Reasons people believe or say they do. Can we list them? (debate, Christ)
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I'm hoping it will demonstrate something to a lot of browsers, punters and lurkers, gnaffing popcorn in the peanut gallery.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zosimus
All right. Let me break this down for you.
Imagine that two atheist scientists are assigned to investigate a drawer. They know that there are three items in the drawer, but they cannot see into the drawer. They can only draw items out one at a time and examine them.
The first item is drawn. It is a pair of blue socks. The scientists draw different conclusions:
S1: The drawer contains only blue socks.
S2: All socks in the drawer are blue.
Each of these theories is consistent with the evidence. A second item is drawn and it is also a pair of blue socks. Each scientist feels that his theory has been strengthened. Then a third item is pulled and it is a brown tie.
S2 claims that the third pull (a brown tie) is definitive proof that all socks in the drawer are blue. S1 concurs and junks his theory.
So we are left with Hempel's Paradox. To what extent does finding a brown tie confirm the hypothesis that all socks are blue?
Let us further imagine that the scientists move on to drawer 2, quite similar to drawer 1. This drawer, however, contains 100 items. The first ten items are drawn and all of them are brown ties. Both scientists exclaim:
"These ten brown ties are excellent evidence that all the socks in the drawer are blue."
To what extent do you agree with the scientists?
Up until the tie, the scientists were logical in saying that the drawer contains blue socks. They do not know what else is in the drawer because they can't see inside. The contents of the drawer other than blue socks (which they have evidence of) is Unknown and therefore any claims that it contains brown ties, bananas or unicorns is a claim without foundation, but undisproved.
Then the Brown tie comes out. The correct conclusion is that the drawer contains both blue socks and at least one brown tie. All other claims are undisprovable but unsupported hypotheses.
There is no way the third scientist could deny the blue socks unless they had vanished and there was no good evidence. Then (like a lot of claims) it has to be considered unverified (1) until persuasive proof of blue socks is forthcoming.
Assuming that the first two scientists have the socks as evidence there can be no case of the disputation that you argue. I'm not familiar with Hempel's paradox (I'll look it up) but I suspect that you have misused it.
In any case, i fail to see what your mind experiment proves other than you don't seem to understand how science or even inferational evidence works.
....
Ah. Ok. It's what we call the white Swan paradox. It's fairly simple. Scientists (in this case ornithologists) are correct in assuming that all swans (so far as they know) are white. One in Australia assumes they are all black. As soon as they can compare notes, they agree there are two varieties of swans. This paradox may work with philosophers trying to make mind experiments do the work of scientific research, but it doesn't trouble science in the least.
The argument in fact comes down to 'what unknowns can we deny?' The answer is 'None, but we cannot believe any unproven claim, either'. Quite simple. This is why the 'they denied powered flight' argument fails, because even though we now we know there was powered flight, so those who wanted evidence of it can be made to look silly, in fact they were right to not accept the claim until it was verified. If they did not, we would have cold fusion in the science books and everyone would be wondering why it never seems to work.
(1) this is of course why Anecdotal evidence is invalid. The vid on open Mindedness (I'll post it - required reading) said that while i saw someone vanish in front of my eyes it would be unreasonable to expect others to accept it on my say so.
Up until the tie, the scientists were logical in saying that the drawer contains blue socks. They do not know what else is in the drawer because they can't see i. The contents of the drawer other than blue socks 9which they have evidence of) is Unknown and therefore any claims that it contains brown ties, bananas or unicorns is a claim without foundation, but undisproved.
Then the Brown tie comes out. The correct conclusion is that the drawer contains both blue socks and at least one brown tie. All other claims are undisprovable but unsupported hypotheses.
There is no way the third scientist could deny the blue socks unless they had vanished and there was no good evidence. Then (like a lot of claims) it has to be considered unverified until persuasive proof of blue socks is forthcoming.
Assuming that the first two scientists have the socks as evidence there can be no case of the disputation that you argue. I'm not familiar with Hempel's paradox (I'll look it up) but I suspect that you have misused it.
In any case, i fail to see what your mind experiment proves other than you don't seem to understand how science or even inferational evidence works.
This paradox may work with philosophers trying to make mind experiments do the work of scientific research, but it doesn't trouble science in the least.
Thank you for that succinct summary!
Quote:
Originally Posted by TRANSPONDER
The argument in fact comes down to 'what unknowns can we deny?' The answer is 'None, but we cannot believe any unproven claim, either'. Quite simple.
Because they are the ones being made to look silly - just as in the 'They denied powered flight' argument. Who are 'They'? Skeptics, is who we are told they are. The whole point is to try to shame us into accepting unverified claims because we are afraid of looking silly if they turn out to be true.
The fact is that we don't mind at all being proved wrong. It is all good information. It is the believers who have their personal cred invested in a non -validated faith -claim (God) and they assume that we can be similarly intimidated into swallowing faith - claims just in case they should turn out to be true.
This of course fails for the same reason that Pascal's wager fails - because there are other faith - claims that are rejected out of hand when they have neither less nor more decent evidence for them.
The black raven paradox is as you say irrelevant as it requires a whole load of closed -minded fiddling of the philosophers' thinking processes in order to have them jump to conclusions about ravens. That all ravens known were black hardly justified the assumption that anything that is another colour is not a raven. A piece of coal is a raven perhaps?
In any case these entertaining logical paradoxes have little to do with science or indeed logical reasoning which is quite simple - put credibility into what is verified by the best methods we have (they ain't divine revelation, trust me on that ) and yet leave the door wide open for any compelling evidence, whatever it may be and whatever theories it may overturn.
But it does not mean that we "dismiss everything that we think we know"...(ah yes..that's what this is all about in the end ) on the grounds that it might turn out to be wrong, especially as No scientific theory has been debunked, discredited or inverted since Copernicus turned Ptolemey's solar - system inside out.
And rather than Religion getting much right, the gaps for the various gods have been steadily closing.
Thank you. 'MakeArqRich.com' accepts dollars, Euros and S American pesos.
Quote:
Originally Posted by old_cold
I keep thinking I've mistakenly wandered into the twilight Zone when I read here lately
That's the idea. There is a venerable and re -occurring element in Theist apologetics which we call 'Quantum -Woo'. One aspect is exemplified by the murky waters of quantum, because indeterminacy and the double slot experiment, Schrodinger's tadpole and the trousers of time are all supposed to throw our certainty about the Scientific Realities that Materialist Science tells is All There Is into a Confusion of Doubt, Uncertainly and Totally Superfluous Capital letters.
It was the explanation behind my dear old Mate Eusebius throwing Alien technology in Egyptian pyramids at me. So...if FlyingSaucer pilots used power-saws to cut blocks for Khufu or Menkaure, ...exactly how does that validate the Bible?
I'll tell you:
(a) show that science is wrong about everything it thinks it knows
(b) disregard what science says
(c) that leaves faith - claims as valid as science -backed claims.
This is as Doug. Adams said of Oolong Collouphid's 'zebra -crossing' (1) mind -experiment, a lot of 'Dingoes' kidneys', but that did not prevent religious apologists making repeated attempts to debunk the validity of the scientific -backed corpus of verified data in the hopes of making their faith -claims look a bit more credible.
(1) actually it's 'mega -zebra' since 'mega' is just stuck onto any terrestrial reference to give it an Extraterrestrial flavor. Trust me, Megazebra tastes awful.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 06-14-2019 at 01:11 PM..
Oh, all right! Then let's start providing overwhelming evidence.
"God exists" is equivalent to "Everything that doesn't exist is not God."
Unicorns don't exist. They are not God.
Bigfoot doesn't exist. He is not God.
Leprechauns don't exist. They are not God.
Santa Claus doesn't exist. He is not God.
The Tooth Fairy doesn't exist. She is not God.
Therefore, God's existence is very highly confirmed. I guess there really is evidence for God.
But why stop there?
=======================
"Richard Dawkins doesn't exist" is the same as "Everything that exists isn't Richard Dawkins."
I went to the beach yesterday and saw millions of grains of sand. Each one of them was not Richard Dawkins.
I have gazed into the sky at night and seen millions of stars. Each one of them was not Richard Dawkins.
I have met thousands of people in my life. Each person was not Richard Dawkins.
So the theory "Richard Dawkins doesn't exist" is very highly confirmed. There is overwhelming evidence in support of it. Anyone who claims he does exist is a fact denier.
A totally irrelevant post in response to what a dictionary definition of evidence is.
So when you can not answer a question, you start another irrelevant problem in logic?
He needs to just stop.
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) and yet leave the door wide open for any compelling evidence, whatever it may be and whatever theories it may overturn. 
) on the grounds that it might turn out to be wrong, especially as No scientific theory has been debunked, discredited or inverted since Copernicus turned Ptolemey's solar - system inside out. 
I'll tell you:
