Is My Hypothesis Valid???

The assertion that there is a lion in the forest is not solely based on subjective evidence.There is objective evidence that lions exist.There is objective evidence that forests exist.This is inherently different from the assertion, for example, that there is a fairy in a magical flying island. There is no objective evidence that fairies exist, and neither is there objective evidence that flying magical islands exist.A subjective experience still requires objective evidence before it can have any degree of likelihood attached to it.It is highly likely, for example, that a claim of having seen a cat cross a road is true, because previous objective evidence supports the assertions that cats exist, that roads exist, that cats do cross roads occasionally, and that such events have been witnessed before.It is highly unlikely that a claim of having seen a flying lion is true, because previous objective evidence suggests that lions cannot fly.It is even more unlikely that a claim of having seen a flying leprechaun is true, because there is no previous objective evidence suggesting that leprechauns, flying or not, exist at all.Further, by its very nature subjective evidence is open to human interpretation. When a person claims to have seen a UFO, for example, it is highly likely that the person saw something. That the thing seen was actually an alien spacecraft is the witness' own personal interpretation of what he/she saw. This is why human eyewitness testimony is so flimsy - our brains piece together full pictures from barely-glimpsed or poorly-remembered experiences using what we expect to see based on previous experience. Subjective "evidence" can support many different conclusions due to its openness to interpretation, meaning it cannot reliably support any conclusion.This is why we rely on independent, outside verification of personal observations. With the known phenomenon of mass hysteria, even large groups of people who witness the same event cannot completely verify that the event occurred; other evidence (photographs, video, footprints, fingerprints, hair, etc) must independently support such events when they are significantly outside the norm.

Again, as I just said, there is objective evidence that lions exist, and objective evidence that forests exist. The claim that there is in actuality a lion in a forest is partially supported by objective evidence. Do you know what a forest is?If you're completely ignorant lions and forests, then no, there would be no objective evidence supporting the assertion of the 100.Unfortunately, that simply reinforces my point. Without the objective evidence supporting what a lion or a forest are and that they exist, the observations of the 100 are open to interpretation. The "lion" could in fact be a jaguar, or a fairy. The "forest" could be a city, or a tent. The observation of the 100 could simply be mass hysteria. Their claim is not evidence that there is a lion in a forest at all if we do not have objective evidence that lions and forests exist.Replace "lion" with "fairy." If 100 people come up to you and claim to have seen a fairy in the forest near your home, is their collective observation evidence that fairies exist?"Evidence" must be a set of objective facts which collectively support a given conclusion above others.Fingerprints, discarded bloody knives, and a corpse with knife wounds are collectively evidence of a murder, because they support that conclusion above other conceivable conclusions.In the case of a claim that there is a lion in teh forest, we have the knowledge that lions and forests exist as facts that collectively support the assertion of the 100, though further verification is required.In the case of a claim that there is a fairy in the forest, the only fact is that 100 people are making a claim that cannot be immediately verified with pre-existing objective evidence. Without any facts to collectively support a conclusion, it is equally probable that the fairy exists, or that this is a case of mass hysteria, or any number of other scenarios. The subjective claim is reason for further inquiry, but is not itself evidence of anything at all.There must be some degree of certitude granted by any proposed proof in order to qualify as evidence.That means that evidence must support a concise position. It cannot support multiple equally likely positions simultaneously, because in such a case there can be no degree of certitude at all (if a large number of disparate positions are all equally supported, no conclusion can be drawn and thus whatever information is under consideration cannot alone qualify as evidence).If I claim to have witnessed a clemthorp, my claim is not evidence of anything. Multiple different conclusions are supported equally - I may have been hallucinating, I could have made it up, I could be delusional, I could have seen a false pattern that I then interpreted as a clemthorp...and what the hell is a clemthorp, anyway? There is no degree of certitude granted by my claim alone; no conclusion can be supported above any number of others. This is analogous to deistic claims that there exists an undefinable "higher power."If 100 people claim to have seen a lion in the forest, the fact that lions and forests exist provide at least some degree of certitude (even if it's extremely low) that those 100 people saw what they identified as a lion in what they perceived to be a forest. As Straggler would say, the objective evidence in this case points to the plausibility, though not the actuality, of a lion actually existing in a forest. Without that objective evidence, the claim of the 100 grants no degree of certitude whatsoever, and alone is not evidence of anything beyond the fact that 100 people have claimed that there is a lion in the forest.Leaving aside the "100 people claim there is a lion in the forest" claim for a moment, it's important to note that, while additional witnesses do increase the likelihood of an event actually having happened, those witnesses must have actually seen the same thing. This is of particular relevance with religion - multiple claims of having witnessed or experienced "the divine" do not cumulatively qualify as evidence because each person's definition and experience of "the divine" is different; one person's vision of Thor and another person's divine revelation from Zeus do not combine to prove that a "higher power" exists.

Which is appropriate, considering I was not replying to RAZD. What is the point, exactly? I don't understand why you take issue with identifying a flying island as magical. You seem to hold that all evidence is subjective, that nothing can be directly known objectively. I can understand why - to paraphrase Morpheus in the Matrix, what we see, smell, hear, taste and touch are all electrochemical signals interpreted by our brains, meaning that the actual sensory experience and its interpretation are all subjective.We determine what objectively exists by finding additional independent evidence that agrees with the initial perception. For instance, if I thought I had seen Bigfoot, in order to verify that my subjective experience was actually an observation of objective reality, I might look for one of Bigfoot's footprints where he was standing, or try to snap a quick photo with my camera phone (presumably photographs do not take pictures of hallucinations, and of course can be analyzed independently).This is fundamentally different from fully subjective evidence, such a dreams or "feelings" that cannot be independantly verified. And again, I wasn't addressing RAZD, so his positions are rather irrelevant. Not quite. We don't need to possess all objective evidence. That's impossible - human beings are not omniscient, and yet we can still draw reasonably accurate conclusions. We don't have all of the objective evidence surrounding evolution, for example - but we know that evolution happens.Key here is that we need some objective evidence, and the likelihood of accuracy increases as more objective evidence is known.The purpose behind reliance on objective evidence and independent validation is to eliminate personal bias and other unintentional (or intentional) distortion of perception. A single person's perception is not, alone, evidence of what that person believes they have observed. The likelihood that the perception accurately reflects reality increases with the amount of objective evidence supporting it; seeing a cat, for example, is supported by the fact that cats do exist, and can be further supported by petting the cat, hearing the cat, examining the cat's pawprints, observing the cat to eat food, etc.Subjectively perceiving that a cat exists in a specific location without any previously verified sensory method (in other words, dreaming about the cat, "feeling" the location of the cat, etc) are all worthless, and the chances of such subjective experiences that actually rely on zero objective evidence are no better than random guessing - in other words, they are not evidence of anything at all.

Why on Earth would you ever expect to have objective evidence of a purely subjective phenomenon?Human emotions are totally subjective. They don't exist objectively at all. Saying "I love my son" is equivalent (so far as evidence goes, anyway) to saying "I had a dream about my son," or "I have positive feelings when I think about my son."There's nothing objective about it, and those who claim that "love" or other emotions exist in any objective way are barking up the wrong tree. There are certain brain processes that can be objectively measured that can be associated with emotions and thoughts, but when it comes down to it we're still not objectively measuring emotion - we're objectively measuring electrochemical processes in a person's brain that that person experiences as a given emotion.There's no problem inherent subjective experiences and feelings. Problems only start to arise when you try to apply wholly subjective experiences like dreams and feelings to objective reality.When Straggler says "I love my son," no objective information is involved. When it comes down to it, Straggler's experience of "love" may be very different from mine, or yours. But when Straggler says "I love my son," he is expressing that he feels an emotion he has identified as "love" towards his son. It's completely subjective...and completely okay. We believe him simply because, with wholly subjective things like emotions, only Straggler can possibly know what he feels because it's his experience.When a person says "I feel God's presence," their subjective experience is not in doubt - they certainly have some "feeling" that they identify with their deity. However, this does not in any way suggest that "God" exists in objective reality. It simply means that an individual has a feeling.Subjective "feelings" only relate to objective reality similarly to (sometimes educated) guessing. "Feeling" that there is a cat inside a closet has absolutely no relationship to a cat actually being in a closet; dreams of flying or falling into a giant canyon have no relationship to Superman-style flight or a suicidal jump.Subjective experiences relating to gods, ghosts, goblins and fairies, whether they be visions of angels or dreams with divine revelation, prove only that the individual had a subjective experience. Such subjective experiences are not, in any way evidence of any of those things existing in objective reality.The mere term "subjective evidence" directly correlates to confidence in a given conclusion that cannot, by definition, be supported by the subjective experience. No degree of objective certitude is granted by a "feeling" for one conclusion over another - it can only provide unfounded emotional confidence: faith. The hallmark of irrationality is operating under the mistaken assumption that personal, unverifiable, subjective experiences somehow relate to objective reality.

Again with your woefully inaccurate Venn diagrams.The set of (perceptions of reality) does not entirely rest within the set of (reality). If it did, every perception would qualify as "real," including hallucinations, and the Virgin Mary in a water stain.

I have had such experiences. I have "felt God's love" and "presence." I have had prayers "answered." I was certain that a deity existed.Until I examined those experiences, and realized that they almost certainly originated within my own mind. Self-delusion, wishful thinking, false pattern recognition, and confirmation bias.I accepted that the evidence for the IPU was identical to my evidence for my deity - there wasn't any, not really. Only subjectively interpreted experiences arbitrarily attributed to my deity of choice. A believer in the IPU, Thor, Zeus, Allah, or any other deity could have had the exact same experiences and attributed them to that deity.I accepted that my deity was equivalent to the IPU (or any other deity, whether actually worshiped or made up to prove a point).That's a large part of why I'm an atheist currently. Clearly, your assertion is false. A believer may not be inclined to compare their deity with the IPU, but for those to whom reason, logic, and intellectual consistency hold sway, consideration and even acceptance are very possible.

CS seems to have concluded that similar subjective experiences (that is, experiences which exist solely in the minds of those who experience them but have similarities across many individuals) provide evidence of soemthing that exists outside of the minds of the individuals.This is rather like saying that, since many people have dreams about being able to fly, there must be some inherant human ability to fly. Or at least a common, supernatural "source"for the common dreams.We know that this is poor reasoning. CS has to assume a 6th sense of some sort for this to work - some means of perception other than the 5 senses, a means of perception he can provide no mechanism for and no evidence to support such an assertion. This is why he's avoided saying as much.The alternative is that phenomenon like visions of teh Virgin Mary observed in a water stain under an overpass, or Jesus' face on a grilled cheese sandwich actually represent real supernatural phenomenon. These are well-researched, and are nothing more than false pattern recognition. The water stain and the cheese sandwich both exist outside of the mind of the observer, but the images are subjective perceptions based on blurry, vague patterns resembling an expected image, no different from seeing a bunny shape in a passing cloud.In either case, there is no evidence that any of these experiences exist anywhere other than in the minds of those who experience them. They are not reproducable or independantly verifiable. They are not testable.The IPU may have been made up specifically to demonstrate the logical inconsistency of having increased confidence in one assertion over another when both are unevidenced and unfalsifiable, but that doesn't change the fact that there is still no evidence of any deity. These experiences that CS is trying to use to paint a difference are nothing of teh sort - they're simply subjective experiences that do not seem to exist outside of the minds of believers.CS needs to show that these experiences relate to an external source. To do that, he must either falsify the mundane explanations for water-stain-Mary's and grilled-Jesus-sandwiches, or he must support with evidence (or at lease propose a mechanism for) the existence of a 6th sense to allow external input other than through the five normal senses.

How, precisely? If exactly the same amount of objective evidence exists in support of the IPU as for any and all deities, how would the belief be different? Is it different because non-IPU beliefs are "more sincere?" Since when does sincerity have anything to do with whether a belief is rational or not? There are people who sincerely believe in fairies, even today; children holda sincere belief in Santa Claus. Sincere belief clearly has absolutely nothing to do with whether the belief is true. You mentioned previously the difference between the loose definition of "evidence" and the strong definition - and yet you've been conflating the two for msot of your participation in this thread. The topic, as Straggler has mentioned several times recently, regards actual objective evidence for deities, and whether belief in deities is rational or logical. This is simultaneously an appeal to authority, popularity, and tradition, CS. This qualifies as the loose definition of "evidence," meaning a reason for holding a belief, but does not meet the more strenuous definition. If my mother holds a sincere belief in the IPU, is that a rational reason for me to believe in it? Simply because "my mother says so" is a rather poor reason for believing that something otherwise completely unevidenced exists in objective reality. After all, I believed in Santa when I was a child because my mother said so, and Santa turns out to be a fictional character. Same with the tooth fairy, the "stork" that brings kids, and any number of beliefs. Does the sincerity of my mother's belief in God make that particular evidenced entity more likely to actually exist? How? Be specific. Remember that many people still sincerely believe in fairies, 6-day Creation, and a global Flood. This is absolutely ridiculous. You're appealing to a popularity that doesn't even exist here. A more accurate statement would be "so many people in the world have a belief in mutually exclusive god(s), many of which have absolutely nothing in common save the term 'god' (and, of course, the complete absence of evidence supporting their existence),and so there's probably something out there."We all know that the popularity of a belief carries no weight as to the belief's validity. Belief in a Flat Earth was awfully common 1000 years ago, and yet that belief was still incorrect. But in this case you can't even point to a popularly common belief - most of the deities are completely mutually exclusive.Do you think that the popularity of belief in god(s), even when those beliefs contradict each other, supports the notion that god(s) actually exist? Why? Be specific. Once again, you're conflating the loose definition of evidence with the more stringent one. None of these things are actual evidence, CS, any more than popular belief was evidence for a Flat Earth, or the sincere belief of a parent somehow provides evidence for a fairy. It may be a reason that a person holds a belief, but that reason is not logical as it depends on committing various logical fallacies. Your "evidence" does not actually support the objective existence of deities even one jot - it equally supports the idea that human beings are by nature irrational and gullible, two things we actually do know to be true and have objective, testable, repeatable evidence for, unlike the existence of a deity.Frankly CS, your argument is bollocks. "But people sincerely believe in (deity x), so that makes (deity x) different from the IPU!" Utter nonsense. Give me 6 months, and I'll wager I can manufacture a group of people who sincerely believe in a deity purely of my own manufacture. Cults do it all the damned time. The objective evidence supporting the objective existence of both deities and the IPU remain exactly the same: there isn't any. Your appeals to tradition, authority and popularity don't change that very simple fact.Your "difference" is of no relevant consequence. You may as well point out that god(s) and the IPU are "different" because typically god(s) are neither pink, nor unicorns. It's still a red herring argument, a blatant and rather poor attempt to dismiss the fact that no actual evidence (in the strict sense, since that's all that matters for this discussion) exists supporting either any deity or the IPU, making them for all practical purposes related to this discussion equivalent.

I have, in fact, had dreams about the Immaterial Pink Unicorn and the Flying Spaghetti Monster (completely honest - likely due to our discussions here, but that part is irrelevant).Is that a reason for me to believe that either of them actually exist?Is a dream an empirical method of detection or observation?If I feel an overwhelming sense of wonder at the amazing complexity and never-ending stream of fascinating revelations about the Universe around us, and attribute this sense of wonder to the IPU/FSM, am I justified in doing so? Is attributing such a sense of wonder to the IPU/FSM any different from attributing it to the Christian God or any other deity?Roughly a decade ago, I was a firm believer not only in God, but in ghosts persisting on Earth. I and a group of friends would take photographs late at night in areas where we knew (or at least believed) traumatic experiences and even violent deaths had occurred, and captured what we believed to be ghosts on film (they typical smoky figures and "unexplained" lights that ghost hunters frequently report), and tended to feel a sense of unease and dread in certain areas that we were convinced was caused by a ghost.Certainly my experiences were convincing to me back then. Did my sincerity constitute a legitimate reason to believe that ghosts actually exist? Did my photographs, which I personally was unable to explain, provide real evidence that ghosts exist? Was I or was I not being arbitrary in saying "I don't know what that is, ergo ghosts?" Did my emotional reactions of fear and dread in distinct areas constitute an empirical method of detection and observation of ghosts? Why, or why not?Disregarding the fact that I found my "evidence" to be convincing at the time, was my belief in ghosts rational? Was it delusional? Was it logically justified? Did I have an objective reason to believe in the actuality of ghosts, as opposed to simply an unsupported possibility?What about when I and my friends became convinced that there was a ghost specifically inside of a crypt in a nearby graveyard, which watched us and gave off a feeling of malevolence? What about when I and a few of my friends became convinced through "feelings" that we were being specifically followed by ghosts? These were not isolated incidents. I and a group of 3-5 friends did this frequently, sometimes several times in a single week. All of us reported the same "feelings" of fear and dread. In one case, one of my friends and I became convinced that an unusually strong and recurring wind blowing away from our intended investigation site was a "warning" to stay away. We took many photographs, and many of those contained the visual anomalies I described.Were my beliefs actually justified? Were they rational, or reasonable? Clearly I had more reasons to believe in ghosts than I did to believe in the IPU or FSM based on a few dreams. Were those reasons legitimate, or were they based on poor thinking, numerous logical fallacies, and basic traps of human psychology?I don't care whether you think my reasons would be convincing to you, just as you don't require your reasons for believing in God to convince us. But I'd like to know if you think my beliefs were justified. Was I being rational in believing in ghosts? What parts of my evidence, if any, was empirical?

Possibility is quite different from actuality, CS. I didn't believe in the possibility, I believed there were actually ghosts following me and my friends, that we were photographing ghosts, etc.Was I really justified in thinking that I was experiencing something outside of my own mind? Does a vague "feeling of dread and fear" actually support that notion?What definition of "ghosts" could we use that is loose enough to still be called "ghosts" and not just "something," but still lets me rationally suggest that vague photographical anomalies are being directly caused by the "ghosts?"Does the validation of my "feelings" from my friends, who reported similar feelings, justify believing that there is actually something outside of our minds directly causing those feelings? Were my vague "feelings" empirical? Does my emotional state count as a sense with which I can receive information from the outside world? You tell by critically examining the thought process, CS, to determine if it was based on fallacious reasoning.Let me give you my take, and the reason I no longer believe in ghosts.Feelings, by definition, are subjective. They do not exist outside of our minds. The fact that my friends also felt those feelings is a red herring - we were out at 3 am in graveyards and in a place commonly referred to as "the rape trail" (an area between the University of Connecticut and off-campus apartments that has a jogging path and exercise equipment; it was unlit until not many years before I came, and rumor had it many rapes were committed in the woods off the path) looking for ghosts. Feelings of dread and fear are to be expected. It was simple confirmation bias, a logical leap (ghosts must be causing our emotional state, not our own mindset, for no reason at all), and validation from the rest of the group.The photographs were empirical - but what they showed was inconclusive. We had vague wispy, cloudy shapes, small lights, etc. It was Connecticut, and it was cold at 3am. The cloudy shapes were far more likely the result of breathing while photographing, and the lights were almost certainly simple reflections or other mundane phenomenon. "Ghosts" was an unfounded leap in reasoning - it occupied the same role as "goddidit," in that anything we could not immediately explain was attributed to what we were looking for: ghosts.The "ghosts" that followed us were simply the result of paranoia and fear, strengthened by validation from the group. Any time you think about someone invisibly watching you, you can feel the same thing.The "malevolent force" in the crypt? Turns out it wasn't a crypt at all - it was a maintenance shed made up to look like a crypt for aesthetic purposes. We had partially seen a light that was on inside. Our paranoia and confirmation bias took care of the rest.The "warning" wind was, obviously, nothing but the wind.We had plenty of "subjective evidence," and even physical evidence we thought supported our belief in ghosts. And yet our beliefs were based on one logical fallacy after another. We arbitrarily assigned any phenomenon we were unable to explain to what we were looking for. We credited our subjective "feelings," which by definition can only exist within our own minds, to external entities.Our beliefs were totally unjustified. The conclusion that ghosts exist in actual reality (not the possibility but the actuality) was based on an arbitrary choice that ghosts were responsible. Why not God? Why not Satan? Why not aliens, or vampires, or a mind-controlling frog? Why not the Immaterial Pink Unicorn, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster? We had absolutely no reason to attribute our experiences to "ghosts" instead of any of the other choices...and we completely dismissed out of hand the most obvious and parsimonious choice of all - we were experiencing totally mundane phenomenon and attributing it all to extraordinary causes without any corresponding extraordinary evidence to support it.We had the following hypotheses:If ghosts exist, we should be able to detect them through an emotional reaction when they are present.If ghosts exist, we should be able to detect them through photography despite being unable to see them with the naked eye, and these photographs should have strange distortions like "clouds" and "mists" or lights that were not observed when the photographs were taken.In both cases, we were making the unfounded and completely arbitrary assumption that ghosts cause direct emotional changes, or that our internal "feelings" constitute a "6th sense," and that ghosts produced specific phenomenon on film that is not captured by the naked eye. We had no reason to do so. In one case we were trying to detect somewhat-empirical entities through non-empirical means; in teh other, we were just demonstrating poor thinking - we had no mechanism by which ghosts could magically manifest on film but not to our eyes, nor did we have a reason to think such manifestations should take the form of "mists" and lights. Our hypotheses were invalid, because they were founded on faulty logic.We also didn't take any control pictures, didn't document our feelings, the location, and time of our photographs, we used low-quality, disposable cameras most times, didn't independently write our emotional reaction to prevent causing sympathetic emotional responses throughout the group (ie, I'm afraid, so you become afraid), etc.How then does this translate to god(s)? Well, my experience with ghosts is somewhat analogous to my experience with God, so let's go through the exercise again.When I was a believer, I had several reasons for my faith. First was the Bible. I made the arbitrary choice to consider the Bible to hold some "truth," while discarding other texts that were equivalent (the Koran, the Vedas, etc). Empirically and objectively verifiable falsehoods in the Bible (the Flood, etc) did not sway this belief. I had emotional experiences (the "love" of God, etc) that I attributed to God rather than any other possibility due to wishful thinking and confirmation bias. I had prayers "answered," while conveniently dismissing those prayers that were not, due to confirmation bias. My beliefs were validated by a community of believers who were each individually basing their beliefs on the same logical fallacies.Again, none of this was about the possibility of a deity - I skipped straight to the actuality. It's absurd to speak of possibilities when discussing faith and religion, which hold that the objects of their faith are actualities, not simply possibilities.My "God Hypothesis," like my ghost hypothesis, was based on false pattern recognition, wishful thinking, confirmation bias, and a series of unfounded arbitrary leaps of logic. The hypothesis was completely invalid.Dismissing any considerations of possibilities as irrelevant, was my faith in the actuality of God justified? What about ghosts? That's absurd, and irrelevant. Nobody is asserting the impossibility of either ghosts or deities, or even the IPU or the FSM.Because my reasoning was logically fallacious, my hypothesis was invalid.
Because I relied on non-empirical means of detection, whatever I detected was by definition non-empirical - and therefore almost certainly all in my mind.Because I had no empirical evidence with which to support the assertion that ghosts exist outside of my mind, I have no rational reason to have confidence that they do actually exist outside of my mind.The same with god(s). While I have plenty of subjective, non-empirical reasons to believe in a deity, I don't see how such experiences can possibly grant confidence in the actuality of god(s) existing - and my attribution of those experiences to god(s) is completely arbitrary and based upon logical fallacies to boot. In the absence of empirical evidence supporting the existence of deities, I am forced to conclude that I have no confidence in the actuality of the existence of deities.Any other conclusion would be irrational and unjustified.

How so? Others consider dreams to be perfectly valid evidence for whatever they've dreamed. Many believe their dreams predict the future, others have religious visions, etc.Why are my dreams of the Immaterial Pink Unicorn and the Flying Spaghetti Monster a red herring? How are they different?

What about when I've been over to my neighbor's house and looked around thoroughly trying to find the alleged cat? Certainly it's possible that the cat is very good at hiding and I simply didn't find it, or that it's an outdoor cat that only comes back home at night when I'm asleep, but the absence of any evidence after having thoroughly searched is certainly evidence that my neighbor doesn't have a cat.In the case of deities, as Straggler likes to point out, we know that people tend to make them up out of their own imaginations. We could apply this to the cat analogy by saying that the person who suggested our neighbor may have a cat is a habitual and well-known liar, and that last week he told us the same neighbor had a dog.Again, it's certainly possible that we just didn't find the cat, and it could still exist. But after looking thoroughly and finding not so much as a hair or a food dish, wouldn't the reasonable conclusion be that my neighbor has no cat?Would the situation change if several other people insisted that they've seen my neighbor's cat? What if they all describe the cat differently? What if some of them think it's really a dog?What if RAZD says that my neighbor has a pet of some sort, but he's not sure what type, and is in fact loath to describe it with any sort of characteristics? Why would RAZD believe that there is a pet in the house if he doesn't even have sufficient data to tell even vaguely what kind of pet it is?What if some of the "witnesses" say that they've never seen a pet at my neighbor's house, and never heard or smelled or touched anything like a cat or other pet, but that they still believe there is a pet in the house?What if, during my search, I thought I heard a "meow?" In the absence of any other evidence, should I conclude that it was likely just a squeaky door hinge or some other sound coupled with my own selection bias? Or should I conclude that there is likely a cat that miraculously sheds no cat hair, requires no food or water dish, has no cat box, no cat toys, no bags of cat food or litter, and that in fact the only thing even remotely resembling a cat in the house is a book about cats?Should I think my neighbor has a cat? Does my reasonable but fruitless search mean nothing? Does the noise I heard support the existence of a cat, or would that be an unfounded logical leap based on too little information and selection bias? Do the witnesses testifying that there is a cat change the picture, especially when some of them disagree over basic facts about the cat, including whether it's a cat at all?If last Thursday I thought I saw a cat at my neighbor's house, would that change the reasonable conclusion? What if, on Thursday, I was convinced that my neighbor had a cat because of what I saw? Would that change the reasonable conclusion from the fruitless search? Is it more likely that I was mistaken regarding seeing the cat, or that a cat does exist despite the absence of any cat-related evidence in my neighbor's house?I would say that the reasonable position in all of these cases would be to believe that my neighbor very likely does not have a cat. I would be pretty confident in that belief, while still acknowledging the always-present chance that I could be wrong. Do you disagree? Why or why not?

I'd very much like it if RAZD could simply give one or two examples of subjective experiences he would count as evidence.He's clearly told us that experiences while asleep and unconscious are not what he's talking about.But what is he talking about? I've never been able to quite figure it out.Is RAZD referring to personally-interpreted experiences empirically observed with the five senses? For instance, a song that happens to play at the right moment corresponding to your thoughts that provides comfort or clarity of thought? In this case the actual experience itself is empirically verifiable (anyone could hear the song) but the subjective meaning of the experience is not (the song will not correspond to everyone's thoughts and feelings).Would that count, RAZD? The individual is awake and conscious, the experience is not one that would have been sensed by Straggler's unfortunate insensate paraplegic, and the subjective meaning of the experience may justify to the individual a belief that the song was specifically caused by an as-yet not understood entity.How about being in the woods and seeing something that the observer interprets to be Bigfoot? The actual observation was empirical (the observer saw something, and that something should be visible to anyone else), but the interpretation of his observation is subjective. Again, the observer is conscious and aware, our insensate paraplegic cannot detect it, the experience comes from the five empirical senses, and yet the interpretation is subjective and not available to anyone else.Or is RAZD talking about experiences like "hearing voices?" The observer can be awake and conscious, and can "hear" the voice as if it were coming from his sense of hearing. But if only the individual hears the voice even when others are around, the experience is subjective and does not appear to exist outside of his mind. If the observer is convinced that his auditory experience that was miraculously heard only by him was caused by an external agency, is that belief justified? Does it count as evidence?I'm just throwing out anything non-dreamlike to find something RAZD will confirm is what he's talking about. If RAZD would provide his own clearly defined example of what counts as evidence.If we're restricting ourselves to empirically verifiable evidence, then Straggler has RAZD dead to rights: I simply don't understand how an assertion can be unable to be evidenced through the five senses (or equipment that expands on those senses) and yet still be supported by evidence that does not come from a dream or other such experience.But then, RAZD says this isn't his position, so perhaps we're just completely barking up the wrong tree.RAZD, in just a few paragraphs, could you explain what you mean about evidence and subjective experiences, specifically with regard to evidence that supports an entity that is seemingly immune from direct empirical observation?

So you're basically just talking about experiences through the five senses that are had only as an individual, with nobody else to help verify whether your interpretation of that evidence is accurate?That's interesting.And for the record: no, I don't think that my many years of experience give me a high degree of confidence in my ability to sense reality. I've had so many cases where my eyes (or ears, or nose, or jsut my mind) have played tricks on me that I'm skeptical even of my own sensory input. I live by the basic logic of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." If I see a cat, I know that other people have seen cats; I have two of them, and I see them every day, and other people interact with them. I have a large amount of sensory input from all five senses as well as corroborating evidence that a cat has been present even without direct observation (I'm the one who scoops the litter, after all), and I have observed friends and family interacting with the cats as well. I have pretty good evidence that cats do in fact exist, and so if I see something that I believe is a cat, I tentatively go along with that conclusion.Of course, even with all of that, I've still mistaken squirrels for cats.How much evidence would I require to convince myself that I've seen bigfoot alone in the woods? How much to believe that I had actually observed evidence of a deity? If I'm so tentative about so simple and mundane an observation as seeing a cat when I know that cats at the very least exist, it would take quite a bit more than an unverifiable personal experience to convince me of anything supernatural.I've had personal experiences that I thought were ghosts. I;ve had personal experiences where I could have sworn I saw a man walking across my apartment complex, but when I looked directly he wasn't there (it was just a plant, but my brain constructed a full description of a white heavyset male in a striped shirt around 5'10" with dark short hair from my bare corner-of-the-eye glimpse). Unless my personal experience is easily repeatable and can be verified by other people, I very much doubt all of my sensory input. The human brain too easily recognized false patterns to do otherwise. I understand what you mean, I think. When I thought I saw a man out of the corner of my eye, it would have been a reasonable conclusion that there was a man had I not been able to determine that the plant had simply fooled my brain (ie, contradictory evidence). It's not just a world view, and it's not simply pusuance of further verification. In many cases it's the simple ability for an experience to be verified. If I think I;ve seen bigfoot in the woods, there are actions I can actually take to verify the presence of such a creature (search for footprints in the location he was seen, etc). In the case of deities, there's very little I can do to verify their existence, since they don't appear to be empirically observable, and any "answered prayers" and other such "evidence" have consistently had no greater effect than placebo. The fact that I don't concern myself overmuch with seeking further validation of a god concept is primarily caused by the nigh-impossibility of performing any test at all. If you tell me there's life on a specific planet in the Andromeda galaxy, there's absolutely nothing I can do currently to try to validate that claim. That's independent of worldview, that's simple practicality.And you know full well that we aren't simply talking about a justification for further investigation - we're talking about confidence that something actually exists. Seeing a man out of the corner of my eye was sufficient cause to justify further investigation, sure - but it wasn't sufficient justification for me to believe a man actually existed. Even within my own immediate internal dialog, I thought "was that a man over there, or am I seeign things?" I had absolutely no confidence that there was actually a man, I simply had a reason to check for one.People who believe in deities don't say they have reason to check for a god. They say that god(s) actually exist. They skip the verification stage and jump straight into confidence in actuality. This has nothing to do with a "reason for investigation." I'll agree with you right away that, if you hear a voice identifying itself as God, you have definite reason to investigate. You do not have evidence supporting the idea that this God actually exists. Hearing a voice as an individual does not support a God conclusion any more than it supports hallucination or simply being mistaken (hearing the neighbor upstairs playing a movie and not realizing it, false pattern recognition in the white noise of a radio or television, etc). This means it cannot be evidence for a deity - in fact, since the God conclusion is an extraordinary claim (it posits the existence of a supernatural entity), the more reasonable conclusion is that your brain interpreted mundane sensory input incorrectly. I would consider that reason to listen for a movie upstairs, or to consider what I;m actually observing rather than a reason to drop to my knee and pray.In other words, I see personal subjective experiences as a reason to seek verification for a mundane explanation first, rather than seeing them as reason to immediately investigate the supernatural. Only after all possible mundane explanations have been exhausted would I consider there to be reason to investigate the supernatural.Is this due to my "worldview," RAZD? Or is it simply the most rational course of action given that human beings are typically rather gullible? Is it perhaps possible that some "worldviews" are more rational than others? I rather strongly disagree. There is ample evidence that concepts of the supernatural are purely made up: we have countless examples of exactly that. Fairies are made up. Goblins are made up. Most gods that have ever been believed we now know were simply made up.That's not Stragglers "worldview," RAZD, that's a simple statement of relevant fact.You seem to be arguing from the perspective of human credulity. I'll agree that personal credulity can be determined by compliance with a person's worldview. But personal credulity has nothing to do with whether a position is rational or not. Human beings are irrationally credulous (or incredulous) all the time. A person can hallucinate while on LSD and find those hallucinations to be completely convincing that (insert absurdity here). That doesn't mean his credulity is rational. But again - when has this discussion ever been about a reasonable basis for further investigation? Over multiple threads we've discussed whether the IPU is evidencially identical to other deity concepts, the nature of evidence, etc. Only lately have I noticed the "rational basis for further investigation." Have I been missing something? I'll freely admit that the shear number and length of posts may have caused me to forget or overlook this, but I don't see how a basis for investigation has anything to do with evidence, or confidence that an assertion is accurate. With the clarification you gave earlier, I think we can throw this out. To reiterate, you're talking about experiences that appear to come from the five senses while awake and conscious, but that cannot be independently verified because they happen only to an individual. These experiences, because they are observations that by all appearances are made through the five senses, appear identical to other empirically observable experiences. No visions in one's mind, no internal monologues, no dreams, no "gut feelings." Am I still on track here? I think the issue here is that Straggler (and I, as a matter of fact) reject the notion of belief in something that cannot be empirically investigated. If it cannot be empirically observed, why believe in it? If you cannot define it, what makes you think "it" is there? Where?But then, this is because I used to be a person who valued faith very strongly, and who has recognized it as inherently irrational. You're quite right that faith is orthogonal to logic and science - which basically makes discussion of the rationality of faith to be a non-starter: faith is not logical, faith is not rational.But it also means that what you're saying is "this doesn't count. You can't argue against me with logic." How are we then to have a discussion? Should Straggler simply have faith that you're wrong, so that the two of you can reach an impasse that is completely unassailable? If faith is immune to the rules of logic, why even have this entire discussion? Why try to justify your beliefs if they are unjustifiable by the only means your opponents will accept, through evidence and logic?I think I finally comprehend your Venn diagrams now. You're saying, essentially, that there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. You're saying that some aspects of reality can only be taken on faith, and have nothing to do with evidence or logic.I accept that for personal, subjective conclusions. A preference for red over blue has nothing to do with either logic nor evidence.But I reject that notion for assertions regarding objective reality, such as the assertion that a deity actually exists. The accuracy of such an assertion is no more immune from logic or the requirement for evidence than the assertion that there is a pencil on my desk. It's not a personal preference or a subjective emotion, it's an assertion about an objective fact.How can you argue that belief in god(s) is comparable to color preference, and immune from logic or the requirement of evidence? I fear that in responding I've shattered Granny's limit. Apologies to Granny. When those possibilities are actually testable, I agree.But how does this mesh with actual confidence in the existence of supernatural entities? If you hear a voice or think you see something, I agree that there is ample reason to search for the source of the auditory or visual input. But in most relevant cases the observer jumps directly past investigation (or investigates in such a cursory manner that it's plain that they are not genuinely searching for a mundane explanation but are instead looking for support for their already-formed and completely unfounded supernatural conclusion) and directly to confidence in actuality.That's irrational. Likewise.

I have yet to see a belief in god(s) based on sound logic. Faith, by its very definition as a belief that is not based on evidence, is irrational.