A perfect example of the point I made in post #196.
Thank you.
I did quote you. Many times.
You’ve said again and again that “lack of evidence of “x” is not evidence that “x” does not exist”.
If you flip a coin 1,000,000,000 times and it comes up heads every time, is that evidence that the coin does not have a tail?
In the other thread, which I quoted there and quoted here, you said you’d guess the coin would come up heads on the next flip. And yet, according to your logic, there is no evidence that tails doesn’t exist. So you shouldn’t have a guess one way or another. Please explain why your answer to the coin flip is different that your repeated statement that “lack of evidence of “x” is not evidence that “x” doesn’t exist”.
In good news we are now right back where the last thread left off.
Selene…the question being discussed is: Is a lack of evidence of “x”…evidence that “x” does not exist?
This has nothing to do with what you wrote.
If you have something to contribute on the actual matter being discussed in this interchange, I’d love to hear it.
It is my contention (with no regard to knowledge or guesses or beliefs) that a lack of evidence of “x” is NOT evidence that “x” does not exist. It is my contention that it is just evidence that evidence of “x” is lacking.
If you disagree and think that a lack of evidence of “x” IS evidence that “x” does not exist…let’s discuss it.
But you, you are never wrong. Pathologically incapable. Right?
Yes, but when?
IIRC, you mentioned that you are in your seventies? That would put your college career what, fifty years ago? You’re quite the man to have a perfect infallible memory of things that long ago, and since you’re so infallible I’ll just take your word that way back when, when “gay” meant “happy”, they didn’t go too much into the different meanings of the word atheism.
Of course, what you remember being taught then has nothing whatsoever to what the word means now - much less what modern philosophers think of it.
You are so one to talk.
Give me the citation of me saying that I would guess the coin would come up heads on the next flip!
If you cannot find it…and I am saying you CANNOT find it…I would appreciate you coming back here and acknowledging that I did not say that.
Thank you.
Sure… here you go:
And, presupposing you want to weasel out of what you said earlier, you are still dodging the question about the coin flip. I’ll ask it again.
If you flip a coin 1,000,000,000 times and it comes up head every time, is that evidence the coin does not have a tail side?
HELLOOOOOO…Earth calling Diogenes the Cynic.
Are you now saying that because we do not have evidence of sky gods…that is evidence that sky gods do not exist?
They may well not exists…but the fact that there is no evidence that they exist is NOT evidence that they do not exist…just evidence that the evidence is lacking.
It worth noting that the only difference between the two things mentioned “gods” and “sentient beings on specific other planets”…is that you seem to think you have evidence it is possible (which you really do not)…and that there is no evidence that the other is possible.
Circular.
Because I do not feel like jumping through the hoops you feel like putting in front of me.
Jump through them yourself if you want.
Moderating
The personal sniping is not contributing anything to this debate, which is already circling the drain. The thread will be locked if there is any more of this. And Frank apisa, I note that you were cautioned about this in another thread.
That doesn’t make me wrong.
It’s not a silly question at all. In order to be logically and philosophically consistent, you would have to be just as “agnostic” (under your own definition) about invisible space monkeys under your bed as you are about sky gods. If you want to maintain that the question “silly,” then you’ll have to explain why the possible existence of sky gods is less silly than the possible existence of invisible space monkeys under your bed.
The null hypothesis is a practical, working assumption. It’s not supposed tobe a categorical assertion of “truth.”
I’ll try to make it more simple – the presumption that X does not exist unless there is evidence that X exists is practical and provisonal. It’s not supposed to be a categorical assertion of known fact. It’s not a “belief.” it’s a working assumption, subject to change.
No we aren’t. At least I’m not. Total lack of evidence makes X highly improbable, and warrants a working assumption of non-existence. The fact that it can’t be hypothetically disproven in an absolute sense is true, but uninteresting, uninsightful and unimportant.
Not true. There IS evidence that sentient life can exist elsewhere in the universe. The evidence is not non-zero (and just as significantly, not prima facie impossible).
Once more, this is a vacuous point. It’s true in an absolute sense, but not in a practical sense. There is also no evidence that you don’t have invisible space monkeys under your bed. Is there anything at all you are willing to say either cannot possibly exist or is so unlikely to exist as to be dismissed out of hand? I can think of more stuff to put under your bed, in your closet and in your car.
Prima facie, yes, but prima facie is not absolute.
If so, I’d like him to answer the green swan hypothetical I made in the last thread.
Though I’ll make an easier one for him.
Suppose you’re at a shell game, where the man tells you to guess which of three cups has the pea under it. You’ve been watching for a while and nobody ever wins. So, you begin to suspect that there’s no pea under any of the cups. So you have your buddies drag the guy running the game off so he can’t interfere, and proceed to investigate:
Answer these four questions:
-
You peek under the first cup. No pea. Is this the absence of a pea under this cup evidence that there is no pea under any of the cups?
-
You peek under the second cup. No pea. Is this the absence of a pea under this cup evidence that there is no pea under any of the cups?
-
You peek under the third cup. No pea. Is this the absence of a pea under this cup evidence that there is no pea under any of the cups?
-
Taking your accumulated evidence (if any), how much evidence do you have regarding the statement “there’s no pea under any of the cups”?
You have got to be joking, right.
NOWHERE IN THAT STATEMENT DO I SAY WHAT YOU ARE SAYING I SAID.
I apologize. I thought that I was under the bar that had been set - since I was was merely returning to sender.
Quick question since our discussion seems to have petered off: How do you know it’s even possible that god/s exist?
I mean, do you believe that anything is possible? Is it possible that square circles exist?
Wow, really?
Here… I said you said you would guess it will come up heads. Here is your actual quote:
.
So, um… how is that materially different?
Still waiting for your response on the coin flip question, too. I’ll ask again:
If you flip a coin 1,000,000,000 times and it comes up head every time, is that evidence the coin does not have a tail side?
Marley, you seem intent on getting rid of me…so why don’t you just get rid of me rather than keeping up this transparent charade of moderating.
You are a moderator in this forum the way the United States is a moderator in the Middle East…which is to say, with such a heavy investment in one direction that there is no way you can be even close to even-handed.
I have taken more shit from these pretend atheists than I have even come close to dishing out…and you have done virtually nothing about it.
Essentially I am locked out of any other threads to discuss these issues…cannot really get involved in any new ones lest I be accused of hi-jacking them…and now you threaten to lock this one.
Do so, if you have to.
The atheistic community here should be ashamed of itself. It is pathetic. The moderation of this forum is a joke.
Now…either lock the thread; ban me; or get the hell off my back.
I really do not much care which…because I have already made my point.
That’s not at all what he was saying. He’s saying that because we have evidence that animals do exist, we have evidence that animals can exist. To most of us, this is not an outragous claim.
Things-that-laugh-in-the-face-of-the-laws-of-physics, on the other hand, are kind of thin on the ground. There’s nothing we can point to to say “it might be like that, only on some other planet” when it comes to gods. So gods are less probable than aliens because there are at least proof-of-concept examples that physical beings can exist on planets. For gods we don’t even have that much.
I think the reason you’re not answering the question is because you can’t, not without admitting that you are inconsistent in how you apply your agnosticism and that you do indeed assess the probabilities of entities.
Do you believe Harry Potter is a real person? If not, what evidence do you have that supports your belief in his absence?
What is a ‘pretend’ atheist?
What is the ‘atheist community’?
What is an atheist, IYO?
Well if that doesn’t get you in his good graces I can’t imagine what will…