(February 6, 2011 at 6:29 pm)Matthew Wrote: Let's question the assumptions you make here then. You assume that:Why should I grant these assumptions?
- there is no evidence for God or the afterlife
- hypotheses not supported by evidence should be modified or discarded
If you don't share these assumptions, how come? Can you present evidence for the former? Do you really believe we should hold onto unsupported hypotheses?
(February 6, 2011 at 6:29 pm)Matthew Wrote: (It would be helpful if you could explain exactly what you mean by 'evidence' according to your epistemology for the sake of clarity.)
I will admit right here that I am much more scientifically-minded than philosophically-minded. Contemplating ideas and issues has its own merit, but when questioning whether something actually objectively exists or not, I look for observable scientific evidence that can theoretically be tested by anyone, if they went out and did the research and collected data.
Things like intuition, or a personal feeling or sense of meaning, or one's personal interpretation of a holy book, I would not consider evidence. It is easy enough for a person to convince themselves that something exists based on these things, but much harder to convince anyone else.
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