(February 6, 2018 at 4:57 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Certainty would be the more reasonable position..but it's not always the most useful, as your explanation for offering agnosticsm in this regard, in bold, suggests. You negotiated with the truth, by way of nonexistent probabilities and math you have not done and cannot show, in order to sway a person with a contravening opinion to reconsider their own fanciful beliefs.
That act of negotiation is what lends fairy tales the patina of credibility required to persist as they are in the first place.
I agree with the bold (my use of math and/or numbers was not the most accurate tool to demonstrate my point). I disagree with everything else, especially that certainty would be the most reasonable position, and here's why: agnosticism is where all investigations begin. I think you agree with this, right? You can't begin an investigation with a conclusion... a hypothesis, yes, but if you already have a conclusion, you won't investigate further. But after you find a reasonable conclusion, if you do not end with some degree of uncertainty, you cut yourself off from further discovery.
Ptolemy had a model of the universe. Earth in the middle, sun circles around etc. etc.-- Then came along Copernicus who debunked the Ptolemaic model. But here's the thing: Copernicus was wrong. He thought the sun was the center of the universe. It's not. He thought all the stars revolved around the sun. They don't. Certainty in the Copernican model is not the most reasonable position, nor is complete certainty in any position ever advisable. I'm sure we all appreciate what Copernicus clarified for us. But the fact is, certainty in his assertion that the stars revolve around the sun would have inhibited further discovery. Even in cases where we have very good information/evidence, we need to be willing to subject our conclusions (however well-founded they may be) to further scrutiny.
