TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
When 99.99% of people believe claim X and 0.01% doesn't, then the burden of proof is still in the camp of the 99.99%.
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Why do atheist believe something can come from nothing?
- Thread starter Nimos
- Start date
When 99.99% of people believe claim X and 0.01% doesn't, then the burden of proof is still in the camp of the 99.99%.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Let's play along with your silly game. Perhaps then you'll understand just how stupid this fallacious "argument" is...
31% of humans are christians.
69% are non-christians.
So, following your very own logic, what is the "default condition" of humanity?
OEPS!
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Then others have exactly zero reasons to believe your claims.
And you agree with that, because you probably don't buy into people's claims of experience with alien abduction, bigfoot, the loch ness monster, deities from rival religions, Tom Cruise's experience with his immortal inner Thetan, etc etc etc etc.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
How so?
I'm not aware of me believing any such thing.
Care to explain in what way you think I do believe such?
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Hmm... To play advocate of the devil here for a second... In his defense, he did say "the default human condition" in several posts. And where the word "human" was ommitted, I think we should assume that that is what he means - after all, he believes humans are a "special" type of ape. Although it wouldn't surprise me that he's a creationist who wouldn't call humans "apes".
Having said that, there is some truth to what he says, but not exactly like he thinks it is the case... in fact, the reality of the matter is actually quite devastating to his case....
Humans tend to be religious, yes. But why? What are the underlying reasons for that? And how, if any, does this manifest in other animals?
The answer turns out to be quite simple...................
ALL animals (some more then others) have a tendency to engage in Type 1 cognition errors. This is "the false positive". That cognition error is also combined with a tendency to infuse agency into seemingly random events.
So what does this tendency result in? Answer: superstition.
Yes, animals get superstitious. It results in so-called "magical thinking". It results in concluding patterns, where there are no patterns. There's a famous pigeon experiment which illustrates this nicely.. In a nutshell: pigeons are put in cages. At random moments, food is dropped in the cage. After a while, the pigeons were acting very weird. All of them developed "superstitious" beliefs concerning how to trigger the food dropping.
The food drops while a pigeon happened to be flapping his wings. Now the pigeon thinks that flapping his wings, makes food drop. So the pigeon starts to frantically flap its wings. It "forgets" the many times it fails and when food drops randomly, the pigeon incorrectly concludes that his wing flapping caused it ( = the false positive).
Another pigeon was rotating on its own axis.
Another pigeon was stomping its feet.
etc etc
All of them "found" patterns, that were never there.
This likely is a survival mechanism.
The cliché idea is: you are a primitive humanoid ape on africa and you hear a rustle in the bushes. is it the wind, or is it a dangerous predator? (= infusing agency; "they are out the get me!").
Those who stand around to "gather more evidence" are lunch if it does in fact consist of a predator.
Those who engage in the false positive and assume that it's a predator out to get them, run away. If it turns out that it was in fact a predator - they survive. If not, no harm done.
THAT is what religion really is.
A gigantic Type 1 cognition error with infused agency.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
There is exactly zero added value in claiming that "god" created the universe and its laws.
It makes no difference whatsoever in the study of these laws and the universe and everything it contains. Not a single shred of difference.
If anything, the only thing such an assertion might accomplish, is preventing progress....
Because someone who claims that, and truelly believes it, won't be asking and investigating the question "where did the universe come from?" or "how did the universe come to be?" or similar.
Why would they - they already have their answer: "god dun it".
This is why in science, we never assume the answers before asking and investigating the questions.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
If an argrument is fallacious, the only proper response is pointing out that it is fallacious.
And in this case, IC is just one gigantic argument from ignorance and incredulity.
"i don't understand how this feature came to be, therefor it is impossible that it came to be, therefor god" - IC in a nutshell.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
It's not.
Not believing, is not a belief.
You need to believe something to have a belief.
To disbelief, is the exact opposite of that.
Disbelief is the default, not something that needs to be "adopted".
Theism is what needs to be adopted.
You need to do something specific to qualify as a theist: you need to believe specific claims.
Atheism is when you don't do those specific things to qualify as a theist - which is the default.
The default position is ALWAYS disbelief of claims.
Or would you say that your "default" position is the BELIEVE the claims of alien abduction, scientology, islam, hinduism, whalhalla, fairies, santa, bigfoot,..... or any of the inumerable, potentially infinite, claims people (could) make?
Off course it isn't.
The default is always disbelief.
Someone claims "aliens abducted me". That claim is NOT automatically considered true "until the opposite is demonstrated".
No. Instead, a claim is rejected on the counts that that claim completely failed to meet its burden of proof.
What is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.
I don't need to come up with evidence that god doesn't exist, any more then you need to come up with evidence that aliens aren't abducting people, that bigfoot isn't real, that fairies don't exist, that islam is incorrect, etc etc etc etc.
You know what really isn't rational?
Shifting the burden of proof.
WHich is exactly what you have been doing in this post.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Special Pleading is one of the favorite and most popular fallacies among theists when it comes to discussing the accuracy of their beliefs.
You are entitled to believe whatever woo pleases you.
From my first link that incidentally, you asked for
In the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, Behe gave testimony on the subject of irreducible complexity. The court found that "Professor Behe's claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large."
Evidence is that which is evident, and that which makes any given idea more or less likely to be the case. Theists typically make errors identifying and interpreting evidence, as when they see the world or their scriptures as evidence of a god, neither of which is evidence for a god. They are evidence that our physical reality exists and contains words written by men and attributed to god, both of which speak to a godless universe just as well, meaning that neither of these is evidence for a god.
The multiverse is one of several candidate hypotheses for the history of our universe, none of which can be ruled in or out at this time, and perhaps never. It has the virtue of accounting for the apparent fine tuning of the universe without invoking a sentient, intelligent agent, making the hypothesis the one that best accounts for all evidence with the most parsimony.
We needn't concern ourselves with absolute truth, ultimate truth, objective truth, or any other metaphysical construct. It's truth enough to know that if belief B drives action A which consistently or more frequently than competing ideas results in desired outcome D, we can call that idea true, but its really better to call it empirically adequate, meaning that it works - it's useful - and nothing more need be said regarding the truth value of the idea. We just add it to our fund of knowledge.
Consider these ideas:
Empirical adequacy - A theory is empirically adequate, roughly, if all of what it says about observable aspects of the world (past, present, and future) can be confirmed
Instrumentalism - belief that statements or theories may be used as tools for useful prediction without reference to their possible truth or falsity. Peirce and other pragmatists defended an instrumentalist account of modern science.
Fallibilism - the principle that propositions concerning empirical knowledge can be accepted even though they cannot be proved with certainty.
Correspondence definition of truth - a statement is true to the extent that it conforms to / corresponds with / accurately reflects (objective) reality.
Newton's work on celestial mechanics was improved upon by Laplace and Einstein, who demonstrated that Newton's work was incomplete, and for certain applications, inadequate. Nevertheless, Newton's equations can be used to send a probe to Pluto and expect it to rendezvous in a time and place anticipated by those equations. Is Newton's work true? Doesn't matter if we answer yes or no. It's surely useful, and that's what matters.
Science has made atheism intellectually tenable and therefore, socially acceptable. The more science one learns, the more likely he is to be an atheist.
So do most atheists, including this one.
A Vestigial Mote
Well-Known Member
Then how's this @leov - I just don't believe your claims. I don't assert they aren't correct - I'm just waiting for you to demonstrate that they are. Until you do, there is absolutely no reason to act on your assertions or believe you one bit. None.
It is EXACTLY as if I told you that unicorns exist, and you say "I don't believe it, where are they?" and then I hem and haw and finally tell you that I have no idea where they are and can't demonstrate the truth of anything I am saying. Are you going to tell me that you're going to GO OUT AND BUY A SADDLE so that you can ride around on the unicorns I told you about, before you even know if one exists? You'd be the most gullible person alive if that is the route you took.
In conclusion - I would only ever buy the saddle you are offering to "ride God" if you could demonstrate that there is something there to ride on. As soon as you do, I will first eat my shoe, and then totally buy myself a saddle and ride God around until He's blue in the face - ropin' me some cattle and whoopin' and hollerin' all day long.
Again, again and again science is not refuted. It is up to those making a scientific claim to present a hypothesis and falsify that hypothesis with objective verifiable evidence. The testimony at the Dover trial demonstrated that the Discovery Institute failed to do this.
Road Warrior
Seeking the middle path..
Thanks for expressing your beliefs.
You did not respond to it, nor did you respond to my post.
The testimony by the advocates of ID and the ID literature demonstrated that it was a religious claim and not science.
Thief
Rogue Theologian
they might cut off your infidel head
someone posted a video of someone getting her head cut
the police were there
they did nothing
she died
but.....angels are displayed with sword in hand
I can't take that away
Thief
Rogue Theologian
he didn't say WHO designed the universe
or to WHOM he might be grateful
he's is now one of the grateful dead
and likely.....surprised
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Not a belief, not an opinion.
Simple fact.
IC is infested with logical fallacies, as has been demonstrated hundreds of times by now.
In fact, it's amazing that this nonsense still keeps coming up in discussions, considering how often it's been refuted, debunked, falsified to hell and back.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Well that was random.
I guess you get combo points for the effort of doding the point being made and at the same time also take a cheap stab at islam.
Which ironically, kind of doubles down on the point I made in the very post that you were trying to dodge.
Funny how irony can manifest itself so spontanously.