The worth of Knowledge

[diffidus]

Goddammit, again???? Diffidus will you just change your religious views to theist and get it over with? This is becoming abbhorently banal. You have yet to prove why a space god with superpowers is more likely to exist than a unicorn so until you do that, your argument is bunk.

I was reading an interesting account about how the Human mind works with regard to belief. It goes something like this: when a person sees a fact or an argument that agrees with their belief, it is immediately taken on board without hardly any critical examination. When a person sees a fact or argument that goes against their belief, it induces a state of anger. It is difficult to challenge one's own beliefs, but alarm bells are raised within me if I find I am becoming angry over anothers point of view. It maybe that they have a real point. I sense anger in your response.

I will try to answer your question as best I can.

I think that with regard to the various ideas that you suggest, such as unicorns and the like, there is an error of classification. While the following is not wholly comprehensive, it does provide a certain coverage:

Class 1: Claims related to the existence of little red riding hood, peter pan etc. These can be dismissed on the basis that nobody is claiming that they exist, in fact, the authors of the fairy tales freely admitted that they were pure inventions of their imagination.

Class 2: Unicorns, the Greek God Pan etc. These concepts have become mythology. It is in the nature of a myth that they do not exist and that nobody now claims they do.

Class 3: Loch Ness Monster, Yeti etc. These are claimed to exist by some people and even now there are regular sitings. For these we should keep an open mind, but the probability of their existence is very low. We can assert this probability due to measurement. These creatures are not undetectable, in principle, using current technology. For example, Loch Ness has undergone search using submersibles and sonic radar. No sign of Nessy has been found. This does not rule out his existence, but we know from the area of the Loch and the claimed size of the monster, that the chances of it being outside the search zone is small.

Class 4: Gods existence, the human soul etc. Claims related to these, such as 'God exists' are still widely held by people. Evidence is presented by people in the form of personal accounts. But the really important point, is that it is not possible, at present, to estimate the probability of the claim being true or not, due to the inherent nature of the thing under consideration. It could well be that, as Humankind's knowledege progresses, we may be able to settle these issues, but at present we cannot.

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There seems to be a pre-ponderance of people on this site who claim that the only worthwhile form of knowledge is empirical knowlege based upon measurement. This is not true.

Take as examples the following statements: ' It is an absolute fact that in Euclidean geometry, the internal angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees', 'I think therefore I am', 'The earth is smaller than the universe that contains it', 'The law of cause and effect is based upon faith and cannot be proven'.

These are all statements of fact, but cannot be proven by emprical measurement. Emprical measurement is useful, but only a part of what is required to make a scientific assertion about the world. Imagine measuring how hot the radiation from the sun is, at different distances from its surface. This would give you a set of measurements, but without any understanding, you could not say what the temperature would be at points in-between your measured points. To do this, you have to employ a different type of knowlede that is based upon abstract reasoning. Without this type of reasoning, empirical observation would be virtually useless.

This is why some statements can be made with 100% certainty that they are true, while others are doubtful.

There are even people on this site who believe there is a real difference in meaning between the statements 'I believe that God doesn't exist' and 'I don't believe in God'.

Finally, there are people on this site who believe that God does not exist based upon it being unlikely, due to the lack of empirical evidence. But this 'unlikely' implies a knowledge of the probability that God does not exist. Upon what set of empirical measurements is this probability estimated? The answer is none!! Atheism, on these grounds, is a huge leap of faith into the dark world of Humankinds lack of knowledge.

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I wrote up a response to this that broke down your arguments but then my computer froze so I will sum it up. First, some of your facts, such as a triangles angles equaling 180 can be proven like this -
http://www.mathsisfun.com/proof180deg.html

Your argument fails, however, because you make the assumption that empirical evidence is the only thing atheists use to come to their conclusions on the probability of god. We factor in concepts such as the nature of life, the nature of the universe, and the nature of the deity, while weighing the evidence. This is the third time you have tried, and failed, at proving that atheism takes faith. The more you post, the more you prove that your position is just lack of conviction, and not the intellectual high ground you try so hard to make it sound like.

Diffidus:

What is 'the nature of life'?

[Faith No More]

What is 'the nature of life'?

Generalizing how life interacts with each other. Life feeds on life and can be very cruel about it. Nature shows indifference to the individual at best, and at worst is extremely malevolent. It's pretty cruel for being the product of design from an all-powerful being. This is one piece of the puzzle when determining god's existence.

[BloodyHeretic]

Goddammit, again???? Diffidus will you just change your religious views to theist and get it over with? This is becoming abbhorently banal. You have yet to prove why a space god with superpowers is more likely to exist than a unicorn so until you do that, your argument is bunk.

I was reading an interesting account about how the Human mind works with regard to belief. It goes something like this: when a person sees a fact or an argument that agrees with their belief, it is immediately taken on board without hardly any critical examination. When a person sees a fact or argument that goes against their belief, it induces a state of anger. It is difficult to challenge one's own beliefs, but alarm bells are raised within me if I find I am becoming angry over anothers point of view. It maybe that they have a real point. I sense anger in your response.

I will try to answer your question as best I can.

I think that with regard to the various ideas that you suggest, such as unicorns and the like, there is an error of classification. While the following is not wholly comprehensive, it does provide a certain coverage:

Class 1: Claims related to the existence of little red riding hood, peter pan etc. These can be dismissed on the basis that nobody is claiming that they exist, in fact, the authors of the fairy tales freely admitted that they were pure inventions of their imagination.

Class 2: Unicorns, the Greek God Pan etc. These concepts have become mythology. It is in the nature of a myth that they do not exist and that nobody now claims they do.

Class 3: Loch Ness Monster, Yeti etc. These are claimed to exist by some people and even now there are regular sitings. For these we should keep an open mind, but the probability of their existence is very low. We can assert this probability due to measurement. These creatures are not undetectable, in principle, using current technology. For example, Loch Ness has undergone search using submersibles and sonic radar. No sign of Nessy has been found. This does not rule out his existence, but we know from the area of the Loch and the claimed size of the monster, that the chances of it being outside the search zone is small.

Class 4: Gods existence, the human soul etc. Claims related to these, such as 'God exists' are still widely held by people. Evidence is presented by people in the form of personal accounts. But the really important point, is that it is not possible, at present, to estimate the probability of the claim being true or not, due to the inherent nature of the thing under consideration. It could well be that, as Humankind's knowledege progresses, we may be able to settle these issues, but at present we cannot.

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Your class division appears to be primarily based on how popular a belief is. God's existence and the human soul have no more good evidence than unicorns, they're just more popular. You don't make a very good argument.

"It is in the nature of a myth that they do not exist and that nobody now claims they do."
Just substitute religious beliefs for myths in that sentence, and you have it.

[colubridae]

These are all statements of fact, but cannot be proven by emprical measurement.

You can’t prove anything with empirical evidence. All you can ever do is gather empirical evidence which supports your theory.
If you find any evidence which contradicts your theory, it’s busted.

Rewrite your original post bearing this in mind and it will come to the usual nought.

Hope this helps.

[SleepingDemon]

Popularity does not equal probability therefore based on evidence alone, gods and unicorns have the same probability of existing. I will however leave the possibility open, but it still must be proven. I don't put much stock in personal accounts of the supernatural, else alien abduction would be a statistical probability and not mass delusion. .And diffidus, frustration is an acceptable response when an identical conversation is brought forth by the same individual again and again.

[diffidus]

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Goddammit, again???? Diffidus will you just change your religious views to theist and get it over with? This is becoming abbhorently banal. You have yet to prove why a space god with superpowers is more likely to exist than a unicorn so until you do that, your argument is bunk.

I was reading an interesting account about how the Human mind works with regard to belief. It goes something like this: when a person sees a fact or an argument that agrees with their belief, it is immediately taken on board without hardly any critical examination. When a person sees a fact or argument that goes against their belief, it induces a state of anger. It is difficult to challenge one's own beliefs, but alarm bells are raised within me if I find I am becoming angry over anothers point of view. It maybe that they have a real point. I sense anger in your response.

I will try to answer your question as best I can.

I think that with regard to the various ideas that you suggest, such as unicorns and the like, there is an error of classification. While the following is not wholly comprehensive, it does provide a certain coverage:

Class 1: Claims related to the existence of little red riding hood, peter pan etc. These can be dismissed on the basis that nobody is claiming that they exist, in fact, the authors of the fairy tales freely admitted that they were pure inventions of their imagination.

Class 2: Unicorns, the Greek God Pan etc. These concepts have become mythology. It is in the nature of a myth that they do not exist and that nobody now claims they do.

Class 3: Loch Ness Monster, Yeti etc. These are claimed to exist by some people and even now there are regular sitings. For these we should keep an open mind, but the probability of their existence is very low. We can assert this probability due to measurement. These creatures are not undetectable, in principle, using current technology. For example, Loch Ness has undergone search using submersibles and sonic radar. No sign of Nessy has been found. This does not rule out his existence, but we know from the area of the Loch and the claimed size of the monster, that the chances of it being outside the search zone is small.

Class 4: Gods existence, the human soul etc. Claims related to these, such as 'God exists' are still widely held by people. Evidence is presented by people in the form of personal accounts. But the really important point, is that it is not possible, at present, to estimate the probability of the claim being true or not, due to the inherent nature of the thing under consideration. It could well be that, as Humankind's knowledege progresses, we may be able to settle these issues, but at present we cannot.

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Your class division appears to be primarily based on how popular a belief is. God's existence and the human soul have no more good evidence than unicorns, they're just more popular. You don't make a very good argument.

"It is in the nature of a myth that they do not exist and that nobody now claims they do."
Just substitute religious beliefs for myths in that sentence, and you have it.

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Not really - you have completely ignored the subtlety of probability. We can always estimate the probability of existence of mythical creatures such as unicorns, based upon the fact that these beasts (it was once claimed) existed on earth. The earth is finite and we have explored a great deal of it including satelite coverage. So, if somebody were to claim that they had seen a herd of unicorns the claim could be challeged. We could certainly state that the probability was extremely low. However, since these are mythical creatures, which, by definition, nobody believes in them anymore, this would seem to be an pointless academic exercise.

Loch Ness monster is similar, in that the probability could be estimated, but it is not yet a myth - since people still seriously claim that it exists and offer varying degrees of evidence.

So you see the really important thing is whether it is possible to estimate the probability.

With the concept of God, claims are being made and evidence offered, but the evidence is largely subjective. The result is that no estimate of the probability of existence can be formed. If 'those that believe' claimed that God was like a Unicorn i.e. a real living beast on earth that had somehow evaded detection, at least we could search the planet and then confidently say His existence is unlikely. With God, however, the claim(and I emphasise claim) is that He is all around us but in another dimension. Since we cannot detect Him, either He does not exist or, our understanding or detection methods are not yet developed enough. But how do we know which is true, since Humankinds current state of knowledge could be just a drop in the ocean of what is to come!

[Faith No More]

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Not really - you have completely ignored the subtlety of probability. We can always estimate the probability of existence of mythical creatures such as unicorns, based upon the fact that these beasts (it was once claimed) existed on earth. The earth is finite and we have explored a great deal of it including satelite coverage. So, if somebody were to claim that they had seen a herd of unicorns the claim could be challeged. We could certainly state that the probability was extremely low. However, since these are mythical creatures, which, by definition, nobody believes in them anymore, this would seem to be an pointless academic exercise.

Loch Ness monster is similar, in that the probability could be estimated, but it is not yet a myth - since people still seriously claim that it exists and offer varying degrees of evidence.

So you see the really important thing is whether it is possible to estimate the probability.

With the concept of God, claims are being made and evidence offered, but the evidence is largely subjective. The result is that no estimate of the probability of existence can be formed. If 'those that believe' claimed that God was like a Unicorn i.e. a real living beast on earth that had somehow evaded detection, at least we could search the planet and then confidently say His existence is unlikely. With God, however, the claim(and I emphasise claim) is that He is all around us but in another dimension. Since we cannot detect Him, either He does not exist or, our understanding or detection methods are not yet developed enough. But how do we know which is true, since Humankinds current state of knowledge could be just a drop in the ocean of what is to come!

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[BloodyHeretic]

There's a teapot orbiting Pluto you know. It's too small to be detectable, so you'll just have to take it on faith. Well you could be agnostic about it of course...after all, our knowledge is just a drop in the ocean....

[Darth]

Well an all pervasive god that does nothing is unprovable sure. At the moment all you've got is a deistic omnipresent god, agnostic atheism is the right way to approach that concept I agree. But when was the last time a theist left it at that? The more they define their god, the more attributes it has, the easier it becomes to dismiss it as illogical/impossible/inconsistent with observations, non-existent.

[tackattack]

defining and classifing things is inherit to human nature. Because we seek to define something we experience does not make theists irrational, just normal.