(December 21, 2017 at 11:45 am)possibletarian Wrote:(December 21, 2017 at 11:16 am)SteveII Wrote: I am not saying this is what makes a rational argument. I am saying that in addition to all the reasons that I have outlined here countless times why I believe that list, you cannot show they are false beliefs (or even likely to be false)--so they remain rationally justified beliefs. To say it another way, if you had a way to show they were false, yet I still believed them to be true, then they would not be rationally justified beliefs.
Define your threshold for likely to be false.
There exists a competing naturalistic theory that makes sense of the facts that indicates my belief could easily be wrong.
Quote:Quote:Bad parody. I can offer a hundred defeaters for Santa Claus existing. So, while a child's belief might be rationally justified in the absence of those, it will not be if I share them.
That was not the point, you can make up numerous scenarios for culminate evidence pointing to a completely incorrect result, especially given the person has collected the data themselves to only point in one direction.
You don't have a cumulative case of anything if there are reasons and evidence not to think the belief is true--but you are simply ignoring them. Most arguments against Christianity are not rebuttal arguments--they are more along the lines of "well...you haven't proved it".
Quote:Just because you have come to that conclusion, and because you believe that your particular god has properties (like most gods) that cannot be 'unproven' then it must be true.
I am very interested in your definition of 'likely to be false' what on earth does that even mean ?
Further to what I was just saying, my cumulative case would break down if evidence was presented that made it clear that any grouping of my beliefs are likely to be false--which is a lower threshold than simply false.
A good example: I don't think the earth was created in a literal 6 days. Why? Because I think that the evidence (scientific, exegetical, historical, etc.) shows that that belief is likely to be false. I don't think that my list contains beliefs that can be undercut like this.