RE: No reason justifies disbelief.
March 20, 2019 at 9:12 pm
(This post was last modified: March 20, 2019 at 9:16 pm by LadyForCamus.)
(March 20, 2019 at 6:57 pm)Belaqua Wrote:(March 20, 2019 at 6:36 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: You seem to be saying, “we can’t ever really know anything, so why even try?”
Absolutely not. Exactly the opposite. We can't be sure of many things, but we should still do our best.
(And I'm not saying that everybody has to study the same things I do.)
Let's take the standard definition of knowledge: justified true belief. We believe something when we hold it to be true. We can and should do our best to make sure those things we hold to be true are justified. But to be knowledge, they also have to be really truly true, and this is something that we may have to hold back from saying. History teaches that we may be justified, but still wrong.
Obviously there are different levels of provability. In a formal system like math, we can be sure that 2+2=4 if we agree on what the symbols mean. But empirical and metaphysical claims are in different categories.
So, then how should one go about investigating the claim that a god exists? If intelligence is required for having a shot at getting to the correct answer, to what field of study should one apply their intelligence?
Quote:The bigness of a question might depend on what's important to you. I guess things like moral issues can be big questions, pressing environmental concerns, physics questions. Some of these things are more decidable and some less.
It's possible that a lot of people have the correct answer to the question "Does a god exist?". Our job is to work out which of the available answers that is. If any.
Again, I'll ask, how should we go about finding the true answer to that question? It seems to me (correct me if I'm wrong), that you think scientific inquiry is the wrong tool for this job, because the nature of things the scientific method endeavors to find belong to a different (and mutually exclusive) category from metaphysical truths. If not the scientific method, what other method should we employ in order to arrive at a true answer to the question, "does a god exist?"
Quote:Surely it's better to listen to intelligent people more than stupid ones? I mean, stupid people may be saying true things, perhaps by chance, but doesn't intelligence count for something?
Well, I suppose that depends on its relevance to the nature of the thing in question. If you believe that intelligence is a relevant tool for investigating god claims, then you've got to expand on which relevant subjects we should be applying our intelligence to in order to have a shot at reaching a true conclusion. When you eliminate any and all empirical and/or testable things...well...I'm not sure what's left, lol.
Nay_Sayer: “Nothing is impossible if you dream big enough, or in this case, nothing is impossible if you use a barrel of KY Jelly and a miniature horse.”
Wiser words were never spoken.
Wiser words were never spoken.