Omphalism

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What is the rational conclusion regarding the age of the Earth?

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The scientific consensus age of 4.x billion years

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How confident of this conclusion do you think we can rationally be?

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Reasonably confident - the biggest assumption is constancy of physics, but this seems to have some evidence to support it. [/quote]

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Does your answer to this question (with the implicit lack of certainty that we all seem to agree is necessary) really allow you to claim agnosticism towards the conclusion that the Earth was created less than a week ago?

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My approach means we rule out omphalism as a possibility because it is intrinsically impossible to prove or disprove.

Why is the empirical conclusion the rational conclusion if you deem it rationally to be no more likely to be true than the omphalist (Last Thursdayist, Last month-ist, whatever) conclusion?This seems contradictory.

OK. OK. Rule out? That seems a little too convenient. In what sense do you mean "rule out"? Do you just mean ignore the question in any practical sense? (In which case I agree entirely I might add). Do you "rule out" all things which are empirically unknowable and what exactly do you mean by "rule out"? What can we "prove" or "disprove" with absolute certainty? And those who would advocate a form of omphalism would disagree that it is entirely unknowable in the way you are suggesting. It may not be empirically knowable. But all sorts of non-empirical methods of knowing could be claimed as the basis for an omphalistic conclusion.If someone tells you that the universe was omphamistically created last year and that they know this by divine revelation of some sort on what basis do you "rule out" their claim? Aside from practical irrelevance how much credence would you give the veracity of this claim?

Because you can't use the empirical data to determine the likelyhood of Last Thursdayism even though the data suggests that its older. Its rational to follow the data, but its just not saying anything about whether or not everything was created last thursday.

But why is it rational to follow the empirical data? In doing so you are implicitly rejecting the key omphalist claim that the empirical data you are following is deceptive. But you previously said that omphalistic claims could not be rationally discarded as inferior.Again - This seems contradictory.

In Last Thursdayism, the empirical evidence still suggests old age. Its rational to believe it, but you'd just be wrong.

Previously: And now: So rationally we should have confidence in the empirically evidenced age of the Earth. But simultaneously we cannot rationally consider this conclusion as any more likely to be correct than the omphalist conclusion which specifically states that the empirical evidence is misleading and unreliable. So (according to you) we can rationally have confidence in a conclusion whilst simultaneously rationally accepting that this same conclusion is no more likely to be reliable than it is unreliable.Huh?

If not, then you'd be able to use the empirical evidence to disprove Last Thursdayism. Not exactly, we can't show that the empirical conclusion is more reliable than Last Thursdayism.

So explain to me why it is you consider the empirically evidenced conclusion regarding the age of the Earth to be the rational conclusion. As you have previously stated to be the case.

It follows from sound reasoning from the evidence.

But omphalism tells us that the evidence in question is misleading.So why do you place empiricism over omphalism when it comes to looking at the evidence and deciding what the rational conclusion is?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Because I've seen that empiricism works and I haven't seen that omphalism does. With omphalism we have the last 10,000 years of scientific advancements suggesting that empiricism is right and omphalism isn't.We've been over this... see Message 78 and Message 104

Previously: And now: So is it rational to consider the empirically evidenced conclusion as more likely to be correct than incorrect? Indeed. And yet you remain unable to see that citing the empirically evidenced conclusion as the rational one whilst simultaneously claiming that it is rationally impossible to consider this as more likely to be correct than the rival omphalist conclusion results in a contradictory position. So is it rational to consider the empirically evidenced conclusion regarding the age of the Earth as more likely to be correct than incorrect?That is the question. Can you answer it without contradicting yourself?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

How do you determine that?You'd have to compare it to something. You can't use empiricism to validate empiricism...Compared to omphalism... yeah, that one's been falsified.Compared to Last Thursdayism? How can you show Last Thursdayism is more unlikely? I don't claim the empirically evidenced conclusion is rationally accepted over Last Thursdayism. That's why the rational reponse to Last Thursdayism is agnosticim.Show me why Last Thursdayism is more unlikely and you'll have a point. No, I don't see how you can calculate that likelihood. Its a new questions and I just did.The previous discussion was about accepting the empirical conlusion over an alternative. Now you're trying to validate empiricism with empiricism.

Maybe we are talking at cross purposes. Let me phrase my questions more succinctly and ask them one at a time.Do you think we can rationally consider the empirically evidenced conclusion regarding the age of the Earth as more likely to be correct than incorrect?Or not?Edited by Straggler, : Spelling