Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MetalSlimeHunt]

They applied it to everything, which wouldn't be so much of a problem if not for the fact that lots of theists still do, even though we know better now.

[MonkeyHead]

Yea, the "know better now" is a big deal. At the risk of turning this thread circular, I always get a small rage on when people hold particular ideals as sacrosanct and unchallengable, but have no issue with challening those held by others, be they grounded in religion, politics or science. All ideas and beliefs are (or at least should be) equally open to challenge, rejection, acceptance or refinement - its what has allowed us to make such great strides as a species since the rennaisance in so many areas. If you are unable to defend your own through rational thought and argument, boxing them off as "sacred" seems a bit of a cop out to me.

[The Mechanical Man]

EDIT: Please disregard my method of defining the terms of atheist, theist, and agnostic here. Refer to my next post for a more accurate definition.

To truly be an atheist, one must have absolute (100%) belief in that a god, deity, or something of similar nature does not exist.
To truly be a theist, one must have absolute (again, 100%) belief that a god, deity, or something of similar nature does exist.

For anyone in these definitions, that is the final answer. For them, the mystery is already solved. There is no wiggle room here; if you are an atheist, you absolutely do not believe in god. There is no doubt whatsoever in your mind.

To be an agnostic, one does not have absolute belief of the existence or non-existence of gods.

As such, an agnostic atheist would then believe a god does not exist, but accepts that one may (however small a chance). In this case, they would have anywhere between 50-100% belief in the non-existence of gods (if belief could be measured as a percentage. Perhaps this make this faulty logic? I don't think so myself). An agnostic theist would also then have between a 50-100% belief in the existence of gods. They would believe that a god exists, but their lack of 100% certainty makes them agnostic; because if you lack 100% certainty that god exists, then that missing percentage is the measure of your certainty that god does not exist.

What agnosticism is not is a 50/50 belief- that you are 50% certain god does exist, and 50% certain god does not exist. That is not what agnosticism is. Agnosticism is not a belief in the same way that atheism and theism are. I, for one, do not believe that anyone can be "agnostic" but not be an atheist or theist. Either you are an atheist, theist, agnostic atheist, agnostic theist, or whatever that 50/50 belief is.

But I'm sure that since everybody has their own little definitions of things, my explanation of this would be totally wrong to some people.

[MrWiggles]

Religion gap filling is arbitrary and unsubstantiated.

Scientific Theories leaves holes but also predict what should go into those holes if the model is true. This is where predictive and explanatory power comes from with a model. The 'The Periodic Table of Elements' arranged itself with lots of empty spaces describing charaterisic of elements that wont be discovered for decades after its conception.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The Higgs Boson wasn't based on faith, it was based on the fact that without it the Standard Model was left incomplete, and a undiscovered particle with certain properties would be able to fill that gap. The alternative would be that the Standard Model is completely illegitimate and we had been looking at the whole thing from a very wrong angle.

well, religious people are filling a gap (and a bloody big one, too), so to a certain extent, your argument is void.

My argument is not void at all.

Religions filling gaps with their fiction is baseless upon actual testable reality. The hypothetical postulation of a particle that did in fact turn out to be real after all in order to properly define a model of particle physics that we did not have observational completion of at the time of its creation is completely and utterly different because it is based off of a consistent observation of the universe. Up until recently the Higgs Boson's presence was simply inferred rather than observed, and as nothing had been done to disprove the Standard Model even with one aspect of it remaining elusive to us it remained the theory of choice and has indeed been reaffirmed through the observation of the Higgs Boson.

Meanwhile, two-fifths of my countrymen are trying to have a several thousand year old (and honestly rather boring) creation myth taught as being science even when the highest court of the land told them years ago that it wasn't going to fly.

[Cthulhu]

The Higgs Boson wasn't based on faith, it was based on the fact that without it the Standard Model was left incomplete, and a undiscovered particle with certain properties would be able to fill that gap. The alternative would be that the Standard Model is completely illegitimate and we had been looking at the whole thing from a very wrong angle.

well, religious people are filling a gap (and a bloody big one, too), so to a certain extent, your argument is void.

No.  The mathematical models said there would be another particle with the properties of the Higgs Boson, and they were attempting to confirm its existence.  If I have a hole in my puzzle shaped like a puzzle piece, I would not be presumptuous to assume I'm missing a piece and go looking for it.

The God of the Gaps, on the other hand, looks for any gaps in current understanding, and then either shoehorns God into them or says the whole thing is wrong and my personal conception of God is responsible.  There's a difference.

The Higgs Boson is falsifiable.  God is not.

[MrWiggles]

note how I said 'to a certain extent'

I said that because
A) the full picture is more complex than that. and I'm too tired to think straight
B) it lets me cop out

Your qualifier doesnt change the fact that its wrong.

[Levi]

But I'm sure that since everybody has their own little definitions of things, my explanation of this would be totally wrong to some people.

That is the definition I've always gone by.

[Hiiri]

@The Mechanical Man: It is faulty logic. First of all, belief and knowledge are not in the same category.

And second, the percentages don't make any sense. What's it like being 72% sure and how is it different from being 59% sure? Either you accept the claim or you don't.

It's not about having different definitions. This common agnosticism definition simply does not make any sense. "Do you believe in a God?" "I don't know" only tells us you do not possess a positive belief in a personal god, which makes you an atheist, not agnostic. It seems people constantly mix "Do you believe in God?" with "Does God exist?" Former is knowable, latter is not.

Spoiler: Knowledge and belief (click to show/hide)

I claim I have 5 puppies in my backyard. Do you believe me? You don't KNOW whether or not I have 5 puppies, but it wasn't the question. Question was, do you believe me? (This is the part where you start judging evidence and whether or not it is rational to believe this claim.) Since puppies exists, people have puppies as pets, I have no apparent reason to lie, and the claim is so irrelevant/small, it would be pretty rational to assume I have the puppies.

I claim I have 5 000 puppies in my backyard. Do you believe me? You still don't KNOW, but that's not the question. Question was, do you believe me? Puppies exist, people have puppies as pets, but it would be weird for one person to possess 5 000 puppies, so most likely rational response would be to not believe my claim, even though it's completely possible.

I claim I have 5 000 unicorns in my backyard. Do you believe me? You still don't KNOW, but that's not the question. Question was, do you believe me? No, we have no evidence for the existence of unicorns, claim of possessing unicorns is huge, therefore it would be ridiculous to believe my claim without any evidence.

At no point is it required for you to know anything for you to believe/dismiss the claims I made, regardless of what the reality is.

[The Mechanical Man]

Disclaimer, first of all: I've had to reexamine and completely alter my arguments several times in this post, and I've moved stuff, edited stuff, and deleted stuff. I hope it makes sense and is at least somewhat logical.

It seems people constantly mix "Do you believe in God?" with "Does God exist?" Former is knowable, latter is not.

Using those two questions then, this is how I would define the religious terms:

A theist by definition would answer "yes" to both of those questions.
An atheist would answer "no" to both of those questions.
An agnostic would either answer "yes" or "no" to the first, and "I don't know" to the second.

However, it should be noted that the first question is, under normal circumstances, the same as the second. The agnostic response provides the exception to this, of course, but if this were any other similar question the two you posed would be exactly the same. That is because by asking "Does god exist?" you are also asking "Do you believe in god?". With the 2 questions you gave, a sane person cannot answer "yes" to one and "no" to another; they are either going to answer "yes" to both or "no" to both. It is only when the agnostic says "I don't know if a god exists" that you are required to ask "do you believe in god?" because answering the 2nd question with a yes or no automatically answers the first. When you ask someone if something exists, you are really asking them if they believe it exists (the exception, again, being the agnostic, but I'm too tired to reason that out with logic). While the questions are logically different, I suppose they are interpreted to be the same due to social and practical conventions.

And second, the percentages don't make any sense. What's it like being 72% sure and how is it different from being 59% sure? Either you accept the claim or you don't.

Perhaps I made a mistake in that regard. As far as my mind can tell me right now, there is not a qualitative difference between 72% sure and 59% sure. The point I was trying to make (but perhaps did not emphasize well enough) is that there is a qualitative difference between 99% sure and 100% sure. If you were 100% sure, while you may still be lacking real and factual proof, your certainty is so strong that you truly think the proof is there (regardless of whether it truly is or not).

[Leafsnail]

But I'm sure that since everybody has their own little definitions of things, my explanation of this would be totally wrong to some people.

That's why most people use the generally accepted and used definition of things rather than making them up arbitrarily.  As far as I can tell you're confusing lack of belief with belief in the opposite direction.

[The Mechanical Man]

But I'm sure that since everybody has their own little definitions of things, my explanation of this would be totally wrong to some people.

That's why most people use the generally accepted and used definition of things rather than making them up arbitrarily.  As far as I can tell you're confusing lack of belief with belief in the opposite direction.

But lots of people have little variations and spins on things. Not everybody refers to the definition of something from one specific dictionary. There are often nuances that people have on definitions, in my experience.

And in this case, lack of belief is belief in the opposite direction.

To simplify this, let's distill this to the question "Is A true or false?". If you do not believe A is true, you automatically believe A is false. This is because of the binary nature of the question- it only has 2 possible answers with no in-between. So naturally, if you think one answer is incorrect then the only remaining answer must be correct in conclusion. "A is not true" is logically equivalent to "A is false".

[TCM]

@The Mechanical Man

If you apply faith to numbers, like a percentage chance in God, how do you measure it numerically?

And what if I say I'm completely Athiest, nothing else like Agnostic, but I don't have a 100% certainty in the non-existence of a deity(ies)?

This isn't math, I think all of real life is based on probability. If I think there is a 99.99999999% a car will strike me when I cross the road, do you think I am not completely firm in my decision to not cross it?

[The Mechanical Man]

And what if I say I'm completely Athiest, nothing else like Agnostic, but I don't have a 100% certainty in the non-existence of a deity(ies)?

Then you are not truly an atheist. You are an agnostic atheist. A true atheist must believe that a God does absolutely, with 100% certainty, not exist. Anything less than that is agnostic atheism.

If I think there is a 99.99999999% a car will strike me when I cross the road, do you think I am not completely firm in my decision to not cross it?

It is acceptable to make the assumption that you would be hit by the car, but you would still know that there is a chance -regardless of how extremely slight it is- that you would not be. Because of this, you can't say with 100% certainty that you will be hit, but it is acceptable to act as if you would.

[MrWiggles]

Why does it matter?

Intellectual Honest forbids me form stating there is a 100% chance of no gods, but I'm stil l pretty damn confident there isn't.

But why is the wiggle room important? The important part is acceptance of the claim. Either yes or no. Possibly more important if it effects and/or impacts your life.

And also this whole 'true XXX' just smells of the true scott's man fallacy for some reason.