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[NJW2000]

Bleh, 3 pages?

And how does Occam's razor even work if there is no evidence at all and they're just statements? Surely knowing which one is overcomplex is equivalent to having some information for or against them? Semantics, I guess.

And mediocrity.... yeah, the statements oppose and have nothing to support them. The fact that they are given means nothing, unless they have been selected from a range, rather than just being possible, in which case there is something to support or disprove them: the veracity of the giver. Mediocrity seems to imply that we know something about them, which we don't.

[LordBucket]

the following statement which has no proof in favour of it NOR against it.

Statement A

Should we accept statement A or not?

No.

Should we accept statement B if it also has no proof for or against?

No.

Statement C is in direct conflict with statement A and once again has no proof either way.

Do we accept C or not?

No.

should all statements in this category be treated in the same way?

Does it stand to reason to reject all these statements because accepting them all is impossible due to conflicts?

Do things change if we are not talking about accepting these statements but the ACTING upon them?

I think that the way you're approaching this is maybe a little bit silly. Real life is not a logic classroom. We can assign probabilities based on incomplete information, we can weight our decision making process with cost/benefit analysis, and we can accept "I don't know" and "maybe" as valid answers.

"I cannot confirm the validity of A" is not equal to "A is not valid"

[LordBucket]

you can accept statements without 'proof', indeed most of the statements you've accepted in your life you probably accepted without proof and you simply took them on authority or they were intangible unproveable things and you accepted them anyway...

whether you should accept some hypothetical statements or not is a silly question, it all depends on what the statements are

This is actually a fascinating topic. I once pointed out that most people have no proof and very weak evidence that dinosaurs ever existed, only the say-so of people who also have no proof. (Have you ever seen a dinosaur? "No." Have the people telling you dinosaurs existed ever seen a dinosaur? "No." Ever you ever seen a fossil? "No." Even if you have, would you be able to tell the difference between a fossil and a rock? "No." Ok, why do you believe in dinosaurs?)

It became one of the worst freakouts I've ever seen on bay12.

[LordBucket]

The problem with that is that you can say that about any science. Unless you're the one testing it yourself, any scientific study falls under this same category.

Yes. To which my response is: "how is believing the word of 'scientists' you don't know and will never meet simply because they fly under the banner of science, any different from believing the word of the priesthood simply because they fly under the banner of religion?"

You have faith that "scientists" know what they're talking about.

That's an uncomfortable truth for most people. 'Oh, a scientist said it. It must be right."  The average person simply believes whatever they're taught in school. The process by which little kids learning about dinosaurs grow up to become adults who believe in dinosaurs is exactly the same as the process by which little kids learn about god and become adults who believe in god.

Faith.

[Graknorke]

You have faith that "scientists" know what they're talking about.

You have faith that there isn't a worldwide conspiracy devoted to deceiving you about everything, for whatever reason? Big leap.

[scrdest]

The problem with that is that you can say that about any science. Unless you're the one testing it yourself, any scientific study falls under this same category.

Yes. To which my response is: "how is believing the word of 'scientists' you don't know and will never meet simply because they fly under the banner of science, any different from believing the word of the priesthood simply because they fly under the banner of religion?"

You have faith that "scientists" know what they're talking about.

That's an uncomfortable truth for most people. 'Oh, a scientist said it. It must be right."  Yes, yes, obviously you personally have veted and examined and verified these things. Of course. But the average person simply believes whatever they're taught in school. The process by which little kids learning about dinosaurs grow up to become adults who believe in dinosaurs is exactly the same as the process by which little kids learn about god and become adults who believe in god.

Faith.

Most people don't *believe* what they were taught in school; at best, they assume the approximate of that whenever that would even come up, because the existence of dinosaurs is thoroughly irrelevant to most people's decision-making processes.

And even still, this is a simple heuristic - appeal to authority IN THE FIELD - which is not fallacious. A scientist's reputation hinges on their honesty, and someone finding out that said scientist has falsified the results or made an unsubstantiated claim can be a career-ending move for said scientist. It's also part of the standard procedure for submitting research to have people whose entire job is to find and point out any abuse of that kind.

It's no different than going to any doctor, for example - you trust your surgeon not to carve his initials in your internal organs because if he did, it would be game over for him - its their job to do that correctly and have people who will smack them if they don't, and even still a knowledgeable enough amateur or a fellow professional can point out that eyes traditionally belong above a mouth. Someone may slip through the cracks once in a while, but they tend to be caught eventually.

It's a typical heuristic - quick and dirty, but sometimes you need quick and dirty because the alternative takes far too much resources to go through for, most of the time, identical outcome.

Meanwhile, expressly empirically untestable claims, such as metaphysical ones, such as, y'know, cannot be taken on authority because the claimant has no oversight, no peer review, no professional repercussions for being wrong. The continual acceptance of such claims on authority is, essentially, real life bug exploiting - of human psychology, namely, specifically of the fact that said psychology didn't *need* to deal with such questions, so purely faith-based statements piggyback on the principle which worked for things otherwise testable.

[LordBucket]

should you really doubt a scientific paper, you can test it yourself

Yes, sometimes it's possible to do that. Somebody seeking evidence for dinosaurs could go on an archeological dig themselves, for example. But has the average person who believes in dinosaurs actually done that? Or have they simply taken it on faith because somebody told them when they were young and impressionable?

Also, there is a difference between science and faith in the sense that, should you really doubt a scientific paper, you can test it yourself.

Again, has the average person who believes in dinosaurs actually done that, or have they simply taken it on faith?

Can't do that with faith.

Well, let me play devil's advocate here. A very common thing protestants like to say is that if you honestly pray to Jesus with an open heart, he'll hear and answer you.

That's a verifiable claim.

Have you ever tested it? Has the "typical atheist" ever tested it? Or have they simply dismissed it as something not worth testing because their beliefs are set and therefore don't require vetting, just like the person who doesn't bother going on an archeological dig because their beliefs in dinosaurs is set?

Generally speaking, people believe what they believe for reasons that have very little to do with evidence or logical proofs.

[scrdest]

Well, let me play devil's advocate here. A very common thing protestants like to say is that if you honestly pray to Jesus with an open heart, he'll hear and answer you.

That's a verifiable claim.

Have you ever tested it? Has the "typical atheist" ever tested it?

You might be surprised.

[Graknorke]

Have you ever tested it? Has the "typical atheist" ever tested it?

Impossible from the position of an advocate, since if you don't get an answer you just weren't believing hard enough. And besides that there's an intrinsic difference between telling someone that they need to believe you before you can prove anything, and telling someone they need to go see something to prove it to themselves.

[LordBucket]

If you say something with the presence of authority, than people tend to be more inclined to actually accept it than to not.

Yes. But accepted authority is not exempt from circumstances of belief. Somebody raised in a religious household and taught to believe the priesthood probably perceives the priesthood as an accepted authority. Someone taught to believe in science probably perceives those affiliated with science as authorities.

Have you ever tested it? Has the "typical atheist" ever tested it?

Impossible from the position of an advocate, since if you don't get an answer you just weren't believing hard enough.

If you go on an archeological dig and don't find any dinosaur fossils, is that sufficient evidence to conclude that dinosaurs didn't exist?

[LordBucket]

Ah, the crisis of implication. A->B; if A is false, you know nothing of B. So, no.

Ok. So if you pray to Jesus and get no response, therefore that's also not sufficient evidence to falsify the claim?

It's the double standard that interests me. If a person hypothetically were to believe that dinosaurs were fake, and if that person went on a dig and found nothing, they might be inclined to construe that as evidence to support their belief. Just as, somebody who didn't believe in god attempting to pray and receiving no response, might be inclined to construe that as evidence to support their belief.

Somebody who believes in dinosaurs would probably claim that it's silly to not believe in dinosaurs based on a single failure to find fossils. Somebody who believes in god could make the same argument.

This is why my preferred field of study of the sciences is math.

Then you probably already realize what most people don't understand: proof is a mathematical concept. It does not apply to real life.

There can be no such thing as proof in real life. Only evidence and belief.

Simple example: prove that you're not a brain in a jar.

I still don't see why arguing that people blindly believe scientists in the same way that people blindly believe religion is a new argument.

I didn't claim it was a new argument. The topic of this discussion is "On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof." This is relevant. The burden of proof people apply to things that they believe tends to be much lower than the burden of proof they require from things they don't believe. If you raise a child to believe that blowing themselves up will earn them a glorious afterlife, it's generally unlikely that they'll go seeking verification. If you raise a child to believe in dinosaurs, it's generally unlikely that they'll go seeking verification.

If you raise a child to believe X, it's generally unlikely that they'll go seeking verification, and even if they do, the burden of proof they require will tend to much less for confirmation of things they already believe. It doesn't matter what the X is.

Yes, sometimes it happens that people seek to verify and sometimes change their beliefs. It does happen sometimes. Most of the time it doesn't. At least not without significant emotional incentive. Logic and evidence are generally ineffective means of inducing belief.

[NJW2000]

Words "biggest freakout on bay12 last time I posted this" and a topic several people have declared kinda dumb anyway do not combine in any good manner.

[Frumple]

I guess we're done with the OP, so continuing on to other fun is... might as well? I'unno. Something like that.

Well, let me play devil's advocate here. A very common thing protestants like to say is that if you honestly pray to Jesus with an open heart, he'll hear and answer you.

That's a verifiable claim.

Have you ever tested it? Has the "typical atheist" ever tested it? Or have they simply dismissed it as something not worth testing because their beliefs are set and therefore don't require vetting, just like the person who doesn't bother going on an archeological dig because their beliefs in dinosaurs is set?

At least from what I've experienced, testing it -- repeatedly, over and over and over -- is exactly what leads to a lot of "typical atheists", especially those that are raised in a religious household. They pray honestly, and worship fervently, and hold open hearts as wide as the clear blue sky and get zilch. Years upon years of no supporting evidence tends to eventually lead to abandonment of the proposition.

... meanwhile, you occasionally get archaeological digs in high school and whatnot, that trivially and generally repeatedly produce returns. I've actually got a giant sloth tooth hanging around somewhere or another that's many millennium old (tested with me involved in the process and everything), heh, and we spent a bit in a field trip or two digging up extinct fish imprinted rocks and junk. Neat stuff. Something you can actually whack someone with.

Beyond that, as grak alludes to, it's not actually a verifiable claim. It looks like one, but what counts as praying honestly or with an open heart has no quantifiable or measurable benchmark, which is where the prayer claim fails on verifiability. You can't actually check to see if the experiment was performed correctly, and you have no consistent control group. Fossil dig, you can set your benchmark -- geological strata, geographic region, etc. Physical, quantifiable, ones. -- and test it. You've also got consistent measures and methodology that are pretty much guaranteed to produce results, given sufficient effort, where "sufficient effort" actually has a number (depth, area covered, number of digs, etc.) that can be assigned to it and checked against. Honesty, open heart... the best we could do with that is maybe brain scans or somethin', and while I do believe we've tried stuff like that before, I don't recall it giving any results that back up the claim in question. And people have spent literally decades of their lives trying pretty much everything to get return from prayer and got either nothing or nothing distinguishable from nothing.

... that said, yeah, I'm one of the ones that would agree that faith is a pretty big deal. It's just that there is a substantial difference between belief in propositions that are verifiable (in a communicable and consistent way) and those that, well. Aren't. And a great deal of spiritual propositions are unverifiable at best, incommunicable and/or inconsistent at worst, assuming they're not just outright false.

[scrdest]

If you say something with the presence of authority, than people tend to be more inclined to actually accept it than to not.

Yes. But accepted authority is not exempt from circumstances of belief. Somebody raised in a religious household and taught to believe the priesthood probably perceives the priesthood as an accepted authority. Someone taught to believe in science probably perceives those affiliated with science as authorities.

Have you ever tested it? Has the "typical atheist" ever tested it?

Impossible from the position of an advocate, since if you don't get an answer you just weren't believing hard enough.

If you go on an archeological dig and don't find any dinosaur fossils, is that sufficient evidence to conclude that dinosaurs didn't exist?

It would take a truly bizarre contrivance of fate to find someone who would be raised to treat whatever a scientist says to be gospel without qualification. Unless you've walked in through a portal from WH40K somehow. Yes, it would be blind faith - by definition, but that's because your argument presupposes indoctrinating someone into having blind faith in scientists.

As for the second part of the post, I do not recall - and upon reflection I'm quite glad nobody reasonably claims it to be so, because it would be a scary world otherwise - that dinosaurs were allegedly omnipresent. And we come a full circle - if 99 attempts fail to find a response to a honest prayers, or a 99% of the globe is dug up for fossils and produces nothing, then you have a pretty goddamn good argument to claim that the existence of Jesus responding to honest prayers and global existence of dinosaurs, respectively, are false.

Of course the hundredth attempt may succeed - there's actually a statistical value whose purpose is precisely that, expressing that there's a one-in-x chance that God took a day off 99 times you tried and so your claim has a miniscule chance of being completely bollocks despite a seemingly strong pattern of evidence.

Bear in mind, evidence in real life does not exist in vacuum.

Ah, the crisis of implication. A->B; if A is false, you know nothing of B. So, no.

Ok. So if you pray to Jesus and get no response, therefore that's also not sufficient evidence to falsify the claim?

It's the double standard that interests me. If a person hypothetically were to believe that dinosaurs were fake, and if that person went on a dig and found nothing, they might be inclined to construe that as evidence to support their belief. Just as, somebody who didn't believe in god attempting to pray and receiving no response, might be inclined to construe that as evidence to support their belief.

Somebody who believes in dinosaurs would probably claim that it's silly to not believe in dinosaurs based on a single failure to find fossils. Somebody who believes in god could make the same argument.

A singular failure to reproduce results is not significant if others have found strong evidence for them several times independently. That's because at that point you're trying to prove that previous results were a fluke, and claiming that since you didn't find any bones dinosaurs don't real requires you to posit how, then, all the other bones, some of which are publicly available in museums, happened to pop into existence.

The exact same thing applies to prayer, except now you're moving in murky metaphysics and problems of psychology - both of which are largely unavailable for objective third-party review. You cannot prove you heard or felt something or that you didn't, at the current level of technology at least, so the evidence for is much weaker; there's also a whole bunch of alternative explanations for such phenomena based on cases in assorted headologies which were recorded, which offer a decent counter-explanation. It's harder to explain away giant skeletons than it is mental phenomena.

[Graknorke]

If you go on an archaeological dig and don't find any dinosaur fossils, is that sufficient evidence to conclude that dinosaurs didn't exist?

No? Really it shouldn't be surprising that someone with no training in archaeology and who refuses to believe any advice from people who do would end up finding bugger all. Maybe an old trolley and some cans of iron bru or something. But hey it is still a dig, they just missed out on some important factors like location.
But "speaking with an open heart" is one of those things that is impossible to verify. And if the only important thing is an "open heart" (like your Protestants claim), then there's no reason why a person shouldn't get an answer.