Scientific Knowledge

But what is "religious truth" ? Is it simple conformity to dogma ? Or is it something else ? Can a thing be a "religious truth" and also false under more normal standards of "truth" ?

RAZD, I have some questions about your statement: Who are "we"?What evidence do "we" have?What test methods do " we" have and how do you know what they show?Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Since RAZD is apparently unwilling to answer some simple questions about his own statement, I am going to point out the major problems with it. By certainty, RAZD means absolute 100% certainty, and this is not possible.We cannot disprove solipsism with 100% certainty, so RAZD cannot even know that any other people exist. Even assuming that they do, we cannot know with certainty the state of their knowledge, so the "we" must be only "I".We cannot know with 100% certainty that any written material - books, scientific papers etc - are accurate and reliable. RAZD therefore cannot rely on written material to convey the evidence or the outcome of tests. And while he might have made observations that tell him the Earth is very old, it is unlikely that he has made any himself that give an age of over 4 billion years.Worse still, RAZD cannot rely on his memory with 100% certainty. If he is not looking at the evidence or the tests RIGHT NOW he cannot be 100% certain of what they show. Or can he ? If he is using any information not immediately apparent to him to reason to a conclusion - even so simple a conclusion as interpreting the test output - he cannot be certain of THAT information. This would seem an insuperable barrier to absolute certainty of any numerical age at all. There is no test that lets you directly read off an absolutely certain numerical age from the thing being tested.100% certainty is a chimera, it cannot be reached in any study of the external world. We cannot even know with 100% certainty that there IS an external world. 100% certainty is for axiomatic systems and our present experiences (in that we can be 100% certain that we are having an experience - nothing more).RAZD can say that "I am absolutely certain that, according to the best of my knowledge, the Earth is more than 4 billion years old." But he can't talk about "we" or tests" or "evidence" because he cannot be absolutely certain of any of them. "We", "tests", "evidence" belong to the external world, and he cannot be absolutely certain of any of it.

There are some points I could make regarding fictional entities, but they seem off-topic in this thread. So, to keep with the topic...Scientific laws are derived by induction - the weight of repeated observation. Now it must be said that a properly conducted inductive test is both rigorous and a rational basis for belief. But it is not a logically valid argument. It does not prove that the law will hold for anything that has not been directly examined, that the law held prior to any observations nor that the law will continue to hold.It would be easy to invent hypotheses where the law might not apply in certain other places or times. For instance, that the apparent law only holds in the presence of otherwise undetectable entities that just happen to be present at all the relevant observations. Or that there is a God who happens to change the laws of physics every so often. Science pays no heed to such hypotheses because they are unevidenced, unparsimonious and worthless.So, science uses logically invalid methods, and completely ignores unfalsifiable, unevidenced entities. Is a trust in science therefore a "logically-invalid" "pseudo-skeptical" position ?

Marcello Truzzi also writes Note that this criterion is met by the argument that thunder and lightning are caused naturally, rather than by Thor.Truzzi also concedes that plausibilty arguments may be adequate in some cases: And he has words for opponents of skepticism that have some relevance: In my view, defending a position by putting forward unfalsifiable and unevidenced ad hoc speculations as propositions to be taken seriously would fall into much the same category. Certainly it could be fairly described as "clinging to any slim loose end".Finally, Truzzi denies a need for absolute disproof: The latter sections of the Wikipedia entry, on Describing believers in pseudoscience and Criticizing scientific skepticism might also be profitably read by those interested in this debate.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Zen Deist's "modified Dawkins" scale: Aside from the misuse of "logically invalid" (a classification which is both a category error and badly mistaken) it is obvious that this scale is missing something.For instance we do NOT have "tested objective empirical evidence" that Lord Voldemort does not exist. Yet I do not think that anyone here would see anything wrong with assigning a '6' to this belief, or a '2' to the belief that Lord Voldemort does NOT exist (unless it is argued that they are too generous to the idea that Voldemort might exist).It would be a (logically invalid) genetic fallacy to point to the fact that Lord Voldemort appears to be a character invented for a work of fiction as evidence that no such person existed. (And is it not possible that one of Voldemort's Death Eaters inspired J K Rowling to help prepare the world for their master's return ? Or perhaps Dumbledore did it to warn the world ?)So in fact we can and do use a priori considerations to reasonably reach positions other than 3-5. Zen Deist is incorrect in saying that it is always wrong to hold positions 2 or 6 without "tested objective empirical evidence".And in fact that is one of the major points in this long, long argument. But if Zen Deist is right, and we may only reach position 6 by means of empirical evidence then he must have more than a little uncertainty over the question of Lord Voldemort's existence - because he has not produced any "tested objective empirical evidence" that Lord Voldemort does NOT exist.

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If you want to, I can show you how these are shown to be "logically invalid" with the absence, or without sufficient, supporting evidence (the noted condition).

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No, you can't. "Logically invalid" is a judgement about the form of an argument. It's not even the right judgement since judging an argument to be logically invalid merely tells us that the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises.A logically valid argument may lead to false conclusions and a logically invalid argument may be sufficiently strong that all rational people should assent to it. It is possible to construct a logically valid argument for any conclusion, no matter how obviously false it may be. Yet induction, one of the backbones of scientific reasoning is not logically valid.So yes, your misuse of "logically invalid" is amusing, but nothing more.

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Are you claiming that we do not have objective evidence that Lord Voldemort is a fictional character, created by an author, and used in a series of intentional fictional fantasy stories?

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If I had intended to make such a claim I would have made it. My actual claim is that we do not have objective tested empirical evidence that Lord Voldemort does not exist.

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Now you can make up stuff all day, PaulK, but the argument is that Lord Voldemort is a fictional character, created by an author, and used in a series of intentional fictional fantasy stories, and the evidence supports that.

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It's good to see that you think that the invention of ad hoc possibilities to preserve the mere possibility of existence is worthless (especially as I had the impression that you thought differently). However, they are sufficient to illustrate that arguing from the known facts about the origin of the books is not a logically valid argument that Lord Voldemort does not exist.Thus, we still face the fact that you have not produced any objective tested empirical evidence that Lord Voldemort does not exist. Instead you rely on a logically invalid a priori argument that does not even consider empirical evidence for or against the existence of Lord Voldemort.Note that i do NOT say that your argument is wrong or irrational, I merely point out that it does not live up to the criteria you have set up in your Modified Dawkins Scale.

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Yes, you can choose to be illogical -- that is faith (belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence) -- but you can't then claim that your position is not illogical.

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So, you say that it is illogical to take the position that Lord Voldemort almost certainly does not exist ? Because you have not produced any objective tested empirical evidence to support such a conclusion.

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Okay then, here it is

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And quite amusing it was too.However, it didn't really show what you claim. Mainly because it missed the role of plausibility and other a priori arguments in contributing to our evaluations - or other issues, such as faith, dogma etc. Essentially you strawman the positions you object to by ignoring the very considerations that cause people to take those positions, instead assuming that they do so based on a principle that they apply universally.Practically nobody, for instance, says that "any X with no contradictory evidence is absolutely true", and your Dawkins scale has no place set aside for only those rare individuals.

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Exactly -- it shows that the conclusion is groundless, and there is no indication that it can be true or false. You might as well be guessing.

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More accurately it shows that the argument does not give us a reason to believe the conclusion. But it doesn't give us a reason to reject the conclusion either. So logical invalidity is a flaw of the argument, not the conclusion.

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In other words it appeals to their confirmation bias, and then the logical fallacy of an "Appeal to Popularity" makes it true?
http://onegoodmove.org/fallacy/pop.htm

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So you consider inductive arguments to be "confirmation bias" and an "appeal to popularity". Interesting. As well as any argument that Lord Voldemort does not exist because he is a fictional character invented by J K Rowling. After all, the argument is not logically valid...

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And this is just shy of the logical fallacy of the part for the whole and instead slides into the logical fallacy of omission (of the rest of the picture). Yes, inductive logic plays A part, but the backbone of scientific reasoning is testing and evaluating the evidence deductively, not making up hypothesis.

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Inductive logic is the only way to find general laws. Throw that out, and you throw out all the science that works on finding such laws - and the greater body of science that relies on them. That's a lot of science.You are not even strictly correct in saying that invalidation is deductive logic. There are always sources of error. There are always ad hoc hypotheses that could protect a theory from falsification. Strict deductive logic is not enough, sometimes scientists have to say "the theory is too well-confirmed, the anomalous result must be wrong" (this is pretty much what is happening at CERN with the "faster than light" neutrinos) and sometimes they have to say "we've gone too far protecting the theory with auxiliary hypotheses, time to replace it". Naive falsificationism is not the way science works.

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The rest has already been addressed

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Then I must take it as confirmed that you think that is UNREASONABLE to think that Lord Voldemort almost certainly does not exist (your position 6), and REASONABLE to think that it is more likely than not that Lord Voldemort does exist (your position 3).Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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Therefore, bolstered by this evidence, the odds on it doing something unexpected can allow me to take a 6+ level that it would do something unexpected without being a pseudoskeptic, since, apparently everyone has agreed that being a pseudoskeptic is a bad thing...it just sounds bad.

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But the argument is logically invalid and therefore according to Zen Deist it is no more than "confirmation bias" and an "appeal to popularity". Thus, I guess you must be a "pseudoskeptic" after all.(Apparently an "open minded skeptic" must close his mind to the possibility that some arguments, although logically fallacious might nonetheless be rational).

It is a rather long-winded evasion, isn't it ?

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Curiously, if this is your response to a detailed reply to a specific point that Straggler asked, showing that his conclusion of back-flushing confidence in the results based on an assumption, to result in confidence in the assumption, is not correct and cannot be correct

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Curiously you have failed to notice that my post was a response to Xongsmith, and that your post completely failed to address Straggler's actual point. Which is why I labelled it an evasion.

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So you say (first) that the logical analysis doesn't show that the argument is invalid, and (second) that it shows that the argument is invalid (rather than wrong or falsified

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I certainly did not say the first, and I do not even understand what you mean by the second. And since the statement that you object to is entirely correct, I must assume that the error of comprehension is yours.

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You agree that you can't make valid conclusions with invalidly formed arguments - you can guess, and the guess may be correct, but it is not a conclusion.

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The conclusion of an invalid argument is still a conclusion by definition. To argue otherwise is silly.

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So why should I bother replying to you when you say things like this?

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You mean pointing out obvious facts that you have neglected to take into account ?
Hardly open-minded of you!

I've never even HEARD of of the Dick Cavett show, so that doesn't really tell me much.

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The objective, empirical, repeatable, evidence is that (a) the books are fantasy fiction and (b) that the characters in them are fictional, supported by (c) the acknowledgement by the author that they are, in fact, fictions, and also supported by (d) the classification as fantasy fiction in book stores and libraries, and finally, (e) tested by the reactions of people reading the stories that believe it is a fact that they are fiction rather than real documentaries or narratives.

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When this was put forward earlier, I raised two points against it. The first was that we could not exclude the logical possibility of J K Rowling having "inside knowledge" - perhaps unknowingly. The second, and more important point is that none of this is evidence against the existence of Lord Voldemort. Even if we set aside the obvious fallacies (point e is obviously ad populem, for instance, there is a deeper problem.Let us assume for now, the J K Rowling had no knowledge of the wizarding world, and in fact made up Lord Voldemort. There is still the possibility of a coincidence, in which her invention happened to correspond to fact to the point that someone close enough to the character to be considered "Lord Voldemort" actually existed. The likelihood of this possibility is trivially equal to the likelihood of such a person existing.None of the evidence offered addresses the likelihood of such a person existing at all. Therefore, the argument must implicitly assume that the existence of such a person is so unlikely that we can have high confidence that they do not exist. And this confidence is based on a priori grounds, not on any evidence that directly addresses the question.Thus Zen Deist has still offered no empirical evidence that Lord Voldemort does not exist and has in fact come to that conclusion by implicit a priori reasoning.Edited by AdminModulous, : changed close tags for italics to a forward slash, rather than a backslashEdited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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(But please don't post any argumentum ad populums. People believing something is true is not evidence - despite what RAZD thinks.)
So, where do you place yourself concerning Lord V?

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- I am a 6 on the scale. (probably a 7 tho being that he is a known documented fictional character)

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- Straggler is a 6

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- Xongsmith is a 6

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- RAZD is a 6 (possibly a 7 being that he is a known documented fictional character)

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What are you? It seems you are maybe a 3?

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Why do you think that RAZD/Zen Deist is a 6? Since it is a position taken in the absence of empirical evidence, according to his own arguments only positions in the range 3-5 are reasonable.Further, according to RAZD anybody who takes a position of 1,2,6 or 7 in the absence of empirical evidence must take the same position on everything which is not supported or contradicted by physical evidence. Thus if he takes a position of 6 on Lord Voldemort he must also take a position of 6 with regard to the unfalsifiable supernatural entities he uses in his own examples. Which puts him firmly with those he calls "pseudoskeptics" - or worse since he refuses to accept the reasoning that they employ to support their views.So, to be true to his own arguments he cannot take position 6 with regard to Lord Voldemort. In fact he must hold that it is reasonable to take position 3, even if he himself is a 5.

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Well, RAZD and Straggler have a difference scale. RAZD isn't interested in the Dawkins scale so we'll use theirs.

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He is interested enough to repeatedly post his own version, and to make a lot of claims about it. And it is the scale you were using. So why switch?Oh, and the reason he "needs" to keep repeating his position on the other scale seems to be that he doesn't want to admit his position on his modified Dawkins scale.