RE: Annoying Atheist Arguments
February 1, 2013 at 12:41 pm
(This post was last modified: February 1, 2013 at 12:55 pm by genkaus.)
(February 1, 2013 at 11:52 am)pocaracas Wrote: worldview.... that implies a personal acquisition of some information about the world and reasoning skills to infer future events based on that information.... does it not?
It'd be impossible to live without having one.
(February 1, 2013 at 11:52 am)pocaracas Wrote: Well, if you don't know what spunkGargleWeewee is, how can you believe whether it exists or not?
The word does not exist in a normal dictionary. It exists in this text (and, perhaps, somewhere else). The concept indicated by the word is something only a restricted number of people are aware of.
You have now a very limited information about spunkGargleWeewee.
Do you believe it exists, or do you believe it does not exist? OR do you not believe either way?
Prima facie, it seems like something you made up for the sake of argument - so, I don't believe that it exists. IOW, it doesn't exist. My belief is open to alteration upon further information.
(February 1, 2013 at 11:52 am)pocaracas Wrote: To you, yes.... to me, it's at my discretion. And my discretion goes like I presented.
However it may go, it has to go somewhere. It cannot remain at a zero.
(February 1, 2013 at 11:52 am)pocaracas Wrote: Ah, I was going for a deistic god thing, immortal, creator of the cosmos and little else.
Still not logical.
(February 1, 2013 at 11:52 am)pocaracas Wrote: I agree with your second sentence, but not the first.
And that is your problem. Both of them mean the same thing.
(February 1, 2013 at 11:52 am)pocaracas Wrote: Ah, worldview... you are again assuming you have some more information about the world. The same information that made you construct that worldview. Each one of us has their own set of information there...
What kind of information each one of us is trusting then defines what we can believe in about the world...
And most information we get from adults, while we're young, tends to be cataloged as trustworthy...
And that can be changed and altered as you grow up.
(February 1, 2013 at 12:09 pm)Question Mark Wrote: Well I disagree with you, and I don't appreciate you belittling my argument like that.
What argument?
(February 1, 2013 at 12:09 pm)Question Mark Wrote: One can only know through experience, if you've tested it personally. I know gravity works because I've picked something up and dropped it, thus experienced it. I believe that jumping off a building will hurt because in every instance I've ever seen other people do it, it hurt them, and because I have a working understanding of physics and the limitations of the human anatomy.
Then there's faith, of course. Jumping off a building will hurt because someone told me it will.
Have you personally counted the ballot boxes or do you not know who won the election in your country? Have you personally compared the gravitational acceleration at the equator and the poles or do you not know that it is higher at the poles? Have you personally been to the middle-east or do you not know that Islam is the major religion there?
Personal experience is a very limited and often unreliable way of gaining knowledge. After all, there is only so much you can experience in your limited time with your limited resources. The bulk of knowledge that you have does come from logic and rationality. Your understanding of physics and human anatomy are not things you have "personally experienced" but things you have learned about - and that is knowledge. If personal experience was all that counted as knowledge, then the collective knowledge of humanity would not have made it past the hunter-gatherer stage.