(July 3, 2012 at 11:39 am)Skepsis Wrote: Most people who believe there is an external world do so on the basis of foundationalism. Presuppositions like "I exist" and "my senses are sometimes accurate" are both necessary to make cognitive decisions in the world. Otherwise you fall into radical skepticism and inevidably nihilism.
How are those basic presuppositions justified? By argument?
Quote:Goblins aren't analogous to God, as they aren't of the same constitution. How does the fact that intelligent men who happen to believe in God discard goblins as myth strengthen your case? What you have constructed is an appeal to authority with a faulty analogy thrown in. Two fallacies in one argument.
I explained my intention in my last post.
Quote:Goblins can be eventually defined as an unrestricted negative. An unrestricted negative is, by definition, unproveable.
Can you please define what an unrestricted negative is? And do you mean "unfalsifiable?" (instead of unprovable) I don't think God is by definition unprovable.
Quote:Russell's teapot and infinite other examples of indefinite things fall into this category. What I find is that the religious fall into this odd cycle of "prove to me this unrestricted negative"- what I have never heard before is the OP's odd idea that lack of evidence shouldn't equal lack of belief.
Since when?
Lack of evidence necesitates lack of belief. If you want to contest that then I would feel fine destroying your argument
Because we have no evidence that there are extraterrestrials, does it follow from our lack of evidence that there are no extraterrestrials?
