RE: Why do religious people desperately want to class Atheism as a religion?
November 24, 2015 at 12:06 pm
(November 24, 2015 at 11:55 am)Esquilax Wrote:(November 24, 2015 at 10:26 am)Kingpin Wrote: Sure but what some see as "convincing" others see as "unconvincing". it's purely subjective.
Subjectivity, however, does not preclude upper and lower bounds. For example, regardless of your standards, I suspect you have minimum and maximum tolerances for credulity, that roughly align with everyone else's. Were you to see someone standing in front of an object, staring right at it and denying that object's existence, I would think you would think that person is being unreasonable by being unconvinced of that evidence. Likewise, were you to see someone convinced of an obvious scam claim on the basis that some guy said so, you would most likely conclude that that person is being unreasonable by being convinced on such evidence.
When you get to extreme ends of the spectrum, it's no longer subjective whether one should or should not be convinced by a given set of evidence, in that there are clear epistemic issues with picking one or the other option at that point. Religions all fall into the latter extreme, where if they convince someone, they are doing so on insufficient evidence that followers would never accept for other claims, or even other claims within the same type.
Another thing is that some may not have seen/experienced the same type of evidence that others have.
If there is a murder trial and a witness comes in and says he alone witnessed the defendant in the act of murdering the victim, that person can be 100% sure the defendant is guilty, because he has seen evidence for himself. But that does not mean that everyone else should take his word for it because they were not there and they did not see/experience the same evidence that he did. Unless the witness is able to find another way to prove it, it remains evidence for himself and himself alone.
"Of course, everyone will claim they respect someone who tries to speak the truth, but in reality, this is a rare quality. Most respect those who speak truths they agree with, and their respect for the speaking only extends as far as their realm of personal agreement. It is less common, almost to the point of becoming a saintly virtue, that someone truly respects and loves the truth seeker, even when their conclusions differ wildly."
-walsh
-walsh