On May 5, 2005, at 5:05 PM, Erik Reuter wrote:
* Dave Land ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
"There is a God" and "there is no God" are equally statements of faith.
And "there are fearsome, invisible, undetectable pink unicorns" and "there are no fearsome, invisible, undetectable pink unicorns" are equally statements of faith.
My God, Erik: we agree!
Well, mostly.
Actually, maybe not.
Damn.
The statements "There is [a/no] God" matter to people so much so that they feel that they are "betting their lives" on their choice, or at least so much so that they feel it necessary to burden Brin-L with their [pro/anti]-religious proclamations.
One who was arguing from his conclusion might assert that the pair of statements you posed above are statements of faith simply because he had concluded that there is no difference between God and fearsome, invisible, undetectable pink unicorns (IUPUs). With our extensive Brin-L training, we would not fall victim to that logical fallacy. We would not begin by asserting the unprovable claim that there is no difference between God and IUPUs, so we could not conclude that there is no difference between your pair of statements and mine.
Damn those Greeks.
Incidentally, one of my favorite resources for reminding myself about the nature of logical fallacies is at the Atheism Web: http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html
But "there are babelfish" and "there are no babelfish" are not equally statements of faith.
Because http://babelfish.altavista.com/ certainly exists.
May your own personal IUPUs bless you,
Dave
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