(December 23, 2013 at 12:38 am)Esquilax Wrote:

(December 23, 2013 at 12:27 am)orangebox21 Wrote: If you say you can only speak for yourself you imply that standards are relative, that they are not absolute. Do I have that correct? And if the standards for evidence/proof are relative how could a person prove anything to you? If you accept "relative" standards then you would have to accept anyone's proof/evidence so long as they fit within their own set of standards for evidence.

I'd suggest that the standards I'd given, things that are demonstrable and repeatable and so on, are absolute in that they're objectively verifiable, and objectively real: things that exist exist, and if you can show them to exist you've proved that they exist. Good job.

But the question you asked was, what is the atheist standard for proof or evidence, and that's ill-formed in some ways, because atheists are only unified in their acceptance of a single position: disbelief in god claims. Other than that, their standards can vary, but that's not an exclusively atheist thing, everyone does that; even among the religious, you have people accepting their religion on faith, and those who go looking for evidence first. Hell, there are christians who believe in alien abductions, and also those who don't because their standard for evidence is different enough to exclude those accounts from the category of believability. And that's ignoring the obvious differences between biblical literalists and those who take the less believable stories to just be metaphor. To say that atheists therefore have relative standards is to ignore the fact that everyone has an internalized standard of what's believable to them.

I agree that varying standards are not exclusively an atheist thing. So given that everyone has an internalized standard of what's believable to them don't we need something outside ourselves to be the standard. Because if we don't, how do we know who's right and who's wrong? Or I suppose two other options would be everyone's right or everyone's wrong.

Quote:I'd say that the standards I gave are the minimum threshold for evidence: if something exists and you can demonstrate it, what's the problem? Where do the further questions come in? If something exists and is demonstrable, it would be crazier not to believe it's there, no?

At face value yes. If something exists and is demonstrable, it would be crazier not to believe it's there. Since I don't know where you stand on this argument I'll ask (and this is where the further questions can come in): some people have argued that we could be living in some kind of alternate reality (like the matrix movies). If a person subscribes to this argument the conclusion is how can we prove something exists? Do you believe this is a valid argument? If not what is your counter argument?

Quote:Also, I take issue with your claim that accepting the idea that people bring their own standards of evidence to the table requires me to accept everyone's evidence as sufficient so long as it's sufficient to them: that doesn't follow at all. Why would you think that?

This stemmed from the concept of relativity. You accept things as true if they fit your criteria. Someone else accepts something as true as it fits their criteria (though differing from yours). Is the truth relative (to the differing criteria)? Or is one set of the criteria right and one wrong? And if so who decides? If I subscribed to relativity as such I would be much more concerned about people being consistent within their own standards and would thus allow their evidence as valid if it follows suit because after all it's relative (to the individual's criteria). If I subscribed not to relativity I would be more concerned about who is right and who is wrong and how to know which is which.

Quote:Edited to add: Oh, and when I say I only speak for myself, that's me being polite. I don't want to put words into anyone else's mouth. You didn't need to spin my polite invitation for anyone else to chime in with more into this whole thing about relative standards, that's just silly.

I"m sorry. It was not my intent to demean your politeness.

(December 24, 2013 at 1:48 am)orangebox21 Wrote: I agree that varying standards are not exclusively an atheist thing. So given that everyone has an internalized standard of what's believable to them don't we need something outside ourselves to be the standard. Because if we don't, how do we know who's right and who's wrong? Or I suppose two other options would be everyone's right or everyone's wrong.

Yes, and the thing outside ourselves is the objective reality in which we live. As I alluded to earlier, reality cares not a whit what your specific standard is; the things that exist within it will remain.

Quote:At face value yes. If something exists and is demonstrable, it would be crazier not to believe it's there. Since I don't know where you stand on this argument I'll ask (and this is where the further questions can come in): some people have argued that we could be living in some kind of alternate reality (like the matrix movies). If a person subscribes to this argument the conclusion is how can we prove something exists? Do you believe this is a valid argument? If not what is your counter argument?

Well, I guess my question in return would be, so what? So what if we're living inside the matrix? There might be some external world out there, but I don't know how one could prove that to be true, and anyway, even if we were we'd still be required to deal with the internal rules of the matrix; matrix fire will still burn me, even if I know for sure that what I'm experiencing is fake. This problem of hard solipsism doesn't actually get us anywhere, and so I don't really view it as something I'm justified in worrying about. Like the question of god, I'll consider it once there's at least a little evidence for it.

Quote:This stemmed from the concept of relativity. You accept things as true if they fit your criteria. Someone else accepts something as true as it fits their criteria (though differing from yours). Is the truth relative (to the differing criteria)? Or is one set of the criteria right and one wrong? And if so who decides?

I think it's important that we make a distinction between the truth, and those things that we accept as true. It's the things that we accept as true that are relative, and that's easy to see; we've got people who accept that there's a god, people who don't, people who accept that the moon landing was real, people who don't, etc etc. We can go on forever about the varying disagreements that people have over what's true, but the important thing to remember is that, no matter those disagreements, there is only one thing that actually happened, and therefore only one truth, about which those people disagreeing are either correct or incorrect in their acceptance of it. There either is a god, or there isn't; there's no possible sense in which both could be true, or neither. We either landed on the moon, or we did not; someone's right, and someone's wrong there.

So when we come to the god question, you might very well be right, right now. I could be dead wrong, and I know that's a possibility, because I don't know everything yet. The question of my standard of evidence doesn't say much at all about the relativity of truth, but rather addresses whether or not I'm rationally justified in accepting claims as true or false.

Quote:I"m sorry. It was not my intent to demean your politeness.

It's cool, I guess it just amused me to see the significance other people can place in really quite simple sentiments.

^^^ So then out of curiosity what causes you to reject the testimony of the Bible. You would agree that the book exists. And no doubt you accept testimony as valid evidence. I say this assuming most of the evidence you have for your beliefs from testimony. I'm assuming you either believe in the moon landing or not and I'm guessing you haven't yourself been on the moon nor were you there taking the "fake pictures" to support your view one way or another. What is it about this testimony that causes you to reject it?

Oh dear.

(December 24, 2013 at 2:37 am)Jacob(smooth) Wrote: Oh dear.

Indeed. Now you know our pain. :p

(December 24, 2013 at 2:32 am)orangebox21 Wrote: ^^^ So then out of curiosity what causes you to reject the testimony of the Bible. You would agree that the book exists. And no doubt you accept testimony as valid evidence. I say this assuming most of the evidence you have for your beliefs from testimony. I'm assuming you either believe in the moon landing or not and I'm guessing you haven't yourself been on the moon nor were you there taking the "fake pictures" to support your view one way or another. What is it about this testimony that causes you to reject it?

I don't accept unchallenged testimony as valid evidence because people lie, forget, are deluded or insane.

That is why in courts we have lawyers who challenge the evidence that is produced.


I believe that the moon landing exists because there is ample documentary evidence coupled with the fact that had it been faked the Russians , who were following the whole mission via telescope, would have alerted the world to it. For em it is beyond reasonable doubt that there was a moon landing even though I accept that there is a minute chance it was faked.

What is it about this testimony? For a start it is all hearsay generally not valid in any court, there is no supporting evidence and a great deal of the bible is self evidently wrong in that it is self contradictory As well as demonstrably wrong.

(December 24, 2013 at 2:32 am)orangebox21 Wrote: ^^^ So then out of curiosity what causes you to reject the testimony of the Bible. You would agree that the book exists. And no doubt you accept testimony as valid evidence. I say this assuming most of the evidence you have for your beliefs from testimony. I'm assuming you either believe in the moon landing or not and I'm guessing you haven't yourself been on the moon nor were you there taking the "fake pictures" to support your view one way or another. What is it about this testimony that causes you to reject it?

Well, one doesn't unreservedly accept testimony, that's important to remember; when a court swears in a witness, they don't assume everything he says is the truth. We have perjury laws for a reason, after all.

There's a metric for how trustworthy testimony is, based on numerous factors. One is the identity and education of the testifier: the bible is written by multiple mostly anonymous authors who had no formal education nor even a functioning scientific apparatus. So, it fails there. Another is the supporting evidence for the claim; when it comes to the moon landing, for example, I can actually research the design of the rocket and, with sufficient education, understand whether it would or wouldn't function. And that's to say nothing of the photographic evidence from other lunar landers of the touchdown site. But the bible has very little in the way of evidence, to the point where we can't even confirm Jesus existed, and in fact much of today's science contradicts accounts in the bible (that science, by the way, is replicatable by anyone.)

So, we don't really know the authors and even if we did they didn't have the knowledge to say the things they did, and the actual investigations in the modern era disagree with them anyway. That would normally be enough, but when you add in that we know that the biblical canon has been edited and redacted by pretty much every christian religious tradition to ever get a hold of it... this isn't trustworthy testimony.

(December 24, 2013 at 2:32 am)orangebox21 Wrote: ^^^ So then out of curiosity what causes you to reject the testimony of the Bible. You would agree that the book exists. And no doubt you accept testimony as valid evidence. I say this assuming most of the evidence you have for your beliefs from testimony. I'm assuming you either believe in the moon landing or not and I'm guessing you haven't yourself been on the moon nor were you there taking the "fake pictures" to support your view one way or another. What is it about this testimony that causes you to reject it?

Good responses by the others to this, i'd like to add that we might consider other testimony from people who lived before our lives, such as Newton or Einstein, because they were able to argue from a reasoned standpoint using an avidence based approach. They also produced data and methodology that can be peer-reviewed, scrutinised and repeated/improved upon. What would make us not consider someone such as Einstein is if he made his conclusions before drawing out any hypothesis, and if he argued from authority and used the threat or retalliation to force his point upon us. The bible (and even more so the qur'an) is basically one big threat; it has to coerce people in to believing something and threaten them with hellfire. I'd quite like to interrogate god myself but sadly he only seems to talk to those who don't pander to his purile authority.

Quote: So then out of curiosity what causes you to reject the testimony of the Bible.

When cross-examined by archaeology/history it turns out to be horseshit. This is a bad sign.

(December 24, 2013 at 2:32 am)orangebox21 Wrote: ^^^ So then out of curiosity what causes you to reject the testimony of the Bible.

I think the Bible sets a bar (the word of the almighty god and creator of the universe) that it does not clear. I find it no different from any other set of old religious or mythical texts designed to impress or entertain us, but which aren't true. At least the old testament, anyway. The new testament seems a more cynical and politically-shrewd approach to the creation of religious mythology.