(May 9, 2025 at 1:07 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(May 9, 2025 at 12:52 pm)Nay_Sayer Wrote: I don't converse with people who don't care about evidence or think it's a bad thing.  

There's a reason why falsification is the gold standard in science 

Unlike religion of course, where claims have for millennia been touted as immutable absolute truths, with some people (creationists for example) clinging to such claims even after scientific evidence has demonstrated unequivocally that they are false. 

This also brings up another fundamental difference between science and religion, as science now demands all ideas are falsifiable, and discards unfalsifiable ideas as unscientific, the often used vernacular to describe how useless such ideas are is "not even wrong". Most claims for the supernatural of course fall into this useless category, as they are unfalsifiable. 

Science also keeps an open mind, and all ideas must remain tentative in the light of new evidence, no matter how well established. The antithesis then of the closed minded religious idea that truths can be immutable. 

Evidence is simply the available body of facts or information, indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid. Whether that evidence is sufficient on any given proposition is another matter, but the more that evidence is interpreted subjectively, the less reliable it becomes, the more objective it is, the more reliable it becomes.

(May 9, 2025 at 5:59 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(May 9, 2025 at 5:47 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Nah.

"At the heart of the underdetermination of scientific theory by evidence is the simple idea that the evidence available to us at a given time may be insufficient to determine what beliefs we should hold in response to it" (Stanford, 2023).

I strongly urge you to read the entire article. Or, if you’ve already done so, get someone to explain it to you. To quote Inigo Montoya, ‘I do not think it means what you think it means.’

Boru

(May 9, 2025 at 7:30 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: I strongly urge you to read the entire article. Or, if you’ve already done so, get someone to explain it to you.

I am the only one here in a position to explain it. Unless, of course, you know someone here who's also taken graduate courses on the philosophy of science?

Johnny just keeps digging he will be in the earths core before long 

(May 9, 2025 at 7:54 pm)The Architect Of Fate Wrote: Johnny just keeps digging he will be in the earths core before long 

Far too many Christians who post at atheist forums are know-it-alls.  That clashes badly with Christians' assumed humility, but I guess that figures with the self-appointed.

However, I sometimes wonder whether the real problem is that they believe they are guided by the Holy Spirit no matter what kind of nonsense they spout.

(May 9, 2025 at 8:10 pm)Alan V Wrote: However, I sometimes wonder whether the real problem is that they believe they are guided by the Holy Spirit no matter what kind of nonsense they spout.

Nope, I'm guided by my degree in cognitive science. Why would I not speak with confidence?

Degrees boasted over the internet are as meaningless as   meaningless can be

You just hit the core Johnny

(May 9, 2025 at 6:31 pm)Sheldon Wrote: Evidence is simply the available body of facts or information, indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid. Whether that evidence is sufficient on any given proposition is another matter, but the more that evidence is interpreted subjectively, the less reliable it becomes, the more objective it is, the more reliable it becomes.

I don't think it's true to say that evidence is the available body of facts or information. 

Facts and information on their own do not rise to the level of evidence.

They become evidence when a human being interprets them in support of a conclusion. Then the interpretation of the fact may be used to increase the credibility of a proposition -- which is what evidence does.

So a footprint on the beach is simply a footprint on the beach. If a person sees that footprint and interprets from its presence that someone has been there, then the footprint is evidence.

The interpretation requires certain priors on the part of the person doing the interpreting. The priors in the case of the footprint are simple -- the observer knows what another person's footprint looks like, how long it is likely to last on a beach, etc. Then the conclusion he draws is straightforward. 

In many cases the interpretation of a fact requires more complicated priors. It is these prior beliefs (i.e. things we hold to be true) which allow us to use the fact as evidence to increase the credibility of a proposition. 

So claiming that some fact, as given, counts as evidence one way or another in some kind of raw, uninterpreted manner, would be overlooking the prior beliefs that we have used to interpret what that fact points to.

(May 9, 2025 at 8:10 pm)Alan V Wrote: Far too many Christians who post at atheist forums are know-it-alls.

Social media have created a frightening boom in the confidence of ultracrepidarians of all types. Christians and non-Christians alike. 

The confident argument made by two minutes of Googling, and now the proof by AI that we're seeing more and more -- on the Internet these have practically pushed aside all genuine education and experience.

Update: John made a website to basically say he's sorry and he's just trolling a bit. He went on to say he agreed with about 90% of what I said.

Appreciate it Johnny