Faith vs Skepticism - Why faith?

RAZD responds to me:

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That presumes a complete absence of evidence,

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No, it presumes that there is an absence of convincing evidence

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"Convincing" to whom? Methinks we're about to wander into a creationist moment akin to claiming that there are no transitional fossils.The model works. Why do you demand chocolate sprinkles? Do you have evidence that they are required?

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that what exists is insufficient for decision/s pro or con.

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Why? The model works. Do you have evidence that it doesn't? Where is your justification that anything is "insufficient"? And even more importantly, why is this undefined "god" object one of the things being investigated to explain the insufficiency?

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The coin is in the air, we don't know if it will be heads or tails.

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Huh? The coin's on the ground. It would help if you would bend over and look at it. Are you claiming that it's rolling away somewhere? Where is your evidence of such.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

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Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

Hi bluegenes, still in denial I see. Charlie can also be many other things, but if he makes the claim that he is agnostic in order to avoid bearing a burden of support for a de facto atheist position he is a pseudoskeptic. This claim was made for the sole purpose of avoiding the issue of strong atheists (6's) having to support their position with empirical objective evidence.In practice you don't behave as though this claim is true. This is not how agnosticism is used, ergo your use of "6" here has a different meaning than it does in Message 496 and you are guilty of equivocation. This is also not how agnosticism is used, ergo your use of "6" here has a different meaning than it does in Message 496 and you are guilty of equivocation.You have used "6" to mean two different things, one that it means agnostic, in order to evade the burden of evidence for a strong negative position, and the other to argue that an actual agnostic position is not tenable. You can't have it both ways.You don't see a contradiction between these two uses?For the record, the "6" involved does not mention agnosticism, but a small amount of uncertainty, as you should have noted when you recapped the scale on Message 229:

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6.00: Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. 'I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.'

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Note that the word agnostic is not included. Notable is that it says de facto atheist. Then there are:

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3.00: Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. 'I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.'

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4.00: Exactly 50 per cent. Completely impartial agnostic. 'God's existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.'

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5.00: Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. 'I don't know whether God exists but I'm inclined to be sceptical.'

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Note that each one of those does use the term agnostic, so we can conclude that the omission of agnostic in the description of 6 was intentional.Your characterization of "6" as agnostic is at odds with the original meaning as well as with your usage of "6" in other arguments.http://onegoodmove.org/fallacy/equiv.htm

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Equivocation

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Definition:

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The same word is used with two different meanings.

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Examples:

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1. Criminal actions are illegal, and all murder trials are criminal actions, thus all murder trials are illegal. (Here the term "criminal actions" is used with two different meanings. Example borrowed from Copi.)
2. The sign said "fine for parking here", and since it was fine, I parked there.
3. All child-murderers are inhuman, thus, no child-murderer is human. (From Barker, p. 164; this is called "illicit obversion")
4. A plane is a carpenter's tool, and the Boeing 737 is a plane, hence the Boeing 737 is a carpenter's tool. (Example borrowed from Davis, p. 58)

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Proof:

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Identify the word which is used twice, then show that a definition which is appropriate for one use of the word would not be appropriate for the second use.

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This was done.Equivocation was used in a feeble attempt to weasel out of the burden that someone who makes a strong claim bears. If you make a claim of being a "6" (De facto atheist) on Dawkins scale in regards to the existence of god/s then there is a burden to bear that the "5" (Technically agnostic) on that scale does not bear.Let's go back to what Truzzi said per Pseudoskepticism and logic:

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Pseudoskepticism - Wikipedia

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Pseudoskepticism

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The term pseudoskepticism was popularized and characterized by Marcello Truzzi in response to skeptics who, in his opinion, made negative claims without bearing the burden of proof of those claims.[9]

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While a Professor of Sociology at Eastern Michigan University in 1987, Truzzi gave the following description of pseudoskeptics in the journal Zetetic Scholar which he founded:

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In science, the burden of proof falls upon the claimant; and the more extraordinary a claim, the heavier is the burden of proof demanded. The true skeptic takes an agnostic position, one that says the claim is not proved rather than disproved. He asserts that the claimant has not borne the burden of proof and that science must continue to build its cognitive map of reality without incorporating the extraordinary claim as a new "fact." Since the true skeptic does not assert a claim, he has no burden to prove anything. He just goes on using the established theories of "conventional science" as usual. But if a critic asserts that there is evidence for disproof, that he has a negative hypothesis --saying, for instance, that a seeming psi result was actually due to an artifact--he is making a claim and therefore also has to bear a burden of proof.

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— Marcello Truzzi, On Pseudo-Skepticism, Zetetic Scholar, 12/13, pp3-4, 1987

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"The true skeptic takes an agnostic position, one that says the claim is not proved rather than disproved."According to Dawkins' descriptions this applies to the "3" "4" and "5" positions (labeled agnostic) and NOT to the "6" position (labeled atheist). Omphalism is not proved, and it is not disproved. It is a possibility.Then we look at omphalism:Omphalos hypothesis - Wikipedia

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The Omphalos hypothesis was named after the title of an 1857 book, Omphalos by Philip Henry Gosse, in which Gosse argued that in order for the world to be "functional", God must have created the Earth with mountains and canyons, trees with growth rings, Adam and Eve with hair, fingernails, and navels (omphalos is Greek for "navel"), and that therefore no evidence that we can see of the presumed age of the earth and universe can be taken as reliable.

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Though Gosse's original Omphalos hypothesis specifies a popular creation story, others have proposed that the idea does not preclude creation as recently as five minutes ago, including memories of times before this created in situ.[4] This idea is sometimes called "Last Thursdayism" by its opponents, as in "the world might as well have been created last Thursday." The concept is both unverifiable and unfalsifiable through any conceivable scientific methodin other words, it is impossible even in principle to subject it to any form of test by reference to any empirical data because the empirical data themselves are considered to have been arbitrarily created to look the way they do at every observable level of detail.

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Thus you cannot establish when this proposed event could have occurred, it could be yesterday, and it could be 12.7 billion years ago.Without any evidence for when it occurred we cannot make any conclusions about it affecting the evaluation of evidence and the conclusions that can be reached.When we look at the evidence that shows that the earth could not be less than 400,000 years old, this is in fact what the evidence shows, and we can conclude that the evidence shows that the earth is not less than 400,000 years old. How so? Omphalism is still not proven nor disproven, it could still have occurred yesterday or 12.7 billion years ago, and the evidence still shows what it shows, and the conclusion reached from the evidence still follows from the evidence.Omphalism has not been demonstrated to affect the conclusion, because it needs to be established as occurring within the time frame in question in order to do that, and this has not been done.This is no different than the basic assumption of all science: that the evidence tells us the truth about reality.Without that assumption all science is meaningless.As I said before, science is tentative, and one of the sources of tentativity is that uncertainty about the evidence. Thus being a level 3 on the claim that the age of the earth not less than 400,000 years old is (a) supported by actual empirical objective evidence, and (b) tentative due to the uncertainty that the evidence is in fact telling the truth.Uncertainty whether or not omphalism is true within the time frame, is exactly the same uncertainty as whether or not the evidence is telling us the truth about reality.Thus no matter what your position is on omphalism, you will have the same tentativity on scientific conclusions due to the uncertainty that evidence is telling the truth about reality.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : both ways

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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Rebel American Zen Deist
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Hi Rrhain, still with the model eh? The model is incomplete, and thus the need for explanations that are not included in the current model cannot be ruled out.The coin is still in the air ...Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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Rebel American Zen Deist
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RAZD writes:

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My argument is that subjective evidence is sufficient to show possibilities, but nothing more.

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In the sense that subjective evidence is very good at asking questions, yes. But the thing is, subjective evidence is lousy at answering them. Subjective evidence does not show possibilities. Objective evidence shows possibilities. It's the reason why we call them "hypotheses": They're based upon objective evidence, but we don't have nearly enough to be able to say.

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To reach a more definitive conclusion your need objective empirical evidence. This has been, and continues to be my position.

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I know. And we have been continually showing you how it fails. But through thread after thread, you seem to have no qualms with bringing it up, derailing the topic.

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The model works. Why do you demand chocolate sprinkles? Do you have evidence that they are required?

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The model is incomplete

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That's not an answer to the question. Do you have evidence that these chocolate sprinkles of yours are required? It is not sufficient to point out that we don't know everything. Of course we don't know everything. But the mere fact that we don't know everything does not lead one to conclude that anything imaginable could be a possible solution.Look at the development of kinematics over the millennia. In the beginning, there was Aristotle and objects in motion came to rest. This was clearly observable: Push something along the table and it will either slide to a halt or fall off the edge and then come to a halt on the floor.Then came Newton and while objects at rest tended to remain at rest, objects in motion tended to remain in motion. How can that be? Slide an object across the table and we can clearly see that the object in motion comes to rest. We do not get to discard all that we have observed before just because somebody has imagined something new. It has to take into account all the evidence we have already collected.Well, the reason why that table-sliding object comes to rest is because of friction. Objects remain in motion until acted on by an outside force and the friction between the object and the table is the force that causes it to come to rest.And then there was Einstein and the universe was filled with inertial frames and we learned that there really is no such thing as "rest." There is only "with respect to me." The object and the table are on the earth, which is rotating on its axis...and orbiting the sun...which is orbiting the galaxy...which is on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy....Again, we could not discard any of the previous observations that we saw: An object pushed along a table eventually no longer slides along it. As the cliche goes, apples did not stop falling from trees, floating in mid-air, just because Newton had to work through how gravity works.So pointing out that the model is incomplete does not indicate that your pet claim has any relevance to the question. It has to fit into all the evidence we have gathered already.Why do you demand chocolate sprinkles when all the evidence we have gathered seems to indicate that they aren't there?Do you have evidence that they are required? It is not sufficient to gaze into the middle distance and mutter things about musings and wonderment. You have to fit those flights of fancy into the evidence that already exists and if they are all pointing in another direction, you had better have a really good way to explain why the chocolate sprinkles resulted in all the observations and evidence that we have already gathered.

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and only referring to what the model covers does not explain everything.

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As I've just shown, that's irrelevant. We're never going to have everything. You're having a creationist moment: Because we don't know everything, that means we don't know anything.On the contrary. We know lots of things. The scribblings in your dream journal have to be integrated into what we already know in order to have any hope of being possible. Otherwise, the conclusion isn't "I don't know," but rather, "That can't be real." Why? Because of the literally thousands of years of evidence we have piled up.Where is your evidence that all of the conclusions based upon that evidence is wrong? Incomplete is insufficient.

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Consider a box, and I put everything that is well described within the box, and close and seal it: this is the model.

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How does this describe anything that is not in the box?

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Do we have any reason to suspect that those things outside the box are fundamentally different from things inside the box? So far, all the evidence has shown that the more things we put in the box, the more like everything else in the box everything seems to be.You're having another creationist moment: That the physics way over there is nothing like the physics over here.

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Perhaps the reasons some concepts are left outside the box is because you need something else to describe them than what is included in the descriptions inside the box

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But you can't even define what it is that you're talking about. How on earth can you justify that our current tools are insufficient?

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why assume that "something else" does not exist because it is not inside your box?

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Because the model works. Why do you demand chocolate sprinkles? Do you have evidence that they are required?

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There are many aspect of the universe that are not well described and there are concepts where scientific description is not even attempted.

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Indeed. But if you can't define what they are, how can you even claim "I don't know"? You have to know what you're talking about first before you can say you don't know. So when are you going to define what you're talking about?

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You have provided no evidence that your model is complete

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I don't have to. I only have to show that it works. I don't have to know how a car runs in order to show that it does. If you're going to claim that it isn't really but only looks like it, you're the one that needs to justify it because all of the current evidence indicates that it's running right now. And your explanation needs to take into account every single observation that has ever been made regarding the car.That's the evidence you keep claiming doesn't exist.

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just asserted that "it works" without defining what it is.

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I'll define mine after you define yours. Frustrating, isn't it?

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and excludes things where the explanation is incomplete or not even attempted.

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As just shown above, all of that is irrelevant. The model still works even if it is incomplete. Do you have evidence that it isn't working?The car is running. Why do you say it isn't? Just because I don't know all the details about how?

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Hence I find your "the model works" claim to be rather self-referential

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That's because it's the base. It's where we start from: All the collected evidence we have gathered over the thousands of years of our history. It's what generates the model and it takes into account all the evidence that have.And then you come along and say that there is something wrong while refusing to justify that claim. Why is it wrong? Where? How? You're demanding chocolate sprinkles but refusing to explain why they are required.

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it works for things included in the model, but ignores things not included.

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Irrelevant. The car is running. Why do you say it isn't? Just because I don't know all the details about how?

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It doesn't explain why gravity exists and does an incomplete job of even explaining how it works

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I don't have to show why gravity exists in order to show that it does exist and therefore your claim that it doesn't will need to come with a description of what actually caused all those evidenced observations we've been having for all these thousands of years.It seems you have forgotten the difference between "necessary" and "sufficient." The two are not the same. In order to show that two and two do not equal five, it would be sufficient for me to show that they equal four. It is not necessary, though. I only have to show that the function of addition leads to two and two equalling something other than five.Have you heard of Merten's Conjecture? It's a numerical mathematical question with a conjecture that it was true. It was proven false in 1985 but the thing is, the proof didn't show where. That is, we know that Merten's Conjecture is false for at least one n, but we don't know which n it is. It was on the order of 10¹⁰⁷⁰: We knew it would fail before that but not where.We don't need to know the specifics why something isn't true in order to show that it isn't. We only have to show that it contradicts things we know to be true.The car is running. Why do you say it isn't? Just because I don't know all the details about how?

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The model is incomplete, and until it is incomplete I don't see any reason to assume that nothing else is needed to complete the model.

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And as you've just been shown, you're wrong in that claim. The burden of proof is on you. You're the one saying that the model is false. Therefore, it is your responsibility to show why. All the evidence we have indicates the model works.

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Excuse me? I don't recall ever mentioning my personal opinion regarding the existence of god. Is there a particular reason that you simply assumed that I was?

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You argued that atheism was the default or null position, not that this meant that the atheist position does not need to be supported.

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Why does that make me an atheist? Has it not occurred to you that I do have evidence (at least what I think is evidence) for why the chocolate sprinkles are required and that I just haven't deigned to let you know what they are?You don't know me, RAZD. It would behoove you to stop pretending like you do.

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Note: I'm still waiting for that objective evidence you claimed existed.

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The model works. Why do you demand chocolate sprinkles? Do you have evidence that they are required?And thus, the merry-go-round spins again.

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Kind of hard to deny something that is conspicuous for its absence.

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You mean the model is non-existent? Huh. That's strange. I went to school to learn about the model. I've got a bookcase full of textbooks describing the model. New information about the model appears every single day.And now you're saying none of those things exist? I paid tens of thousands of dollars on an hallucination?

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Put up your evidence and we'll see how it measures up

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The model works. That's my evidence. Why do you demand chocolate sprinkles? Do you have evidence that they are required?And thus, the merry-go-round spins again.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

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Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

Hi Meldinoor. I have not been able to be on line due to business and other concerns so all I've read is your OP. Perhaps what I have in response has already been said, but perhaps, on the other hand, what I have may add something to what has been covered.As a 10 year old child, some 64 years ago, as WWII was ending, I received Jesus as saviour and began reading the Bible, listening to preaching and attending Sunday School for the first time in my young life. Due to some good mentors, pastors and teachers, etc. I became a devout student of the Bible and the prophecies in particular from the time of my conversion. It was instilled into me to read the scriptures daily, which I did, including my four years in the US Air Force etc. The more I learned from the Bible, books and Christian circles, the more the corroborating evidences supportive to scriptures began to accumulate in my understanding.My conversion came during a week of evangelistic meetings when a Bibical prophecy evangelist came to our church. The services pertained to the end time events relative to the war, the Jews, the land of Palestine etc emerging on the world scene and other matters according to Ezekiel and other phophets. This man, Clay Cooper, from the West Coast was inspirational and explained these things so that even a kid could understand much of what he was teaching.I had attended the church for a year or so before this man came but though the gospel was being preached in the church, I had not been motivated to becoming converted. My family had not been in a church until we moved to town. The neighbors took the three of us kids to church with them. It was not until this evidence of fulfilled prophecy hit me that I was motivate to the point of walking the church isle publically to kneel at the alter with a few others and receive the saviour, the Lord Jesus as savior and lord.Over the years that I have been in churches and other Christian circles, I have known the blind faith folks to whom you allude, but others have given testimony to the fact that it took a lot more than faith to motivate them to a devout conversion experience.It's wrong to lump all of us into the blind faith mentality when it comes to the Genesis record and other Biblical doctrines. Many, such as folks here on this board who say that they once believed but came to be agnostics or athiests were likely first of the blind faith type who became disallusioned, due to the fact that for the most part the churches have totally ignored such evidence as the fulfilled prophecies, archeological discoveries and all of the corroborated evidence supportive to the Biblical record. Imo, that's the travesty that has reduced Christianity and much of Judaism to blind faith.Sadly, this includes most of the evangelical churches which I have been in over the decades. However there are some who, though the evidence has been deficient in the classes and the pulpit, they have a week or two a year when prophecy teachers have meetings. The problem with that is that the ignorant sheeples, not having done their homework can be convinced to believe what ever the respective evangelist believes whether or not it does justice to scripture.I've said the above to say this. If one goes at the corroborated evidence supportive to the Biblical record, including Genesis as an Olympic champion would go at winning, there's enough corroborative evidence available to base one's faith on that evidence. Thus the faith of ones who take the time in their busy lives to prioritize this, is not blind faith.After all, science admits to large and long gaps where empirical evidence is just not available. Thus as some of us creationists do, they must rely on corroborating evidences which they use to arrive at their hypotheses and theories.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

Hi Rrhain, The basic scientific process fails? Relying on the scientific process for reaching more definitive conclusions based on empirical evidence fails? In other words, the absence of evidence is evidence of absence fallacy. If you flip a coin a hundred times and it comes up tails, what is the likelihood that the next flip will be tails? And thus you admit that the model is incomplete. Noting that the car works, and even knowing how the car works, does not answer the question of why the car exists. The absence of evidence is evidence of the absence of evidence, and that's all it is evidence of. I don't, I just note that you cannot eliminate them from consideration by the absence of evidence argument, as it is a logical fallacy. You cannot explain why gravity exists, therefore your model is incomplete.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : clrty

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
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Well I (I wouldn't dare speak for RAZD) wouldn't say that in any field where we have a model that we have evidence for. If there is a model we have evidence for, it is of course much more likely than any model we do not have evidence for. So that stars are formed by collapsing clouds of Hydrogen, is much more likely than believing that some kind of superbeing created them with their hands. Someone here talked about water on the sun being an undetectable phenomenon, but any big amount of water on the sun would certanly be detectable (and any small amount of water would not count as water on the sun, and it would not stay there very long before falling apart in a little hydrogen and a little oxigen...), therefore the absence of (predicted) evidence IS of course evidence against water on the sun.There are however concepts that we KNOW of that the evidence for them is undetectable by our modern day machinery. Nobody would claim that the higgs-boson doesn't exist because "we havent seen it yet" (some say even that no evidence is evidence for the higgs... ) but even that is not what I mean by an undetectable concept, because it makes predictions that can be right or wrong.Now about a concept, like the god concept: It would of course not be part of a physical, biological, or any scientific theory. Why? Because physics deals with concepts that interact physically. Biology with concepts that have the "life" property. All other sciences with some concept that is well defined and has more or less well defiend borders. So no, it wouldn't be scientific to consider it as part of a ph.d... But we can still not say anything about it being right or wrong. Well yes. But the question I am asking myself is: If I am presentet with a ("crackpot"?) theory, how do I react?Christian God? There is a lot of evidence that there is no such thing. We have evidence that there are no higher powers communicating directly with human brains and so on...Newtons laws? I conduct experiments and find the evidence good, although I get problems when looking at Mercury (the planet).Marxism? Well, though one. I ask a social scientist?The Whuluhulu god of kikiwoko that only listens? How the hell am I supposed to know? But the theory of this god (that has no concequence) and my personal theory (there is no such thing as supernatural beings that leave no trace) have both equally no evidence against them. I do not especially care about the kikiwoko people, so I will probably have a personal oppinion that the god does not exist, but how say I have evidence for that? I haven't. And I do not care at all.You see my point?

Hi Onifre, We know from logic that you cannot prove a negative, so you cannot prove that something does not exist (where something includes yeti, aliens, etc). The best you can do is to scour all possible places to see if you can show that X is highly unlikely.Yeti\Sasquatch
Nessie
Ivory Billed Woodpeckers
Coelacanths
etcdemonstrate different levels of confidence in their absence due to the absence of evidence.Because it is not possible to scour all domains where god/s can exist it is not possible to eliminate the possibility.At best all you have are subjective opinions that god/s do not exist The problem here is mistaking the map for the mountain. Showing that a map is incorrect does not mean that the mountain does not exist.Subjective experiences may be visions of the mountain, or they may be something else.Personally I think people can become "enlightened" aka Buddha (Gandhi, MLK, Thoreau are some I consider), but that means a heightened spirituality, perhaps tapping into mountain air, not evidence of gods per se.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

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Hi RAZD, Agreed. This is a curious opinion - How do we determine what the parameters are, or domains for which god(s) can exist? Is that not a human ascribed attribute for the god(s) in question?To say that god(s) exist beyond our earthly domain is to over step our knowledge of reality, is it not?Do humans have the ability to ascribe such domains to wholely subjective experiences? But if we have no evidence for the existence of mountains, only maps that show where mountains might be, and the maps are incorrect, what are we left with other than doubt for the existence of mountains?Does this mean that mountains don't exist? No. It does however suggest that our attempts to find the mountains have failed, because the subjective nature of the experience can't be trusted to give an accurate map to find mountains.If all we have are maps, which are incorrect, then we really have nothing at all. Lets say they are visions of mountains - what good does that do if nothing external to the experience can be corroborated?It seems to suggest to me that the person experiencing it is manufacturing the results, biasly. Cool, I can agree with that to some extent.- Oni

Teapots&unicorns writes:

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Here is where you guys diverge. Rrhain is saying that because there is no evidence, we should not believe that it exists.

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Incorrect. I am not saying we don't have any evidence. I'm saying we have literally mountains of evidence. Instead, my response would be along the lines of: "Here are the observational records of the night sky going all the way back to the Chinese. If there were a roughly 15-cm spheroid, ceramic object weighing approximately one kilo orbiting the earth, it would have been detected at some point. Such an object would necessarily cause a gravitational effect that would have been detected at any of these observational points..." and on and on.This idea that there is no evidence is a fanciful dream of RAZD's. And if the response to all of this evidence is that this teapot can't be detected, then we have such a ridiculous ad hoc assertion that it becomes a question of faith, which will never bow to evidence.Now, if we could come up with something that has absolutely no connection to any evidence we have ever collected (and I would include in that concept that the person hearing this information doesn't know about), then it would be connected to my claim of skepticism as the default position. Burden of proof is always on the one making the claim. If you're going to claim beetaratagang, then you have to define it first and that act of definition immediately starts to create evidence. Anything new has to fit in with all of the evidence that has previously been collected. And even then, the position is one of skepticism until more definitive evidence comes along to show that this claim is justified.The null hypothesis is always considered true until evidence comes along to show otherwise.

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When a new claim is made, it is just, as you say, a "type I" claim. It has no evidence for or against it.

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Except that it does. As soon as it gets defined, it establishes a relationship with all of the other evidence that has been collected which means there is plenty of evidence in support and/or denial of it.

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Rrhain is saying that our "instruments" (from the example above) will eventually be able to prove one side or the other correct.

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Incorrect. I'm saying they already have. The sky has been observed for an extremely long time. If there were a ceramic object approximately 15 centimeters across and weighing one kilo in orbit, it would have been detected due to it necessarily having physical effects upon the world.So since the physical description of your object is in direct contradiction with all of the evidence we have, since the evidence we have precludes the existence of your claimed object based upon its definition, are we going to throw away all of the evidence in favor of a new ad hoc trait you're now going to assert and attach to this teapot?A difference that makes no difference is no difference. If the teapot is incapable of interaction with the world, then it doesn't exist.

RAZD responds to me:

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still with the model eh?

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Until you provide evidence that it needs your chocolate sprinkles, it still works without them.Where is your evidence? You're the one making the claim and yet you seem to think it is everyone else's responsibility except yours.

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The model is incomplete

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Irrelevant as explained previously. You're having a creationist moment: Because we don't know everything, that means we don't know anything. I don't have to know everything about the internal combustion engine in order to determine that my car is running.

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thus the need for explanations that are not included in the current model cannot be ruled out.

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Except that they can be. If the definitions of those other things are incompatible with everything we already know, then they cannot exist. This is where your fantasy of "no evidence" falls flat. We have mountains of evidence. You're just refusing to look at it.F'rinstance, if I flip a coin, even when it's in the air, we know it will not come down a six. Coins come down heads or tails. Dice come down one through six. Any insistence that it is possible that it might ignores the evidence that exists. It is a fantasy to claim that there is no evidence. The mere fact that we know it's a coin is what gives us information.This is why it is important for you to define what it is you mean by "god." It allows us to put this object into relationship with all the other evidence we have. Since you refuse to do so, then we don't even get to say that precious "I don't know" you cling to so tightly.

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The coin is still in the air

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Then why is it on the back of my hand showing tails? It would seem your claim that it is possible that the coin landed the Ace of Spades is not a possibility.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

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Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

RAZD responds to me:

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And we have been continually showing you how it fails.

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The basic scientific process fails? Relying on the scientific process for reaching more definitive conclusions based on empirical evidence fails?

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BWAHAHAHAHA! Oh, that's just absolutely precious, RAZD! That you think you're using the scientific process! You! Who is claiming subjectivity is valid!Thanks, RAZD. I needed a good laugh. You've been studying the conservatives, haven't you. Accuse the other person of what you're doing first so that they have to go on the defensive.On a more serious note, that's my argument to you, RAZD. The model is based upon the process. You're the one claiming that it doesn't work. Therefore, you are the one who needs to show where and how. Your subjective opinion that maybe there is something you refuse to define at play is insufficient.

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In other words, the absence of evidence is evidence of absence fallacy.

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Huh? What "absence of evidence" is involved in kinematics? Are you seriously saying there is an absence of evidence regarding friction and thus anybody anywhere is claiming it doesn't exist?Word salad, RAZD. Please rephrase.We have evidence of absence because the model works. Why do you demand chocolate sprinkles? Do you have evidence that they are required?And thus, the merry-go-round spins again.

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If you flip a coin a hundred times and it comes up tails, what is the likelihood that the next flip will be tails?

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Upon examination of the coin after the 10th flip indicated that it was a double-tailed coin, then we knew that it was always going to land tails.Why do you deny this evidence?

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And thus you admit that the model is incomplete.

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You say that like I ever denied it was incomplete. Of course it's incomplete. It will always be incomplete. Forever and always. How many times have I posted here regarding the scientific process as an observational process and because it is impossible to make absolutely every observation, we can never, ever, not under any circumstances say with 100% certainty that a claim is true, only that it is consistent with all observations we have made? We might have landed on the absolutely, 100% true in all circumstances answer, but we will never be able to know that because we can only observe effects and we will never be able to observe everything.So please drop this charade of yours that you have found some sort of hypocrisy in my argument. I have never, ever claimed that the model is complete.I have claimed it is functional. You're the one saying that it isn't but refusing to justify why. Why do you demand chocolate sprinkles? Do you have evidence that they are required?And thus, the merry-go-round spins again.

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Noting that the car works, and even knowing how the car works, does not answer the question of why the car exists.

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Huh? Who said anything about the car existing? This is about the car running, which presumes the car exists. You're having a creationist moment, RAZD: That evolution needs to explain the origin of the universe. Huh? Evolution is biology. Cosmogenesis is physics. The evidence for the car's existence has nothing to do with the evidence for its running.

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The model works. That's my evidence.

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The absence of evidence is evidence of the absence of evidence

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Huh? The model doesn't even exist? You mean physics, music theory, medicine, psychology, color theory, oil technique, all those things we've studied and observed over the years simply don't exist? They are "absent"?Well, we better close all the schools, then, because there's nothing to actually learn. It's all "absence of evidence."Word salad, RAZD. Try again.The model works. Why do you demand chocolate sprinkles? Do you have evidence that they are required?And thus, the merry-go-round spins again.

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Why do you demand chocolate sprinkles?

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I don't

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(*blink!*)You did not just say that, did you?Do you really need me to go through all your posts and show your specific statements demanding this undefined, vague "force" you've been so keen to insist has a distinct 50-50 chance of existing and thus forces you to claim "I don't know," even though you don't even know what you don't know about it?

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I just note that you cannot eliminate them from consideration by the absence of evidence argument, as it is a logical fallacy.

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Indeed. And if anybody were using the "absence of evidence" argument, you'd have a point. But the exact opposite is the case.We have the evidence: The model works. The model is based upon the evidence. For you to claim that this is an argument of "absence of evidence" necessarily means you are claiming that the model is based upon no evidence.Which means there is no evidence for anything, anywhere, ever.Congratulations, RAZD. You just proved you don't exist.Word salad, RAZD. Try again.The model works. Why do you demand chocolate sprinkles? Do you have evidence that they are required?And thus, the merry-go-round spins again.

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You cannot explain why gravity exists, therefore your model is incomplete.

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Irrelevant. Are you saying gravity doesn't exist? Nice creationist moment you had there: Because we don't know everything, that means we don't know anything.We don't accept it from creationsts, RAZD, what on earth makes you think we're going to accept it from you?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

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Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

Dude you are unable to show that common notions of Santa Claus definitely "do not, or cannot exist". So are you agnostic towards Santa? Or are you a Santa pseudoskeptic? Or is the wealth of objective evidence in favour of Santa being a human invention enough to warrant an extremely high degree of atheistic skepticism towards the actual existence of a magical, undetectable sleigh flying Santa? Requiring that we disprove the disprovable before any high degree of skepticism is warranted is a fools argument.As Oni keeps pointing out there is no evidential reason to even consider the existence of gods as a valid question. The only indication we have that such things are worthy of any consideration at all comes solely and entirely from the claims of human beings. Therefore it is necessary to examine those who make these claims, their propensity and success (or lack of it) in making such claims and the possible reasons they have for making these claims. In fact with regard to claims of immaterial entities these are the only things that we can possibly examine at all. Your refusal to acknowledge this fact and your relentless insistence that we treat claims about deities as if they existed in a complete vacuum of all evidence is simply a denial of the vast and overwhelming objective evidence available.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

tis---strange responds to me:

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Well I (I wouldn't dare speak for RAZD) wouldn't say that in any field where we have a model that we have evidence for.

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I think you need to read the post right above your response: That is exactly what he is saying. He claims that the model isn't evidence. All the observations and evidence that were gathered to create the model aren't actually observations and evidence."It's imcomplete," he claims, as if that has any relevance. I don't have to know all the details behind the internal combustion engine to know that my car is running. He's have a creationist moment: That because we don't know everything, that means we don't know anything.

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There are however concepts that we KNOW of that the evidence for them is undetectable by our modern day machinery.

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But don't ignore all the other types of evidence that exists in justification of the concept. Indeed, we couldn't directly test certain aspects of relativity until the advent of supersonic flight and highly accurate atomic clocks, neither of which were present at the time Einstein published. We had to wait for an eclipse in order to detect the bending of light around the sun.But the fact that we couldn't provide those specific kinds of evidence until later doesn't mean there isn't any evidence right here and now. This is the failure of RAZD's argument: He claims that there isn't any evidence of any kind, anywhere. Complete and utter blank slate.And he's wrong. There's lots of evidence. It may not be the best, but it is there and it is where we start from in order to place this new claim in context with all the rest of the observations we have made over the millennia.

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Now about a concept, like the god concept: It would of course not be part of a physical, biological, or any scientific theory. Why? Because physics deals with concepts that interact physically.

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And god necessarily doesn't interact physically with the world? If so, then god doesn't exist. Everything interacts physically with the world. That's the point behind physics: To study those interactions. If god has no physical connection to the world, then there's no way for god to have any effect upon the world.A difference that makes no difference is no difference.It is a common claim for theists to insist that god cannot be put into the box to be observed, but that pushes god outside the realm of reality and into the world of fantasy and faith.

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Well yes. But the question I am asking myself is: If I am presentet with a ("crackpot"?) theory, how do I react?

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The default position is always: Without evidence to justify your claim, we must reject it since we have a working model that doesn't include it. The null hypothesis is always considered true until shown otherwise. It doesn't matter how "reasonable" or how "counter-intuitive" the claim is. If you can't show your justification, we default to what we already know which works without your claim.

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You see my point?

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I'm not sure I do.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

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Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

Not really. Supportive falsifyable aspects of the Biblical god, Jehovah include history, archeological discoveries and fulfilled prophecy relative to the supernatural which, for the most part, are unique to the Biblical record, cited in archived threads.Until the existing evidence is falsified, it can be regarded as evidence. The more corroborating evidence supportive to the record that can be collected, the more credible the record relative to the Biblical god Jehovah becomes.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.