A skeptic could demand evidence that dogs exist on the basis that she has never seen one and has no good reason to believe they are real. That's entirely reasonable request and it does require the person who believes in dogs to provide evidence.
Seriously, could you imagine someone getting self-righteous and reaching for epistemological arguments just because someone asked to see their dog?
But the problem is that you still cannot confirm that it is false and it's not a logicl fallacy when you assume it is false because you don't have evidence that it's true, you in fact yourself have no logical reason to "assume" it is false.
I'm not trying to "confirm that it is false", I'm merely noting that I've been given no reason to believe it is true. I cannot go about acting as though knowledge is impossible so I go around believing only in things that act as if they are true.
Well you "can", it's just that for whatever reason some people prefer not to. And, if you say "I'm not going to consider that possibility", how is that not the same as rejecting it? If you were not rejecting it, you would still be considering it and you wouldn't rule it out, it's not much different than trying to assume a closed system or ideal circumstances.
People can say "Believe this!" and I can say "Why?" and then if they say "Because it might be true." I can leave because they've just rejected all knowledge and it would be impolite to step on the toes of their philosophy by assuming they're speaking English. People who are willing to say "I can know nothing for certain!" with any degree of seriousness are invited to go jump off a bridge, hard to say what will happen at the bottom.
But if it's a possibility and part of their content of knowledge, how can they reject all knowledge they are aware of yet still hold that possibility true?
But if it's a possibility and part of their content of knowledge, how can they reject all knowledge they are aware of yet still hold that possibility true?
I don't even know what to say here. You have to judge 'possibilities' based on their likelihood. I could jump off a bridge knowing that it's entirely possible that a plane could fly under that bridge at just the right angle for me to grab on and survive.
But if you take that seriously as a possibility for jumping off a bridge, I'd really like to play poker with you.
I'm an agnostic, but I have to say that this is a pretty silly interpretation of agnosticism. Things have greater and lower possibilities of being true. Allowing for the possibility of something being true and living your life as if every slim possibility is true are entirely different things.
Let's look at Dech's claim to be your mother for a moment. The fact that he is using it in an obvious attempt to sway your argument and illustrate a ridiculous example doesn't make your brain downgrade the likelihood of the truthfulness of the statement? Sure, anything* is possible, but everything isn't equally possible. There are many claims out there that, quite simply, can be safely ignored.
*even the idea that anything is possible is silly. Sure, I could suddenly levitate out of my chair in the next few seconds, but it's so highly unlikely that it can be safely discounted.
Well you "can", it's just that for whatever reason some people prefer not to.
No I literally cannot act as though I possess no knowledge. Neither can you. If I did believe that I'd act randomly in accordance with one of an infinite number of possible causal relationships. There is not enough time in your life to even think of an infinite number of possible results.
If you were not rejecting it, you would still be considering it and you wouldn't rule it out
I considered it, found a lack of reason to add it to the list of things I should behave as if are real and went on with my life.
Evidently you have two categories of belief. I have three.
Things I have reason to believe in: Dogs, Computers
Things I have no reason to believe in: Gods, Invisible Unicorns
Things I have reason not believe in: There is bowling ball hovering two inches in front of my face.
Generally I will treat the second and third category in the same way but that does not make them the same. If I took the time to consider everything in category two, as you would like me to, I'd have no time to do anything else because category two is infinitely large.
But if it's a possibility and part of their content of knowledge, how can they reject all knowledge they are aware of yet still hold that possibility true?
Because they're shallow pseudo-intellectuals? Because they think I care about the inane rhetorical "points" they want to win?
I don't even know what to say here. You have to judge 'possibilities' based on their likelihood. I could jump off a bridge knowing that it's entirely possible that a plan could fly under that bridge at just the right angle for me to grab on and survive.
You don't "have" to judge possibilities, why can't you say something is less likely without excluding other possibilities? If I have a 6 sided die, getting a 1-5 is far more likely than getting a 6, but that doesn't mean you have to ignore the possibility of getting a 6.
I'm an agnostic, but I have to say that this is a pretty silly interpretation of agnosticism. This have greater and lower possibilities of being true. Allowing for the possibility of something being true and living your life as if every slim possibility is true are entirely different things.
Maybe that's because it's not agnosticism as much as it is non-cognitivisim. No one said multiple possibilities are true at the same time necessarily, the argument is that saying "I don't feel like considering it" is an arbitrary way to rule out a possibility and thus stating it does not show a logical fallacy. You are merely saying "I don't feel like considering it because it seems unlikely to me".
Let's look at Dech's claim to be your mother for a moment. The fact that he is using it in an obvious attempt to sway your argument and illustrate a ridiculous example doesn't make your brain downgrade the likelihood of the truthfulness of the statement? Sure, anything* is possible, but everything isn't equally possible. There are many claims out there that, quite simply, can be safely ignored.
But if you're talking about morals and the super natural or anything you can physically prove or disprove, you have no real evidence to assert that it is "less likely" that your own beliefs.
*even the idea that anything is possible is silly. Sure, I could suddenly levitate out of my chair in the next few seconds, but it's so highly unlikely that it can be safely discounted.
Safely is still based on your personal standards for being safe.
You realize you just mixed Moving the Goalposts with a Non-Sequitur, right? That was two informal fallacies for the price of one!
if you defined your stance to be the opposite of what I suggested it was then sure, otherwise I don't see evidence that you reject the burden of proof being a formal fallacy, just evidence that you do, according to my standard.
No I literally cannot act as though I possess no knowledge. Neither can you. If I did believe that I'd act randomly in accordance with one of an infinite number of possible causal relationships. There is not enough time in your life to even think of an infinite number of possible results.
Or you could do nothing at all because you cannot confirm what specific action you can do. Maybe you would personally act randomly, how do you know others would? Couldn't you act in a way that is regardless of your beliefs?
You keep saying this and then asking my to justify it as if I said it. That either a strawman (more informal fallacies!) or libel.
So you do accept that even if there is no evidence for something that the possibility of it's existence cannot be ruled and so you do not ignore other possibilities even if you deem them very small?
I considered it, found a lack of reason to add it to the list of things I should behave as if are real and went on with my life.
So it has nothing to do with your beliefs, you merely have a set of behavioral standards and you reject anything that would not allow you to uphold those standards...
Things I have reason to believe in: Dogs, Computers
Things I have no reason to believe in: Gods, Invisible Unicorns
Things I have reason not believe in: There is bowling ball hovering two inches in front of my face.
So you have no reason to believe in them, do you have reason to assign them as being more likely or less likely since that your standard for assigning that you do or do not have a reason to believe in them? How do you prove "god exists" is more or less likely than "god doesn't exist"?
Because they're shallow pseudo-intellectuals? Because they think I care about the inane rhetorical "points" they want to win?
So all people who believe in something they don't have your standard of evidence to support are automatically pseudo-intellectuals? Interesting...especially considering any logical conclusion is based off of at least one axiom which inherently has no evidence or proof, so what logical reason would you have to believe any given conclusion based off of an axiom? It doesn't fit your standards of evidence, the axioms are just assumed to be true.
You don't "have" to judge possibilities, why can't you say something is less likely without excluding other possibilities? If I have a 6 sided die, getting a 1-5 is far more likely than getting a 6, but that doesn't mean you have to ignore the possibility of getting a 6.
First of all, without a single theoretical dice you're implying that all possibilities are equal. They are not.
It's a concept of scale. With two dice, your chances of rolling a six is much higher than rolling a 2 or 12. With ten, your chances of rolling a 6 or a 60 are much, much lower than that.
When you roll 1,000 theoretical dice, the chances of you rolling a total of 1,000 or 6,000 as so slim as to be not worth considering when placing a bet on the total outcome.
Possibilities are all possible, but not equally likely, and to treat them as equally likely is illogical. Sure, value judgments will affect when we decide that the more unlikely probabilities are reasonable, but in general people who draw the line too far are consider to have mental problems (compulsive gamblers, for instance).
Further, hearsay doesn't make something true or even likely. If we can observe 52 cards, and someone says there is a 53rd card that we can use to automatically win the game if we just concentrate hard enough, and all the laws of physics that we know to be true apply, how likely is it that the 53rd card exists, and how reasonable is it for someone to spend all their money trying to obtain it in a game?
Oh my, I think I just swung to full on atheist, or at least further towards agnostic atheist than I was before. I don't think any human religions are true, but I won't discount the possibility that there is some sort of higher being out there. I also won't make life choices based on the possibility that the being exists.
When you roll 1,000 theoretical dice, the chances of you rolling a total of 1,000 or 6,000 as so slim as to be not worth considering when placing a bet on the total outcome.
So how do you determine which belief has which probability?
Possibilities are all possible, but not equally likely, and to treat them as equally likely is illogical. Sure, value judgments will affect when we decide that the more unlikely probabilities are reasonable, but in general people who draw the line too far are consider to have mental problems (compulsive gamblers, for instance).
They are not equally likely if you assume certain standards of being more or less likely, but since those standards of being more likely are assumptions, how to you prove an assumption is more likely?
Further, hearsay doesn't make something true or even likely. If we can observe 52 cards, and someone says there is a 53rd card that we can use to automatically win the game if we just concentrate hard enough, and all the laws of physics that we know to be true apply, how likely is it that the 53rd card exists, and how reasonable is it for someone to spend all their money trying to obtain it in a game?
It seems like you are trying to assert that religion can be put into terms of logicism, which mathematicians may disagree with, but even in that case Godel's incompleteness theorem shows that any mathematical statement cannot be perfectly consistent and will always at some point use an assumption.
Oh my, I think I just swung to full on atheist, or at least further towards agnostic atheist than I was before. I don't think any human religions are true, but I won't discount the possibility that there is some sort of higher being out there. I also won't make life choices based on the possibility that the being exists.
But you cannot simultaneously say "I think it's not true" and "I think it could be true" without contradicting yourself, if you think it's not true then that means you are not considering that it could be true. Instead what you could do is say "I personally find one belief less likely because I cannot prove it's existence, but do not assume it is false but consider the possibility that ether scenario could be true, it could be either true or false".
But you cannot simultaneously say "I think it's not true" and " think it could be true" without contradicting yourself, if you think it's not true then that means you are not considering that it could be true. Instead what you could do is say "I personally find one belief less likely because I cannot prove it's existence, but to not assume it is false but consider the possibility that ether scenario could be true".
No one has been saying "I think it's not true and I think it could be true." When you do this kind of thing, intentionally misrepresenting our arguments, it's called creating a strawman. Please stop doing this.
We've been saying "I don't think it is true, but I suppose it's possible." There's no contradiction here.
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"[Screw] you and the green you ramped in on." - My EDH battle cry. If I had one. Which I don't.
But you cannot simultaneously say "I think it's not true" and " think it could be true" without contradicting yourself, if you think it's not true then that means you are not considering that it could be true. Instead what you could do is say "I personally find one belief less likely because I cannot prove it's existence, but to not assume it is false but consider the possibility that ether scenario could be true".
No one has been saying "I think it's not true and I think it could be true." When you do this kind of thing, intentionally misrepresenting our arguments, it's called creating a strawman. Please stop doing this.
We've been saying "I don't think it is true, but I suppose it's possible." There's no contradiction here.
Stating "I don't think any human religions are true" means you think they are false, because there are only two possible states that it could be in, true, or false, so if it is not one, it must be the other, and so you are in effect saying "they are false, but could be true", which makes logical sense. As I keep saying, you don't have to say that you don't believe one, you can simply state that you arbitrarily assign one to be less likely. It is somewhat similar to saying "1+1 does not equal 3, but it could equal 3".
Stating "I don't think any human religions are true" means you think they are false, because there are only two possible states that it could be in, true, or false
False dichotomy. There exists at least a third state that you're not acknowledging.
Again, we're not saying they're false. We're saying:
"I don't think any human religions are true."
"I haven't seen evidence that any human religions are true."
"I am not convinced that any human religions are true."
"I don't believe any human religions are true."
All four of the above statements are equivalent. They're saying "I don't know." That's the third state. A fourth might be "I don't care," though that might just be a distinction without difference.
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"[Screw] you and the green you ramped in on." - My EDH battle cry. If I had one. Which I don't.
Stating "I don't think any human religions are true" means you think they are false, because there are only two possible states that it could be in, true, or false
False dichotomy. There exists at least a third state that you're not acknowledging.
Again, we're not saying they're false. We're saying:
"I don't think any human religions are true."
"I haven't seen evidence that any human religions are true."
"I am not convinced that any human religions are true."
"I don't believe any human religions are true."
All four of the above statements are equivalent. They're saying "I don't know." That's the third state. A fourth might be "I don't care," though that might just be a distinction without difference.
But they aren't all true, if you state you don't think something is true, you are assuming it is false, otherwise if you were not assuming what state it is in, you could only be considering it is both possibilities, and thus think that "it could be true" and not "I think it is not true". There is a third state, it's just not being used as often.
if you state you don't think something is true, you are assuming it is false
No, I am not assuming anything. You are the one that keeps stating this, not any of us.
When I say "I don't think it's true," I'm the only one who's not making any assumptions. I'm saying "I don't know if it's true and I don't have any reason to believe it's true, therefore I'll not put any more thought into it."
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"[Screw] you and the green you ramped in on." - My EDH battle cry. If I had one. Which I don't.
But if you're not assuming anything then you have no reason to think something is false
Begging the question. I don't think it's false. I keep saying this. Please stop misrepresenting me.
It's not begging the question at all, it's simply a statement that if you think something is false, you cannot simultaneously accept it could be true, the only way to solve it is if to assume neither is 100% true or false. You can't logically state 1+1=2 but also may not =2.
It's not begging the question at all, it's simply a statement that if you think something is false, you cannot simultaneously accept it could be true, the only way to solve it is if to assume neither is 100% true or false. You can't logically state 1+1=2 but also may not =2.
Yes it is begging the question because by saying "if you think something is false" you are implying that I think something is false when I am not. You are assuming one of your premises is true in making your point.
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"[Screw] you and the green you ramped in on." - My EDH battle cry. If I had one. Which I don't.
It's not begging the question at all, it's simply a statement that if you think something is false, you cannot simultaneously accept it could be true, the only way to solve it is if to assume neither is 100% true or false. You can't logically state 1+1=2 but also may not =2.
Yes it is begging the question because by saying "if you think something is false" you are implying that I think something is false when I am not. You are assuming one of your premises is true in making your point.
But I'm not assuming the premise I am stating the implication of assuming someone else's statement, which is somewhat close to a contradiction. IF you think something can't happen, then you are not considering it as a possibility of that thing that otherwise can happen. It is entirely different than stating "I believe both have some chance of happening but do not assume either with certainty". The only way out of this is if someone did not correctly express their intent and then clears it up to mean "I find it highly unlikely but still consider it has some non-zero possibility and thus do not believe it is one over the other at this point".
then you are not considering it as a possibility of that thing that otherwise can happen.
In this post, you are presenting a straw man. You are arguing against something I did not say.
That's probably because I was talking to other people, I'm trying to explain the implications of what they stated. I never stated that you said "I don't believe this", I stated that vortho said "I don't believe this" as well as that other people were arguing in favor of the burden of proof fallacy as if it were a formal fallacy.
And also, what can I assume from the fact that you tried to use the strawman excuse instead of actually trying to justify how I was wrong? Can I assume you agree with my stance about people who say "I don't believe" or not?
Can I assume you agree with my stance about people who say "I don't believe" or not?
No. "I don't believe" is not the same as "x can't happen" or "x is false" or every other thing you've been claiming it means. That's what I've been saying for the past ten or so posts.
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"[Screw] you and the green you ramped in on." - My EDH battle cry. If I had one. Which I don't.
Can I assume you agree with my stance about people who say "I don't believe" or not?
No. "I don't believe" is not the same as "x can't happen" or "x is false" or every other thing you've been claiming it means. That's what I've been saying for the past ten or so posts.
Ok, so logically how can you disregard a possibility but simultaneously regard it? "It is my belief that it is not true" is also different than saying "It is unlikely that it will happen". Saying "I don't feel like considering the possibility" is the same as disregarding it.
Is this a Protestant thing? As a Catholic growing up I don't remember ever fearing God. They're big on God's mercy outweighing his wrath. Hence the penance stuff.
I have former Southern Baptist family members who became atheists and they have nightmares where they're being tormented by demons. The Southern Baptists are very big on hellfire and brimstone.
But you cannot simultaneously say "I think it's not true" and "I think it could be true" without contradicting yourself, if you think it's not true then that means you are not considering that it could be true. Instead what you could do is say "I personally find one belief less likely because I cannot prove it's existence, but do not assume it is false but consider the possibility that ether scenario could be true, it could be either true or false".
"I don't think it's true, but it could be" is not a contradictory statement. We do it all the time in our lives. You can weight possibilities all you want, but eventually you have to invest in one. Maybe you decide to hope for the best and maybe you decide that your time is better spent elsewhere.
You have to consider the source as much as anything else. I won't dismiss the possibility of 'higher' beings than us exist, but why should I believe that the cult offshoot of a cult offshoot of sky god worshipers that themselves branched off of an ancient pagan religion could possibly know that the heck they're talking about? Why would I value their opinions equally with more likely opinions, especially when I know their history?
But you cannot simultaneously say "I think it's not true" and "I think it could be true" without contradicting yourself, if you think it's not true then that means you are not considering that it could be true. Instead what you could do is say "I personally find one belief less likely because I cannot prove it's existence, but do not assume it is false but consider the possibility that ether scenario could be true, it could be either true or false".
"I don't think it's true, but it could be" is not a contradictory statement. We do it all the time in our lives. You can weight possibilities all you want, but eventually you have to invest in one. Maybe you decide to hope for the best and maybe you decide that your time is better spent elsewhere.
You have to consider the source as much as anything else. I won't dismiss the possibility of 'higher' beings than us exist, but why should I believe that the cult offshoot of a cult offshoot of sky god worshipers that themselves branched off of an ancient pagan religion could possibly know that the heck they're talking about? Why would I value their opinions equally with more likely opinions, especially when I know their history?
However, stating "I don't consider possibilities that I consider small" even though they have no mathematical basis to assert they are small, assumed the context that they are disregarding that possibility, and thus, it is the same. If one was an agnostic, they would at most say "it seems less likely", not "it seems less likely, therefore I won't consider it". Objectively you could interpret "I don't think the coin will turn up heads" as stating that it won't turn up heads that specific, single time and still say it will turn up heads in the future, but saying the heads/tails coin would turn up heads permanently would be disregarding the possibility of tails. With religion, it isn't a single instance of being true, it's a continuous set of axioms and morals over which a religion is a belief is assumed true over the span of all time.
So in other words you randomly tried to argue in favor of the informal fallacy of "the burden of proof" You don't actually agree with it?
If you consider it "illogical", you should take at least one philosophy class, you're welcome.
Well you "can", it's just that for whatever reason some people prefer not to. And, if you say "I'm not going to consider that possibility", how is that not the same as rejecting it? If you were not rejecting it, you would still be considering it and you wouldn't rule it out, it's not much different than trying to assume a closed system or ideal circumstances.
But if it's a possibility and part of their content of knowledge, how can they reject all knowledge they are aware of yet still hold that possibility true?
I don't even know what to say here. You have to judge 'possibilities' based on their likelihood. I could jump off a bridge knowing that it's entirely possible that a plane could fly under that bridge at just the right angle for me to grab on and survive.
But if you take that seriously as a possibility for jumping off a bridge, I'd really like to play poker with you.
I'm an agnostic, but I have to say that this is a pretty silly interpretation of agnosticism. Things have greater and lower possibilities of being true. Allowing for the possibility of something being true and living your life as if every slim possibility is true are entirely different things.
Let's look at Dech's claim to be your mother for a moment. The fact that he is using it in an obvious attempt to sway your argument and illustrate a ridiculous example doesn't make your brain downgrade the likelihood of the truthfulness of the statement? Sure, anything* is possible, but everything isn't equally possible. There are many claims out there that, quite simply, can be safely ignored.
*even the idea that anything is possible is silly. Sure, I could suddenly levitate out of my chair in the next few seconds, but it's so highly unlikely that it can be safely discounted.
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You realize you just mixed Moving the Goalposts with a Non-Sequitur, right? That was two informal fallacies for the price of one!
No I literally cannot act as though I possess no knowledge. Neither can you. If I did believe that I'd act randomly in accordance with one of an infinite number of possible causal relationships. There is not enough time in your life to even think of an infinite number of possible results.
You keep saying this and then asking my to justify it as if I said it. That either a strawman (more informal fallacies!) or libel.
I considered it, found a lack of reason to add it to the list of things I should behave as if are real and went on with my life.
Evidently you have two categories of belief. I have three.
Things I have reason to believe in: Dogs, Computers
Things I have no reason to believe in: Gods, Invisible Unicorns
Things I have reason not believe in: There is bowling ball hovering two inches in front of my face.
Generally I will treat the second and third category in the same way but that does not make them the same. If I took the time to consider everything in category two, as you would like me to, I'd have no time to do anything else because category two is infinitely large.
Because they're shallow pseudo-intellectuals? Because they think I care about the inane rhetorical "points" they want to win?
You don't "have" to judge possibilities, why can't you say something is less likely without excluding other possibilities? If I have a 6 sided die, getting a 1-5 is far more likely than getting a 6, but that doesn't mean you have to ignore the possibility of getting a 6.
I would like to play with you to because any time you suggest a good hand, there's still a chance you don't.
Maybe that's because it's not agnosticism as much as it is non-cognitivisim. No one said multiple possibilities are true at the same time necessarily, the argument is that saying "I don't feel like considering it" is an arbitrary way to rule out a possibility and thus stating it does not show a logical fallacy. You are merely saying "I don't feel like considering it because it seems unlikely to me".
But if you're talking about morals and the super natural or anything you can physically prove or disprove, you have no real evidence to assert that it is "less likely" that your own beliefs.
Safely is still based on your personal standards for being safe.
if you defined your stance to be the opposite of what I suggested it was then sure, otherwise I don't see evidence that you reject the burden of proof being a formal fallacy, just evidence that you do, according to my standard.
Or you could do nothing at all because you cannot confirm what specific action you can do. Maybe you would personally act randomly, how do you know others would? Couldn't you act in a way that is regardless of your beliefs?
So you do accept that even if there is no evidence for something that the possibility of it's existence cannot be ruled and so you do not ignore other possibilities even if you deem them very small?
So it has nothing to do with your beliefs, you merely have a set of behavioral standards and you reject anything that would not allow you to uphold those standards...
So you have no reason to believe in them, do you have reason to assign them as being more likely or less likely since that your standard for assigning that you do or do not have a reason to believe in them? How do you prove "god exists" is more or less likely than "god doesn't exist"?
So all people who believe in something they don't have your standard of evidence to support are automatically pseudo-intellectuals? Interesting...especially considering any logical conclusion is based off of at least one axiom which inherently has no evidence or proof, so what logical reason would you have to believe any given conclusion based off of an axiom? It doesn't fit your standards of evidence, the axioms are just assumed to be true.
First of all, without a single theoretical dice you're implying that all possibilities are equal. They are not.
It's a concept of scale. With two dice, your chances of rolling a six is much higher than rolling a 2 or 12. With ten, your chances of rolling a 6 or a 60 are much, much lower than that.
When you roll 1,000 theoretical dice, the chances of you rolling a total of 1,000 or 6,000 as so slim as to be not worth considering when placing a bet on the total outcome.
Possibilities are all possible, but not equally likely, and to treat them as equally likely is illogical. Sure, value judgments will affect when we decide that the more unlikely probabilities are reasonable, but in general people who draw the line too far are consider to have mental problems (compulsive gamblers, for instance).
Further, hearsay doesn't make something true or even likely. If we can observe 52 cards, and someone says there is a 53rd card that we can use to automatically win the game if we just concentrate hard enough, and all the laws of physics that we know to be true apply, how likely is it that the 53rd card exists, and how reasonable is it for someone to spend all their money trying to obtain it in a game?
Oh my, I think I just swung to full on atheist, or at least further towards agnostic atheist than I was before. I don't think any human religions are true, but I won't discount the possibility that there is some sort of higher being out there. I also won't make life choices based on the possibility that the being exists.
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It "could" be that 1-5 represents one theory, and 6 represents another, meaning that one scenario is more likely than another.
So how do you determine which belief has which probability?
They are not equally likely if you assume certain standards of being more or less likely, but since those standards of being more likely are assumptions, how to you prove an assumption is more likely?
It seems like you are trying to assert that religion can be put into terms of logicism, which mathematicians may disagree with, but even in that case Godel's incompleteness theorem shows that any mathematical statement cannot be perfectly consistent and will always at some point use an assumption.
But you cannot simultaneously say "I think it's not true" and "I think it could be true" without contradicting yourself, if you think it's not true then that means you are not considering that it could be true. Instead what you could do is say "I personally find one belief less likely because I cannot prove it's existence, but do not assume it is false but consider the possibility that ether scenario could be true, it could be either true or false".
No one has been saying "I think it's not true and I think it could be true." When you do this kind of thing, intentionally misrepresenting our arguments, it's called creating a strawman. Please stop doing this.
We've been saying "I don't think it is true, but I suppose it's possible." There's no contradiction here.
Pristaxcontrombmodruu!
Stating "I don't think any human religions are true" means you think they are false, because there are only two possible states that it could be in, true, or false, so if it is not one, it must be the other, and so you are in effect saying "they are false, but could be true", which makes logical sense. As I keep saying, you don't have to say that you don't believe one, you can simply state that you arbitrarily assign one to be less likely. It is somewhat similar to saying "1+1 does not equal 3, but it could equal 3".
False dichotomy. There exists at least a third state that you're not acknowledging.
Again, we're not saying they're false. We're saying:
"I don't think any human religions are true."
"I haven't seen evidence that any human religions are true."
"I am not convinced that any human religions are true."
"I don't believe any human religions are true."
All four of the above statements are equivalent. They're saying "I don't know." That's the third state. A fourth might be "I don't care," though that might just be a distinction without difference.
Pristaxcontrombmodruu!
But they aren't all true, if you state you don't think something is true, you are assuming it is false, otherwise if you were not assuming what state it is in, you could only be considering it is both possibilities, and thus think that "it could be true" and not "I think it is not true". There is a third state, it's just not being used as often.
No, I am not assuming anything. You are the one that keeps stating this, not any of us.
When I say "I don't think it's true," I'm the only one who's not making any assumptions. I'm saying "I don't know if it's true and I don't have any reason to believe it's true, therefore I'll not put any more thought into it."
Pristaxcontrombmodruu!
But if you're not assuming anything then you have no reason to think something is false, you only have a reason to state either is a possibility.
Begging the question. I don't think it's false. I keep saying this. Please stop misrepresenting me.
Pristaxcontrombmodruu!
It's not begging the question at all, it's simply a statement that if you think something is false, you cannot simultaneously accept it could be true, the only way to solve it is if to assume neither is 100% true or false. You can't logically state 1+1=2 but also may not =2.
Yes it is begging the question because by saying "if you think something is false" you are implying that I think something is false when I am not. You are assuming one of your premises is true in making your point.
Pristaxcontrombmodruu!
But I'm not assuming the premise I am stating the implication of assuming someone else's statement, which is somewhat close to a contradiction. IF you think something can't happen, then you are not considering it as a possibility of that thing that otherwise can happen. It is entirely different than stating "I believe both have some chance of happening but do not assume either with certainty". The only way out of this is if someone did not correctly express their intent and then clears it up to mean "I find it highly unlikely but still consider it has some non-zero possibility and thus do not believe it is one over the other at this point".
I never said this, which means you can't go on to say:
In this post, you are presenting a straw man. You are arguing against something I did not say.
Pristaxcontrombmodruu!
That's probably because I was talking to other people, I'm trying to explain the implications of what they stated. I never stated that you said "I don't believe this", I stated that vortho said "I don't believe this" as well as that other people were arguing in favor of the burden of proof fallacy as if it were a formal fallacy.
And also, what can I assume from the fact that you tried to use the strawman excuse instead of actually trying to justify how I was wrong? Can I assume you agree with my stance about people who say "I don't believe" or not?
No. "I don't believe" is not the same as "x can't happen" or "x is false" or every other thing you've been claiming it means. That's what I've been saying for the past ten or so posts.
Pristaxcontrombmodruu!
Ok, so logically how can you disregard a possibility but simultaneously regard it? "It is my belief that it is not true" is also different than saying "It is unlikely that it will happen". Saying "I don't feel like considering the possibility" is the same as disregarding it.
I have former Southern Baptist family members who became atheists and they have nightmares where they're being tormented by demons. The Southern Baptists are very big on hellfire and brimstone.
"I don't think it's true, but it could be" is not a contradictory statement. We do it all the time in our lives. You can weight possibilities all you want, but eventually you have to invest in one. Maybe you decide to hope for the best and maybe you decide that your time is better spent elsewhere.
You have to consider the source as much as anything else. I won't dismiss the possibility of 'higher' beings than us exist, but why should I believe that the cult offshoot of a cult offshoot of sky god worshipers that themselves branched off of an ancient pagan religion could possibly know that the heck they're talking about? Why would I value their opinions equally with more likely opinions, especially when I know their history?
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However, stating "I don't consider possibilities that I consider small" even though they have no mathematical basis to assert they are small, assumed the context that they are disregarding that possibility, and thus, it is the same. If one was an agnostic, they would at most say "it seems less likely", not "it seems less likely, therefore I won't consider it". Objectively you could interpret "I don't think the coin will turn up heads" as stating that it won't turn up heads that specific, single time and still say it will turn up heads in the future, but saying the heads/tails coin would turn up heads permanently would be disregarding the possibility of tails. With religion, it isn't a single instance of being true, it's a continuous set of axioms and morals over which a religion is a belief is assumed true over the span of all time.