RE: Share your worldview?
February 6, 2018 at 7:28 pm
(This post was last modified: February 6, 2018 at 7:30 pm by vulcanlogician.)
(February 6, 2018 at 6:44 pm)Khemikal Wrote: -and that's where you begin to be a or irrational. You either knew before or you didn't. There's no such thing as 99% knowing. This is more math that you aren't going to be able to show me.
This is where I'm going to challenge you. First let me say where I agree with you: "You either knew before or you didn't." That's true... concerning my car, the afterlife, or anything. The issue is more complicated with "There's no such thing as 99% knowing." Of course, I can't show any math, but estimates are a thing aren't they?
I just Googled: "What is the mass of Jupiter?" The answer I got was 1.898 X 10^27 kg. Now, of course this is an estimate. It's liable to be off by quite a bit. What we can be certain of is that it is at least OFF by 1 kg or more. I'm not saying I have math to prove this number is off (BTW I don't). But I can say with certainty that I'm uncertain of this number. It's not "99% knowledge" per se, but neither is it 100% certainty.
We can agree on this: there is an actual mass of Jupiter. There is. But do I know it? No. Does anybody know it? No.
Is 1.898 X 10^27 kg more correct than 3 kg? Yes, it is. And by this line of reasoning, 3 kg is more correct than 1 kg.
So here is the question: Am I irrational taking an "agnostic" position about the mass of Jupiter simply by acknowledging that I'm unsure of its precise mass?
My position is: I don't know the precise mass of Jupiter. The "theistic" position is "Jupiter is 1 kg." In this case I reject the theist's position, but in admitting that I DON'T KNOW... you have lumped me in with people who consider things like 1 kg. I acknowledge that it is not 1 kg. But at the same time I reject 1.898 X 10^27 kg.
As I type this, I can already hear your objection forming. "The mass of Jupiter is a numerical value-- the existence of an afterlife is binary." I can give a binary example, too. I just didn't think from the outset to make my example binary. But whatever, I'm not retyping, and I think I made my point okay with the Jupiter example.
