RE: Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76.
April 21, 2018 at 2:25 pm
(This post was last modified: April 21, 2018 at 2:30 pm by Edwardo Piet.)
(April 21, 2018 at 2:18 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote:(April 21, 2018 at 11:47 am)Grandizer Wrote: What evidence? The incredibly uncompelling arguments that nevertheless provide a lot of leeway for alternative explanations excluding creator deities, when special pleading is controlled for? Personal experiences that are susceptible to biases and misinterpretations and inaccurate memories and selective attention? Abuse/misuse of logic and probabilities? Holding to incredibly naive/outdated notions of metaphysical phenomena, continually ignoring the suggestions of both science and philosophy when it comes to our intuition regarding such phenomena?
If you think that I am ignoring something, please point it out.
(April 21, 2018 at 11:50 am)Hammy Wrote: Prove that fire-breathing dragons don't exist. ("just semantics" is a cop-out. Literally all disagreement is just semantics)....
I'm not making any more of a claim that God doesn't exist than you are that fire-breathing dragons don't exist. To expect either of us to prove either 'claim' is absurd.
Lol what the fuck is a pseudo-skeptic? Skepticism isn't about absolute denial, or trying to prove a negative, it's about being skeptical. It seems to me that it's you who wants me to be a pseudo-skeptic, so you can knock down a strawman.
I'm not making any claim about fire breathing dragons though....
That's completely irrelevant. Just because you're not saying you don't believe in them doesn't mean you don't believe in them.
Do you believe they exist or not?
Whether someone is talking about X is irrelevant to the matter of whether they're rational for actually believing or disbelieving in X or not.
Quote:First you put a question mark, and ask what is a pseudo-skeptic, then you claim it is a straw man... Which is it?
The question was rhetorical.
Quote: Wiki pedia has a good link on the subject, if you are not familiar with it.
You're very familiar with it. The point is you're strawmanning me because you're misrepresenting my skepticism as something less reasonable (this so-called pseudo-skepticism) so you can attempt to knock it down.
Never saw that article there before:
from the Wikipedia article of pseudoskepticism Wrote:Truzzi attributed the following characteristics to pseudoskeptics:
1. Denying, when only doubt has been established
2. Double standards in the application of criticism
3. The tendency to discredit rather than investigate
4. Presenting insufficient evidence or proof
5. Assuming criticism requires no burden of proof
6. Making unsubstantiated counter-claims
7. Counter-claims based on plausibility rather than empirical evidence
8. Suggesting that unconvincing evidence provides grounds for completely dismissing a claim
He characterized true skepticism as:
1. Acceptance of doubt when neither assertion nor denial has been established
2. No burden of proof to take an agnostic position
3. Agreement that the corpus of established knowledge must be based on what is proved, but recognising its incompleteness
4. Even-handedness in requirement for proofs, whatever their implication
5. Accepting that a failure of a proof in itself proves nothing
5. Continuing examination of the results of experiments even when flaws are found
It's clear from this that I'm a true skeptic and not a pseudoskeptic.
