(July 9, 2015 at 1:06 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote:(July 7, 2015 at 3:56 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: If you know that a person is irrational about at least one thing, and that is all you know about the person, does that affect your opinion of the person? Well, it should.
How many people do you figure aren't irrational about at least one thing? You show me a person who thinks they're rational about everything, and I'll show you someone who is probably wrong.
That is irrelevant to the point. If all you know is that someone is irrational about one thing (theism, in this example), you don't know what other things the person is rational about and what other things the person is irrational about. But you do know that the person is irrational about that one thing. So you have reason to have a negative opinion insofar as that one thing is concerned.
In the case of someone about whom you know nothing, then you don't know anything about their level of rationality. So you have no reason to have a negative opinion about the person at all. Of course, you have no reason to have a positive opinion of the person either, but that applies to the case of the known theist as well.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
