It’s however what I’ve been focusing on in this thread; I didn’t mean to actually concern myself with the particulars of religion at all, I merely wanted to try and derive some statements on the epistemology (I gotta stop using this word, it’s already losing all its meaning to me) of faith. That there are beneficial aspects to religion, or at least some religions, I can agree – just think of religious art, community, charity, all sorts of stuff. But that isn’t what my arguments concern themselves with.
Yup, I thought you’d get into some type of trouble with that word. Also, it doesn’t help that you came up with your own definition of *atheism * which stipulates the absence of *all *faith, rather than just the absence of faith in god. You could use the word “afideism” instead of atheism, but that doesn’t get around the problem of defining faith.
At this stage, I’m prepared to write off whatever disagreement you’re claiming as pointless, because the effort of determining what it is exactly has become tiresome.
Your excess focus on the conclusion is the stumbling block. I’m confident that I would end up at heliocentricism because it is well established, but I would still conduct a serious analysis and application of the scientific method if I wanted to invest the time and effort in proving heliocentrism independently.
Heck, when I was high school I used inductive reasoning to prove there were an infinite number of Pythagorean triples, well before I knew that this field had been explored in much greater detail.
I don’t understand your question (or putting “one” in quotes) - the scientific method involves making predictions about what should happen if the null hypothesis was true. Design a test, run this test, and if it fails, reject the null hypothesis.
Hypothesis: That’s a dog.
Prediction: It should go “woof”.
Test: Listen.
Result: “Meow”.
Conclusion: Hypothesis is false.
If you can summarize exactly what the point of alleged disagrement is, it might help.
Well then what is your point, and why are you arguing with me? If you don’t find it to be really worth considering magical explanations as an argument, then…I mean what worth is it to point out that we can’t create the magical equivalent of a faraday cage? We can’t put a magical equivalent of a faraday cage around dowsers, but so?
I’m saying let’s not let terminology completely obscure the possibilities. The range is more than dismissed magical communion with God and a misfiring neuron.
It’s okay, thanks. Just some stuff about geocentrism/heliocentrism, the nature of scientific inquiry, and the role of faith/trust/confidence in forming and perpetuating beliefs, much of which is not directly relevant to this thread.
If I decide to pursue the discussion, I’ll start another thread.
