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Socialist

16 (32%)

Green

8 (16%)

Peace and Freedom

2 (4%)

Democratic

1 (2%)

Transhumanist

11 (22%)

Libertarian

8 (16%)

Republican

2 (4%)

Constitution

2 (4%)

Total Members Voted: 49

[Criptfeind]

Unicorns don't exist is not a valid thing to say.

I've truly enriched by life by this thread.

We should go back to the stupid foot test.

[GavJ]

Unicorns don't exist is not a valid thing to say.

In a job interview for a scientific faculty or industry position? Definite red flag on hiring, yes.

In a court of law? Obviously reasonable doubt, sure, but shouldn't be proclaimed as fact.

In a pub by a regular joe? Nah. Have at it, no law against making inductive leaps, and definitely helpful for everyday practicality.

[Darvi]

Unicorns don't exist is not a valid thing to say.

In a job interview for a scientific faculty or industry position? Definite red flag on hiring, yes.

"Before we finish the interview, one question.

Do you believe in fairies?"

Oh man that's gonna cause them critters to go extinct before long.

[Culise]

Unicorns don't exist is not a valid thing to say.

In a job interview for a scientific faculty or industry position? Definite red flag on hiring, yes.

"Before we finish the interview, one question.

Do you believe in fairies?"

Oh man that's gonna cause them critters to go extinct before long.

Given how this discussion started and how it's proceeded, I suspect that the answer could be "I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to answer that because it's technically illegal to ask questions about one's religion."  Watch them try to parse out that answer. :3

[GlyphGryph]

"Before we finish the interview, one question.

Do you believe in fairies?"

Oh man that's gonna cause them critters to go extinct before long.

Remember that the answer isn't no, that's unjustified! You've got to think laterally and answer "I'm agnostic about this proposition."

[Remuthra]

"Before we finish the interview, one question.

Do you believe in fairies?"

Oh man that's gonna cause them critters to go extinct before long.

Remember that the answer isn't no, that's unjustified! You've got to think laterally and answer "I'm agnostic about this proposition."

'Course, it would be offensive to the fairyists otherwise.

[GavJ]

Come on, pay attention. The question is "Do fairies exist?" not "Do you believe in fairies?"  The layman answer to the latter question would be "no" which is ALSO what you would want the scientist to say, which makes it not a good question. The answer to the former is usefully differentiating, because an average bloke would say "hell no" and the kind of person i would want to hire would say "I don't know."

And yes, if I worked for google making up their interview questions, I would absolutely consider adding that one. Not at all kidding.    They have much weirder and probably less useful questions already.

[nenjin]

Tempted to suggest to my bosses adding questions like this to interviews just for the sheer hilarity. I know everyone there can ask that question and look dead serious while doing so.

[Remuthra]

"And what are your opinions on the nature of fairies?"
"Uhhh..."
*Disapproving note-taking*

[alway]

And yes, if I worked for google making up their interview questions, I would absolutely consider adding that one. Not at all kidding.    They have much weirder and probably less useful questions already.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Would-Move-Mount-Fuji/dp/0316778494

Though such questions have fallen out of favor somewhat of late, they were important qualifiers back when programming didn't really have established educational programs teaching it. So those have slowly been replaced with programming problem solving. The absurdist interview events mentioned in that book were also largely tossed out when it became obvious that the best talent would walk out the door for the company insulting their time.

[Criptfeind]

Seriously though. I'm a bit more awake now, and I'm not going to let this slide. Even a scientist wouldn't say "I'm agnostic about the existence of the super natural." If you actually pressed them they would answer something like "Although we can't disprove it we can give a very very very confident and very likely to be a No."

That's not agnostic.

Also holy shit how are we even on 'science' I just realized that this debate isn't even about that. It's about if calling atheism a faith is correct. And in all circles I would STILL say that's still no. Even in like super literal scientific circles they wouldn't crouch it in faith and agnosticism but say something like "It's suuuuuuuuper unlikely god exists, very very unlikely. Almost certainly no god."

It's not faith to say well okay then we might as well say that there is no god then when talking in non scientific terms in general life. It's not 'The scientifically valid position is to hold no strong opinion'. The real valid position is in fact quite strong. Just not 100%. WHICH IS CLOSE ENOUGH

((Note, to try to cut off any actual religious debate, this is just from a prospective where god doesn't exist. And since clearly we all live under a magic sky tyrant it is just hypothetical.))

[Graknorke]

And yes, if I worked for google making up their interview questions, I would absolutely consider adding that one. Not at all kidding.    They have much weirder and probably less useful questions already.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Would-Move-Mount-Fuji/dp/0316778494

Though such questions have fallen out of favor somewhat of late, they were important qualifiers back when programming didn't really have established educational programs teaching it. So those have slowly been replaced with programming problem solving. The absurdist interview events mentioned in that book were also largely tossed out when it became obvious that the best talent would walk out the door for the company insulting their time.

I'm not sure you'd want the best talent if their head is so far up their own arse.

[GavJ]

Even a scientist wouldn't say "I'm agnostic about the existence of the super natural."

Yes, they would. I actually led a local "journal club" in my own department years ago with about 20 science grad students in attendance about exactly that. We were reading some recent meta-studies about ESP, and I'm pretty down to the person they entered with open minds, considered the data for what it was, and left with mostly equally open minds.

I don't think most would even agree with you that "It's a very likely no." They really shouldn't agree with that. I CERTAINLY do not.

Why? Because how the hell would you ever even approach beginning to place a quantifier on the likelihood of it? There's no basis for doing so. The only way you could BEGIN to quantify the likelihood would be if you had already concretely established exactly how common and how powerful supernatural events must be, if they exist. Then you could start to crunch the statistics of likelihood. But of course you don't have either of those pieces of information. You do NOT know how powerful it would be if it exists, so you don't know how sensitive your measurements would have to be. And you do NOT know how common it would be, either, so you don't have any way to calculate how the number of investigations correlates to a % likelihood of existence.

To claim that you do know a likelihood about this is to make irresponsible conclusions based on assumptions you don't have data for.

Also holy shit how are we even on 'science'

It's closely related. Agnosticism is for most intents and purposes basically "science-ism" or "evidence-ism" and agnosticism comes up almost every time anybody mentions atheism, and vice versa.

"It's suuuuuuuuper unlikely god exists, very very unlikely. Almost certainly no god."

This IS faith for the same reasons described above for why you can't place a likelihood on supernatural forces: You don't know how powerful or influential God WOULD be if he exists, and you don't know how pervasive any measurable influences WOULD be if he exists. Therefore you simply do not have the numbers to perform any valid calculations (explicit or intuitive) about likelihoods.

To put it more concretely:
Scenario 1) God left fingerprints everywhere in the universe, and/or actively intervenes on a daily basis. If you knew this to be true, then failure to find any fingerprints or intervention with exhaustive searching you would be able to logically conclude that there is a low likelihood of God existing.
Scenario 2) God has left only 1 or 2 fingerprints that are measurable in the whole of the universe's creation. If you knew this to be true, then an exhaustive search of Earth wouldn't really tell you much at all about the likelihood of God existing. It would lower the likelihood, but only infinitesimally so, because after all, maybe that 1 fingerprint is simply on Mars. Or maybes it's 50,000 lightyears away on some asteroid.

And the simple fact is, nobody knows whether, if God were to exist, if it would be Scenario 1 or Scenario 2. Your claim in the quote clearly assumes Scenario 1, but you just decided out of thin air that that's what it must be. You have no basis for making that decision in science. Nor does anybody else. Thus, nobody has ANY idea whether a given amount of searching implies that you should lower your likelihoods by a lot or a little.




Thus, somebody being confident about how "there is almost certainly no God" is just talking out of their arse as far as Science is concerned. they may happen to be correct or not, but their belief is purely faith-based, since there's no actual way to know that likelihood from evidence or data in the context of only negative findings.

[LordSlowpoke]

* LordSlowpoke adjusts glasses

i have a very good idea

[Arx]

Apparently I'm a kuudere. I definitely know what that means, because as you know I am omniscient.