Why science and religious fatih need not be in conflict: It's as easy as 1-2-3!

[Whateverist]

Whateverist, I know you believe I have an obsession for certainty ..

Guilty.

.. and it seems that nothing I say can sway you from that belief. Be that as it may, what I said initially is that our conscience is evidence for moral facts. That is a very modest claim. I did not say it was proof. That is a common conflation that atheist/skeptics tend to make. Certainty in the form of 'proof' is for mathematical theorems and abstract symbolic logic. For everything else, we draw conclusions from what is evident. That is what evidence means. If I see fresh dirt over a grave, that is evidence that someone just died and was buried. It's not proof. My inference is a justified belief based on what is evident to me from current perceptions and memories similar situations.

And yet, you and Jor are saying that people cannot use memories or perceptions to form reasonable conclusions...unless of course those conclusions match how you already think the world works. When it comes to qualifiable phenomena you won't trust them, but when it comes to quantifiable phenomena you do. Why? If they are unreliable and cannot be trusted in the former then they cannot be trusted for the later because the later results come from the former. Despite their imperfections, perceptions and memory are the inescapable primary building blocks of empiricism. And nothing prevents there from being other paths to knowing besides through perception and memory. I say conscience is another such path, only with respect to moral facts.

I don't think I've picked a dog in that fight but I'm too sleepy to figure out what I think about this now.

Now it is often said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It seems to me quite extraordinary to claim that the holocaust wasn't necessarily evil or that murder isn't necessarily wrong. It seems much more likely that these events and actions are as they appear to be - in fact evil and wrong.

It would be extraordinary for me to say, or you to say it -from our perspectives. But I'm pretty sure we could go out and find ourselves a few moral monsters for which it would not be at all extraordinary for them to say and mean such a thing. It wouldn't change what I feel about it or what you feel about it, but neither does our agreement render their view surprising - in the context of who they are. Yep, it is relative. Only conditional facts here.

[Amarok]

It was not extraordinary to the Nazi's to them doing the opposite and claiming that killing the Jews was evil rather then an absolute good they believed it was  would have been the extraordinary claim . Just as now telling my people that eating raw seal meat is evil (and some think it is) is extraordinary. As for murder there are million exceptions all committed by perfectly regular folk who consciences are working just fine .

[comet]

It was not extraordinary to the Nazi's to them doing the opposite and claiming that killing the Jews was evil rather then an absolute good they believed it was  would have been the extraordinary claim . Just as now telling my people that eating raw seal meat is evil (and some think it is) is extraordinary. As for murder there are million exceptions all committed by perfectly regular folk who consciences are working just fine .

[Whateverist]

¿Is there a comment in there somewhere, Comet?