We are in perfect accord, I see you are a skilled fallicist.
I also HATE when religious people invoke the ‘god of the gaps’. I am sure you have heard them. Physics never said it cannot and will never be able to explain what happened at the instant of the Big Bang, or what came before it, but nonetheless they have jumped on it with [Insert God Here].
Its pathetic
Who said science is done? Has science itself not said repeatedly that “we have only scratched the surface, there is MUCH yet to discover.”?
Precisely, and it is no accident that when you start to dismantle theistic claims for “evidence” that they start to revert back to broad unfalsifiable god claims.
Well I don’t believe there is obviously, anymore than I believe people who claim they have evidence for ghosts or have been beamed aboard an alien mother ship.
I suspect our brains are hard wired for this, rather than wanting it, but yes I see your point.
Well perhaps it is too easy for us to judge humans historically, who lived in an epoch of ignorance and illiteracy. knowledge we take for granted, gained vicariously from intellectual giants makes it easier for us, but how terrifying must their brief lives have been compared to ours.
Have you not heard of Scientology? never underestimate the human propensity for superstition, or their penchant to indulge ignorance as if it is a virtue. Science admits we are ignorant, and struggles endlessly to shed light on that ignorance, but religion views ignorance as a necessary virtue.
I agree totally, religious claims were place holders, offered when there was no conception and therefore little hope of anything better.
Not so fast, there are and I suspect always will be gaps in our knowledge, and thus there will always be superstitious evolved mammalian apes, ready to insert their imaginary deities into those gaps. Just because someone is indulging archaic superstitious guff, does not mean they aren’t wily or clever enough to do so by using concept that are unfalsifiable.
Ironically this rather proves the point, since it is, or at least was, considered an unfalsifiable claim, meant to illustrate how absurdly irrational such claims are. Which I believe is where we started.
I disagree, If I claimed that invisible unicorns existed, you’d have every right to scoff, and even to deride the claim, and to demand objective evidence, and if I then said you could only know they existed by praying to them with faith, then again you could deride it for subjective nonsense.
What you could not rationally do is claim to know they did not exist, or to know anything about them, and thus epistemology and logic would demand you remain agnostic about the claim, despite being rationally justified in disbelieving it, and perfectly justified in pointing out its ridiculous nature.
Who says they definitely don’t exist, and what objective evidence can they demonstrate for this claim?
Now you are dealing in theistic absolutes, “totally refute”? I think you are missing the point a little, agnosticism has nothing to do with what is being asserted, it has to do with the nature of the claim being asserted.
Again this would depend on the claim, religions have made plenty of claims for the supernatural that have been falsified with objective evidence. The Turin shroud was touted as a supernatural miracle, but scientific scrutiny falsified the original claim, and dated it to show it was a medieval forgery, of course the excuses and goal post shifting that ensued were predictable, but the objective evidence nonetheless falsified the original claim. The fact the RCC waffled about the tested fabric being a later addition could also easily be falsified, and rather tellingly they have refused to offer it for testing again, perhaps wisely, as the excuse would fail were the entire fabric to date as the other tested piece. It seems the RCC would be happy to shout if science has lent even a shred of credence to their superstition, but resort to throat clearing when it does not.
Indeed and I agree, but dismissing a claim need not, and should not, involve a contrary claim, unless the original claim can be falsified with sufficient objective evidence.
As in the original Latin axiom quod grātīs asseritur, grātīs, freely dismiss such claim by all means, as they can teach us nothing, but if you overstep the epistemological line, and assert the original claim is false, then you incur a burden of proof just as theists do.
Even if science can never understand anything prior to the big bang, it would not be evidence for any first cause, or deity or anything supernatural. Not having an alternative explanation to their “god claims” for the origins of the universe, does not not remotely validate those god claims, I could as easily claim invisible pixies did it.
NB Try disproving the existence of invisible pixies. So if theists are going to believe something without any objective evidence, and insist it has credence because it is an unfalsifiable belief, what is their criteria for disbelief? I have yet to encounter a theist prepared to even feign an answer to this.
Just because they are gaps to fill, it does not mean that anyone is free to proffer an explanation without evidence and we should all be agnostic about that explanation until it is falsified. No. The scientific method exists for a reason but if you are determined to shrug at each and every unfalsifiable claim made without evidence that comes your way just because you are afraid to be proven wrong, then be my guest.
No. No. No. I wouldnt have to,1) because the burden of proof would be on you making the claim. 2) science: a fantastic horned horse that does not interact with light at all? and prayer is the only way to reveal such a thing? Why stop there? What If we are all actually unicorns and have been given eyes that show us human beings in the mirror and to each other? Thats a bad example that is so vulnerable to reductio ad absurdum.
I think you are too rigidly caught up in strict and rigorous definitions @Sheldon so much so that you could argue yourself into an infinite loop. Common sense has to break you out at some point. Formal logic is a very mathematical and abstract thing, I mean
“If the moon is made of cheese, then God exists” is a statement that has a truth value of TRUE. It is very easy to lose oneself in logic. You seem to care more about being as pedantic as you can about logical inferences but I dont think you are truly agnostic about invisible unicorns are you?
All we really care about is finding the truth. Do you think entertaining the unfalsifiability of all things of zero evidence with agnosticism just to cling to the rules of logic would really yield anything to that effect?
You would make a great professor of strict and formal logic if you are not already, but in the real world I don’t think it is as practically applicable as you are trying to make it
Well I never claimed that anyone was free to do that, and agnosticism is defined in the dictionary, so again it’s epistemological requirement is not something I am subjectively demanding, as by definition was can know nothing about an unfalsifiable claim.
Also your original claim was this:
So, really, if you think about it, there is no god to falsify because the very phenomena that urged man to hold some deity responsible for what they saw, now have purely scientific explanations!
Again this is not true of ALL religious claims, as any claim that is unfalsifiable can by definition have no explanation, indeed a fundamental requirement of the scientific method is that all claims and ideas are falsifiable, science discards all unfalsifiable ideas as they are unscientific.
That’s a gross misrepresentation of everything I have said? I never mentioned shrugging my shoulders, nor have I mentioned being afraid of being “proven” wrong, indeed if a claim is unfalsifiable then nothing can be rationally or empirically asserted about it, tat is what the phrase means.
I am an atheist, it’s in my profile, so please resist the urge to use hyperbole and rhetoric.
I have made no such claim, as I am an atheist.
Re-read my post as you have misunderstood it.
I already stated I agree a theist has a burden of proof for their god claim.
As would anyone making a contrary claim that a deity does not exist.
Atheism is a the lack or absence of belief in any deity or deities, it is not a claim that a deity does not exist, and such a claim would carry a burden of proof.
I never said it did I was using a hypothetical example of an unfalsifiable claim.
Obviously to illustrate my point about the nature of unfalsifiable claims, which you seem yo have completely missed.
What has that to do with my point about unfalsifiable claims, and their epistemological requirement for agnosticism?
I prefer not to think within the confines of definitions of this and that and what we can or cannot do by this or that definition. I don’t like such algorithmic thinking, its robotic and the spirit of philosophy, thought for its own sake has been lost.
That’s a bare claim, you will need to offer some rationale for it before I can respond.
Again you need to justify your claim with some sort of rationale, not simply assert my argument lacks “common sense” as this is not an argument. I haven’t used any formal logic, only cursory references to informal logic, citing known common logical fallacies like argumentum ad ignorantiam. As this fallacy is key to understanding why unfalsifiable claims require us to be agnostic about them. Again we can and in my opinion should, still disbelieve such claims, and all claims made without sufficient objective evidence offered to support them.
You’ve lost me i am afraid, the claim is demonstrably falsifiable, and logic os simply a method of reasoning that adheres to strict principles of validation, how are you claiming one loses oneself in it, and what consequences are you implying occur in this event?
Again Logic has strict principles of validation, so pointing out that an argument does not adhere to these, if for example it contains or uses a known logical fallacy isn’t pedantry, that’s silly.
It was a hypothetical example, but yes and by definition I could not know anything about the nature or existence of a such a claim, though I would of course disbelieve it, since it is offered without evidence. Are you claiming to know something about invisible unicorns? I’d be fascinated to hear your evidence for such a claim to knowledge.
Do you think making irrational assertions is more, or less, likely to "yield truth? If you don’t adhere strictly to the principle of logic what are the likely consequences of such arguments?
Formal logic is based on mathematics, and trust me I ma way out of my depth there. What we are dealing with here is informal logic, and unfalsifiable claims fall under the known common logical fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantiam.
argumentum ad ignorantiam, also known as an appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents “a lack of contrary evidence”), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false, or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true.
I yield Sheldon. Yes. By all the definitions you have so eloquently laid down here, it is true. I must, by definition be agnostic about the unfalsifiable. I don’t agree of course, but there is nothing wrong with that.
At the end of the day, we are both atheists and I am glad about that. Good day to you. I’d love to take you on next time, definitions and all lol
You’ve lost me sorry, that is not an argument, it is a subjective opinion that implies you want to reject the commonly understood definition of words when they get in the way.
Don’t forget you started by telling me you knew the definitions of agnosticism and unfalsifiable. If you didn’t mean the dictionary definition then a) you ought to have said so, and b) need to explain specifically what definition you are applying, and why these should matter in the context of what is being debated.
If a claim is unfalsifiable (it doesn’t matter what the claim is specifically), then how can anyone claim to know whether such a claim is true or false?
One can disbelieve such a claim, as to believe it would leave no criteria for disbelief, but one could not rationally claim to know it was wrong.
Nothing except it is irrational. If you are prepared to make an irrational claim for knowledge you may want to keep that quiet when theists come here to peddle their superstitious wares. Some of them are very intelligent and well informed, and will leap on such inconsistency.
The thing to bear in mind is that logic and science are counter-intuitive, if they were not then humans would not have needed to create such strict methods in the first place.
Also definitions are very important in debate and discussion.
I look forward to it, and never be put off by disagreements, that’s what debate is for. incidentally the atheist hub only allows atheist posters in there, and you can share ideas in there as well, and it is less adversarial in my experience.
Yes, nobody can claim to know its truth value if it is unfalsifiable. I believe that is one of the only reason theism survives today. You say you don’t believe in god, but you are agnostic about any god claim that is made correct?
To be absolutely clear, if I asked you why you don’t believe in god, what would you say?
Can you be an atheist, while being agnostic about god claims? Wouldnt you just then be agnostic?
Not quite, only about god claims that are unfalsifiable, and of course not just god claims, but all unfalsifiable claims.
I would say that I withhold belief from all claims until sufficient objective evidence can be demonstrated for them.
Yes, agnosticism is a statement about knowledge, whereas atheism is a position that withholds belief on a single claim. They are not mutually exclusive.
