I've heard this quite often but I'll ask you a simple question: Will you accept the same kind of evidence you're asking us to accept?
Evidence such as...?
Yes, but with qualifiers. One reason I've pushed so hard in other threads on the topic of assumptions is to better understand how my qualifiers compare to those of others.
[edit]
The historical, legal, testimonial, and experiential categories I've mentioned before.
I think I see what you mean. I would accept someone telling me they bought a new house without evidence but I would not believe someone telling me that God exists without evidence.
Is that what you mean?
And yet it appears to make you curious in some way - possibly because you are intrigued that people could believe such things.
You don't seem like the type who is here just because you enjoy mocking Christians.
Yes. And I'll point out that there are 2 important factors in your example. First, one claim is "big" and the other is "small", so the evidence needs to match appropriately. Second is the issue of the credibility of the one making the claim. If the person who bought the house is known as a habitual liar, one might reject even that claim.
Add in the fact that we have real objective evidence of people, houses, real estate agents, mortgage lenders, property lawyers, the local MLS, and so on. All of this is missing for gods.
And the response to this seems to be that we need to change what our standards of evidence are for the bigger claim, even though those standards give us more than sufficient evidence to prove the smaller one. Seems backwards to me - for almost everything the bigger the claim, the more careful we need to be to make sure the evidence is clear. Yet believers want to change the rules just for god(s), and then claim that other people have too narrow a view when they don't.
Yes. And I'll point out that there are 2 important factors in your example. First, one claim is "big" and the other is "small", so the evidence needs to match appropriately. Second is the issue of the credibility of the one making the claim. If the person who bought the house is known as a habitual liar, one might reject even that claim.
Just letting you know I am aware of the burden in discussions regarding God's existence.
Yes. And I'll point out that there are 2 important factors in your example. First, one claim is "big" and the other is "small", so the evidence needs to match appropriately. Second is the issue of the credibility of the one making the claim. If the person who bought the house is known as a habitual liar, one might reject even that claim.
Just letting you know I am aware of the burden in discussions regarding God's existence.
Yet when it comes to God the vast majority of faiths expect you to change your entire life, the largest of commitments. And it seems at best they present evidence in hte form of some guy you never met says he talked to God.
In past discussions when it was me presenting the example, I constructed it much more carefully - the point being that there are events in our lives that, for the sake of the discussion, both believers and non-believers agree are reasonable and not a "goddidit" example, where the person experiencing it is convinced it is real, and yet for which we cannot provide evidence according to the terms set out in most of these types of discussions.
The same standards we use to figure out real stuff is actually real. Apply the same standards to gods and you get "not real" as the result. Hence paragraphs trying to rationalize why those standards are wrong even though they seem to work for every example save for one - the god that believers are trying to define into plausibility.We would need to better define what those standards are before I could really answer this.
You can't conclude that unless you know that those changed standards of evidence would include God but not other gods. If your standard allows all sorts of different gods to be "observed" then it eliminates monotheism and thus the truth about the Christian God. So you have to carefully craft this new standard of acceptable evidence so that it only admits history, tradition, personal experience, and so on from Christians while as the same time excluding it from every other religious tradition.Regardless, I don't really care if you change your standards or not. If you don't, then I simply conclude that your standards exclude the possibility of knowing God.
That they consider it a position, in the first place.
That they think my lack of belief is of any significance for me.
You may be misleading them by believing that your lack of position is right.
Let's put it this way, there are two groups of things to eat: plants, animals and their products. If someone only eats plants we call them vegan. If someone eats both they are termed non-vegetarian. Now what do you call someone who does not weigh the moral decision.
It would depend on what they eat, correct? So long as someone must eat there is no neutrality.
Let's say that someone refuses to eat because he refuses to consider the other position. This is a neutral position because the person does not have to eat.
Can the neutral decision be a default? Of course not, as long as the rest of the world is eating the decision must be very purposeful.
I speak for the rest of my religious brethren when I say that you should really try this out. Therefore since the rest of us clearly see this, you must claim that we are delusional. That must be the opinion of anyone who does not believe in a religion. That is the forcibly taken neutral position.
But eating is something ALL people do and, more importantly, NEED to do. A better analogy is this: Let's say we have a box in a room whose contests are a mystery to us. The box is about cubic 1ft. Then the following exchange occurs:
You: "Do you believe there is a watch in that box?"
Me: "No. I haven't any reason to think there's a watch ."
You: "Ah! So you think there is no watch."
Me: "No. I don't know that there isn't a watch either."
Everyone is born NOT believing in the watch in the box. This is the default AND correct idea unless you have reason to believe otherwise, regardless of the belief of the majority. That is what most atheists I know think, regarding a generic deity. However, many, if not most atheists I know do agree that even if there is a deity of some sort, the one of the Bible isn't it.
david_x said:You are saying that only an idiot says that something is in the box. This is no different then what I said.
There are many things in this life for which we lack objective evidence. For instance, Sunday a friend told me she had been to the Paul McCartney concert in NYC and it was "great". There is no objective evidence for that. Never will be.Add in the fact that we have real objective evidence of people, houses, real estate agents, mortgage lenders, property lawyers, the local MLS, and so on. All of this is missing for gods. We have much more evidence for the small claim than the big one, to use your classification. And the response to this seems to be that we need to change what our standards of evidence are for the bigger claim, even though those standards give us more than sufficient evidence to prove the smaller one.
ALL evidence is personal experience: what we see, hear, touch, taste, smell, or feel emotionally. That was first demonstrated by an atheist, David Hume, and no one has successfully challenged it since. Theists have that type of evidence.Seems backwards to me - for almost everything the bigger the claim, the more careful we need to be to make sure the evidence is clear. Yet believers want to change the rules just for god(s), and then claim that other people have too narrow a view when they don't.
Ah, I see you are still using the refuted philosophy of Positivism. The second line is Positivism. Let's redo the conversation and see what you fill in for the last line:But eating is something ALL people do and, more importantly, NEED to do. A better analogy is this: Let's say we have a box in a room whose contests are a mystery to us. The box is about cubic 1ft. Then the following exchange occurs:
You: "Do you believe there is a watch in that box?"
Me: "No. I haven't any reason to think there's a watch ."
You: "Ah! So you think there is no watch."
Me: "No. I don't know that there isn't a watch either."
Here's the semantics. "not believing" in this context is "believing there is no watch in the box". You don't know what people are born like because babies can't talk and tell you. It's possible that babies are born agnostic about watches in boxes. Or it's possible that they are scientists and accept the hypothesis is true in order to test it. However, I sincerely doubt that all babies are born Positivists.Everyone is born NOT believing in the watch in the box.
No, it's not "correct". "not believing" in this circumstance has no more epistemological value than believing. There has been no testing, so "not believing" has no more reason to think it is correct than "believing". And this is the root of the problem: you are trying to give "not believing" or "believing there is not" a higher epistemological value than it has. You see, even by your standard of Positivism, you have no reason to "not believe"! You have no more evidence to back that position than to back the position of believing!This is the default AND correct idea unless you have reason to believe otherwise, regardless of the belief of the majority.
Let's put this quote out there again. What is the position, do you think, of most atheists:That is what most atheists I know think, regarding a generic deity.
Why? Especially when you say "anything". Don't lots of things come in boxes? So why would you be an idiot to believe that the box wasn't empty and contained something?I'm saying it, you would have to be an idiot to believe anything was in the box right?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?