The confusion about faith (devil, philosophical, evidence, demons)
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An example of a belief is not stronger evidence than a hypothetical.
Evidence for what? I gave an example of a belief without evidence that we all hold, to show that we all hold beliefs without evidence. That's it.
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Some people have your burden of "good reason" for everything they believe? Because surely, when you ask around, everyone has a reason/rationalization and excuse for everything.
Well that's why I didn't put "good reason" in quotations, as you have done. I think there's a such thing as objectively good reasons for belief, and those who have them are not being irrational.
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What evidence do you have that evidentialism is self-refuting?
As I explained, evidentialism (this being the view that one should only believe statements when there is evidence in favor of them) cannot itself be supported with evidence.
How very convenient. So you know what I believe, but I don't know what you believe?
Strawman. I say again, I don't know what you believe, but I suspect your claim to be atheist, like some others do.
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BS. The "evidence of my posts" is that I'm defending Christianity against anti-theism, not that I'm a Christian. Try again.
I don't need to - that's still valid because of the intense amount of effort you put into apologetics for Christianity.
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Just so long as they shut up about it, right?
That'd make our job needless, alright.
[quote[You and the straw men, I swear. No one ever said you were anti-god. I suggested you were an anti-theist, meaning that you oppose theism (the belief in a god).[/quote]
Anti- theism can mean anti god as well as anti religion. And I'm not really either - as I explained. You are still trying to score irrelevant points with evasions.
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Also convenient (and probably a lie). Pretty much every time someone pretends to suspect that I'm a theist, I tell them I'm not.
So you do, but we still doubt, all the more because you still have evaded saying plainly "I do not believe in any god". Do that and I'll accept you claim, for one. The longer you avoid saying so, the more we will suspect that you are not being straight with us.
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Idk about that. Chances are, most atheists you run into are "pro-religion" (if you mean okay with it, having no issue with people being religious). They're just not all that interested in the topic to engage with you and other anti-theists.
As you said - you don't know. I have said I don't mind what people believe - so long as they 'shut up about it' as you said. But that doesn't make me or any other atheist "pro -religion". You are fiddling with words to force some false position on us.
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Exactly. By default we trust our experiences to be veridical even though we have no evidence to support that trust. No reason, on the invalid and self-refuting evidentialist view, to believe what you admit to believing
the nature of experience is itself evidence enough to put the burden of proof that it is not 'veridical' onto those those who argue that we can know nothing for sure. True, the experience can be misinterpreted (which is where science comes in) but that does not invalidate the reality of the experience.
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We can't speak to the improbability/probability of the world being a dream, a program in the Matrix, etc., as we've nothing to compare it to.
Of course we have; we have reality - verified and validated reality. Speculations about brains in vats and Matrixes remain nothing but speculation.
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Is this to imply that theists have nothing to go on?
Nothing that stands up to scrutiny.
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It doesn't matter if it doesn't matter as that isn't relevant to the point, that evidentialism is a joke.
You are still confusing philosophical evidentialism with practical evidentialism (reliance on evidence). If you want to discard Philosophical evidentialism, do so. It makes no difference.
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What humanity?
All humanity - what did you think?
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Are you assuming the very thing in question, to support the thing in question? Because you could be just turning to one of your illusions to verify that the external world you perceive isn't an illusion...
No I couldn't. If you can show that some evidence put forward is illusory, I'd drop it. Your efforts to put some doubts about what we can believe on evidence are trying to fiddle the issue.
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It's very much a metaphysical topic, and therefore philosophy is relevant.
It isn't a metaphysical topic; it is a reason and evidence topic. You try to drag in philosophy (which is irrelevant) because it is a rich field for Theist fiddlers to try to make us doubt evidence. This is why you keep banging on about (philosophical) 'evidentialism is dead'. So what if it is?
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As I've been pointing out, evidentialism is dead. It is invalid as we all believe things without evidence, and it's self-refuting to say that we should only believe things on the basis of evidence because there's no evidence to support that statement!
And it is uttelly irrelevant. It is invalid in the Philosophical sense (as is Philosophical naturalism} as it is an untenable claim. But it makes no difference to practical evidentialism or to practical naturalism as both have the evidence of experience, that makes them the 'default' and we have the validation of science, which leaves those who want to undermine reliance on evidence with the burden of proof.
Pointing to the errors humans can make as invalidated what exists or the validated results of evidence fails to do anything othger than make the claims of religion, speculations about the supernatural, and guesswork presented as believable fact without any validity at all.
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That's not what evidentialism refers to, but you're quite right. This is why when people harp on William Lane Craig for saying he wouldn't change his beliefs upon finding (hypothetical) evidence against them, they're incorrect to do so.
What I am talking about (validated evidence) is sound, no matter whether you call it evidentialism (which is best kept as a Philosophic position which I wouldn't touch with a barge -pole) or something else. And what people say about Lane -Craig or indeed what he says is also irrelevant unless you put some of the points here for discussion. save trying to make cheap points about what you agree with or don't
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Nor is that what's meant by "evidentialism". No one's anti-evidence, just anti- the view that this is the only way we can rationally believe something.
I know that some are anti that view, but nobody has made a case that I know of to make that anti -view stick. Bear in mind that reason is important, but it nees to have evidential validation at one end or the other, or it remains hypothetical.
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Not quite. Again, this is a metaphysical question. We can use science on sub-topics where it is relevant, but it's not going to be enough to answer the god question. And even less than "enough" to answer the broader question of rationality.
Science doesn't need to answer the god -question. That's not the business or science. It produces the validated evidence, and people use it in discussion. So far the god -claimants have been losing ground on reason and evidence. And there wasn't a valid god -claim in the first place.
basically mystic does the exact same thing you do arg?
I mean I use the words "I trounced you", only after you said it to me, and you cried fouls. I mean you stated it as reason to shun me. And here you are doing it?
Do you mean like how you weave your anti-theist fantasies and damn the rest of us that don't share assault theist at all cost indractrantations?
are you intentionally doing this? or you actually that far behind? Oh no, I am fraud, you and I are ob opposites sides. I have to protect people from you expression of atheism. And teach people that atheism is a valid alternative and that we don't have to live our lives by the central dogma of "hating theist".
I "hate injustices" I will teach my children to stop injustice. But I also teach them not to focus on the hate part and focus on the injustice part. focusing on hate screws the view. Your stance on anti-theist is an excellent example, a living testimony, to just how hate clouds the the objective.
What it comes down to it what others see here. I can say I trounced Mystic and he can deny it. You can say that you trounced me and I can deny it. Bickering about it gets us nowhere; people following the argument will see - and remember - who got trounced and who didn't.
Evidence for what? I gave an example of a belief without evidence that we all hold, to show that we all hold beliefs without evidence. That's it.
It is not "It". There are beliefs that people hold that are not validated or go against reason or evidence. The purpose of validated evidence and logical reasoning is to correct these. But the 'evidence' (or the material reality' of the experience on which those beliefs is based in a default of itself and doesn't need to be evidenced of itself. Rather those who try to say that it has no validity have to make the case why not.
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Well that's why I didn't put "good reason" in quotations, as you have done. I think there's a such thing as objectively good reasons for belief, and those who have them are not being irrational.
Sure. That's why reasonable expectation is not the same thing as Faith.
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As I explained, evidentialism (this being the view that one should only believe statements when there is evidence in favor of them) cannot itself be supported with evidence.
Of course it can; the track record of "science" (broadly) against the lamentable one of Faith -claims is all the validation that any reasonable person would need.
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Originally Posted by LuminousTruth
An example of a belief is not stronger evidence than a hypothetical.
Some people have your burden of "good reason" for everything they believe? Because surely, when you ask around, everyone has a reason/rationalization and excuse for everything.
What evidence do you have that evidentialism is self-refuting? At the most, you are trying to refute evidence as the strongest argument for justification only through reference to your self-castrated logicism.
As such, "logicism" is much much worse. For you see, it should be killed at its root. I again point out that logicism is invalid and literally self-refuting, not just referentially so.
No. Most experiences are falsifiable, as long as the evidence remains to be examined.
The facts of hallucinations and delusions are thoroughly founded.
Furthermore, hallucinations and delusions are often falsifiable, at least to some people.
Unverifiable true beliefs cannot be ultimately distinguished from unverifiable false beliefs. Same applies to the unfalsifiable.
That is the definition of unfalsifiable and unverifiable.
What doesn't follow logically is that because x doesn't follow logically, then that therefore it is an unfounded belief. There is plenty of evidence for largely "logically unfollowed" things, like quantum entanglement, a mathematically rational use for irrational numbers, and a real-world use for imaginary numbers.
The thing is that we can see through these people like a grubby window. It is the old, old logic and semantic fiddlement (which they call "Philosophy") designed to invalidate the scientifically validated evidence that debunks the claims of religion. The ignoring of the 'commonsense' assumptions that we all live by as well as the validated data of science and claiming that evidential expectation, and repeated validation is somehow the same thing as Faith in what is without a shred of evidence, is a fallacy of equivocation from the start, and so all these 'we cannot rely on anything we think we know" in hopes to make faith -claims equally valid is dead from the start.
Just need to identify the particular fiddlement like the irrelevant 'evidentialism is dead' and we can see what is going on as much as the argument from double -slit experiment or vague references to Quantum.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 02-03-2019 at 03:15 AM..
I say again, I don't know what you believe, but I suspect your claim to be atheist, like some others do.
And I suspect your claim to be skeptical that I'm really an atheist.
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I don't need to - that's still valid because of the intense amount of effort you put into apologetics for Christianity.
It really doesn't take much effort to refute anti-theistic arguments. But even if it did, there's no way to get from there to me being a Christian spy. So yes, you need to try again, and find an actual reason to think that.
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Anti- theism can mean anti god as well as anti religion.
No, it means anti-theism ("theism" being the belief in a god).
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you still have evaded saying plainly "I do not believe in any god".
More lies. I say it pretty much every time I'm asked, like I just finished telling you.
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Do that and I'll accept you claim, for one.
Apparently not.
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the nature of experience is itself evidence enough to put the burden of proof that it is not 'veridical' onto those those who argue that we can know nothing for sure. True, the experience can be misinterpreted (which is where science comes in) but that does not invalidate the reality of the experience.
If experience were evidence, it would mean that the Christians do in fact have evidence for theism seeing as how they keep experiencing "god". And again, it's just Philosophy 101 that we do not have evidence to say that our experiences are veridical. Science cannot help us with that, because we have to assume the veridicality of our experiences in order to entertain the process of science! It's just circular reasoning at that point.
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You are still confusing philosophical evidentialism with practical evidentialism (reliance on evidence).
Counting evidence as reason to believe is not evidentialism, and therefore not something I've criticized.
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You try to drag in philosophy (which is irrelevant)
Philosophy is pretty much always relevant, but moreso when dealing with metaphysical issues like the god question. You have to be able to analyze your findings, and determine just what the implications of them really are. You have to know what questions to ask, and identify logical fallacies, etc.
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Science doesn't need to answer the god -question. That's not the business or science. It produces the validated evidence, and people use it in discussion.
This bit is correct...
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So far the god -claimants have been losing ground on reason and evidence.
And I suspect your claim to be skeptical that I'm really an atheist.
It really doesn't take much effort to refute anti-theistic arguments. But even if it did, there's no way to get from there to me being a Christian spy. So yes, you need to try again, and find an actual reason to think that.
No, it means anti-theism ("theism" being the belief in a god).
More lies. I say it pretty much every time I'm asked, like I just finished telling you.
Apparently not.
You are still evading posting "I do not believe in any god". The rest is continued evasion of the one thing that would settle the matter.
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If experience were evidence, it would mean that the Christians do in fact have evidence for theism seeing as how they keep experiencing "god". And again, it's just Philosophy 101 that we do not have evidence to say that our experiences are veridical. Science cannot help us with that, because we have to assume the veridicality of our experiences in order to entertain the process of science! It's just circular reasoning at that point.
Yes, you are almost getting it. The experience of reality (and even the mental delusions about religion are real thinks happening in the brain) as the default position of reality/naturalis. materialism, even. Given that, misinterpretation because of limited human perception and the mistakes that the mind can make is something that needs corection, and science with it's checks and tests has the best track record.
Thus the 'evidence' (raw data) 'evidence' (evaluation of that data) and 'evidence' )validated data) are different things called by the same name.
Yes there is, but that article skips over it; it rather dwells of the philosophical approach, and frankly we don't need it; sound logic in the evaluation of evidence is all that is needed.
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Counting evidence as reason to believe is not evidentialism, and therefore not something I've criticized.[/nor have I it seems irrelevant to anything that either of us have talked about
[/quote]Philosophy is pretty much always relevant, but moreso when dealing with metaphysical issues like the god question. You have to be able to analyze your findings, and determine just what the implications of them really are. You have to know what questions to ask, and identify logical fallacies, etc. [/quote]
Nope. I've found that Philosophy is spectacularly unhelpful because it consistently seems to ignore validated evidence and prefers to talk about ways of thinking. I prefer logic, which of course has a place in Philosophy, or out to. As I hay, Philosophical evidentialism (as I looked it up) as philosophical naturalism, are both logically untenable, so why should I even bother with it?
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This bit is correct...
Such as?
God's voice in the head, the reliability of the Bible, Evidence of creation, the claim that prayer works, prophecy, predictions, and that's not even to count in rival religions and doctrines, doubts about miracles and the increasingly dubious claims about the early church being Christian as we not think of it, and the Christian claims about morality. Enough to be going on with?
You are still evading posting "I do not believe in any god".
Yet again, I'm an atheist! (That means I don't believe in a god) You can stop pretending this hasn't been said numerous times already.
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The experience of reality (and even the mental delusions about religion are real thinks happening in the brain)
1. The point was that you don't know you're experiencing reality. You are having experiences which you trust are veridical even though you don't (and can't) have evidence outside of those experiences to support that trust.
2. If you're going to claim that theism is a delusion, you will need to support that claim. I await your argument to show that there is no god!
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I've found that Philosophy is spectacularly unhelpful because it consistently seems to ignore validated evidence
You are simply confused about what philosophy is. It doesn't ignore evidence but evaluates it. It is asking the important questions, sometimes interacting very directly with scientific findings that might (or might not) be evidence for a given conclusion.
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God's voice in the head, the reliability of the Bible, Evidence of creation, the claim that prayer works, prophecy, predictions, and that's not even to count in rival religions and doctrines, doubts about miracles and the increasingly dubious claims about the early church being Christian as we not think of it, and the Christian claims about morality. Enough to be going on with?
I guess I misunderstood what you meant by "god -claimants". Yes, theists have been wrong on several issues and claims. Same goes for non-theists. But I thought we were talking about whether or not theism itself is true and/or rationally held.
If I have a strong enough conviction, I'll demonstrate my faith by how I live – as though there is a God or as though there isn’t a God. I'll step onto the ladder of belief or unbelief and begin the climb.
For an unbeliever, nothing further is required. She can simply live as though there is no God (while hopefully continuing to exercise diligence in keeping abreast of new evidence and arguments that might change her mind).
The believer, however, faces secondary questions: Who or what is this God? Does this God have anything to do with my life? Am I going to have to answer to this God?
I was following along up until these three paragraphs especially the bolded part. If you demonstrate your faith as though there isn't a God, why must there be secondary questions? And doesn't faith exist to show that you believe there is a God?
What it comes down to it what others see here. I can say I trounced Mystic and he can deny it. You can say that you trounced me and I can deny it. Bickering about it gets us nowhere; people following the argument will see - and remember - who got trounced and who didn't.
I totally agree with this post of yours. i only used it after you tossed it in my face. You do it first and when it came back at you you cried foul. that's a bigger problem. I mean people that believe in something will always outnumber your sect of atheism. so yeah, I am fully aware of who's sect of atheism is unscientific and based more on personal emotional than reality. The sect of atheism that others would put me in will always out number your sect. i am happy about that personally.
I totally agree with this post of yours. i only used it after you tossed it in my face. You do it first and when it came back at you you cried foul. that's a bigger problem. I mean people that believe in something will always outnumber your sect of atheism. so yeah, I am fully aware of who's sect of atheism is unscientific and based more on personal emotional than reality. The sect of atheism that others would put me in will always out number your sect. i am happy about that personally.
But it's not just "belief". It's an acknowledgement of factual truth, versus outright denial. If someone is always denying what is in front of their face, no one will ever take them seriously.
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as that isn't relevant to the point, that evidentialism is a joke.
