust (as with my friend.)I think most people do this, they're just not necessarily aware of it. As Straggler says, there is rarely, if ever, a complete vaccuum of evidence surrounding a claim, and all that peripheral objective evidence should be taken into account.

Appeal to popularity? Millions of believers are wrong on all sorts of things. Millions of people believed the Earth was flat. Millions of people believed you couldn't break the sound barrier. Millions of people believe in anthropomorphic spirits dwelling inside all objects. Millions of people believe in something that is incompatible with millions of other people's beliefs.The belief that if a lot of others believe something, I should too, is not objective in the least. It's subjective. It could very well be that no one is right, or maybe one lone little man in BFE, and no one listens to him because "millions of people can't be wrong."

But the gravity equations had been correct for a lot of other instances. There was evidence that they are accurate (or close to it) and one bit of evidence that there was something wrong. The options are to propose something new "dark matter" or scrap the equations. The evidence was on the side of the equations. And there are a number of scientists out there who are trying other gravity equations to do away with dark matter.

The thing is, they had two options:1) Go with the very accurate and highly useful equations that work in 99% of all cases, but add something to make that last 1% work, or2) Devise an entirely new set of equations that works as well as the first set of equations, but without the need to invoke Dark Matter, or any other unknown phenomenon.Until someone comes along with better equations, we're stuck with only the first opotion, really. And since the first anomalous solutions, we're finding corroborating evidence for dark matter. Science is all about tentativity. It holds to the current equations, if they work in most cases, until better equations come along. It doesn't take one anomalous reading to refute Evolution, Gravitation, Relativity, Germ Theory...it takes an anomalous reading AND a better set of equations. It's often much easier to fix the current equations, and dark matter is that "fix" for gravitation...unless you know of another way to fix them that doesn't require unknown phenomenon.

In a complete absence of any evidence, yay or nay, then I'd say it's evidence, though very, very weak and liable to be overturned at the slightest hint of any actual evidence FOR the claim, that the claim should be considered probably not true. {AbE} For, what exactly would you expect to find if a claim is false? I'd expect a lack of evidence for the claim being true.{/AbE}But, as you should know, we're never in a situation for which there is absolutely no evidence. Even when we think there is none, we still have to cinsider the source of the claim. Now again, arguing from authority (or lack thereof) is also not the strongest basis on which to form a belief, but if we have a claim for whcih there is no positive evidence, and the claim is coming from a suspect source (and all humans are suspect sources when it comes to claims without any objective evidence), the most probable conclusion to make is that the claim is wrong.Edited by Perdition, : No reason given.

That is exactly what atheists say. They just go the next step and say that understanding that, it would be quite a leap to then say, "I believe." If they can't say that phrase, they must be atheists, or lacking belief.

Not quite. Atheists don't believe god exists, but don't necessarily believe god doesn't exist. You could say a Strong Atheist has that positive belief, whereas a Weak Atheist merely lacks belief in god.

But there are only two, mutually exclusive options, either you believe in X or you don't believe in X. If you think there is not enough knowledge to make a decision, then you are, by default, on the not believing side. If you can't say "I believe X," then you would have to be able to say "I don't believe X." There are no other options.{AbE} Note, saying "I don't believe X" is NOT the same as saying "I believe not-X."Edited by Perdition, : No reason given.

But by not knowing, you don't actively believe, do you? Belief is a thing you either have or you don't. If you're not sure about something, then you lack belief. You may not actively disbelieve, but that's a separate thing from not having active belief. It's a simple question: "Do you believe?" If you don't say "yesy" then you don't believe. You seem to be conflating "not believing" with "believing not." They're two different things.I have no problem with indecision on whether something is there or not. Most atheists don't know if there's a god, they just recognize that by not knowing, they lack belief.There are two options: X and not-X. If you don't have X, then by default, you have not-X.For example, you can say you don't have a positive number, but that doesn't mean you have a negative number, you could have zero. Us atheists are saying, "we don't have a positive number," and you're hearing "we have a negative number."

Reductio ad absurdum is a perfectly valid way of showing a logical argument to be incorrect. If you can use the premises to arive at a contradictory conclusions, then you've shown the argument is invalid.